How to Build Positive Relationships at Home and Work

Relationships of every sort work when you take responsibility for yourself—your mood, happiness, success, self-esteem, needs, and well-being. Relationships cannot work when you blame others for what goes wrong or when you sluff off your responsibility or expect others to be responsible for your mood, success or well-being. Likewise, relationships work when you allow others to take responsibility for their moods, success and well-being rather than thinking you are responsible for their moods and feelings.

A boundary is like a fence along a property line which determines what you are and are not responsible for. We get into trouble in our personal relationships when we step over the line and make ourselves under-responsible for ourselves or over-responsible for others.

In this lesson, I introduce three paradigms from which we experience life and build our relationships. By paradigm, I mean the mental map or filter made up of our core beliefs through which we interpret events and make meaning out of our experience. Our paradigms strongly influence our life experiences including how we perceive and communicate in our relationships. In fact, each paradigm represents a qualitatively different way of perceiving and interacting with the world around us.

A law of the universe is that what you put out is what comes back. You can decide and practice living what you want people to experience from you. If you come from respect, friendliness, empathy and goodwill, you will not only build other people, but that is what will come back to you as well.

We think about a relationship as though it were a thing, an entity. It is not. Your relationship is really two relationships—the relationship in your head and the relationship in the other person’s head. These are not the same. The way you perceive your relationship is different than the way person B perceives your relationship. This is important because you "own" the relationship in your head. In this lesson, I offer you three strategies to improve your relationships by owning the relationship in your head.

The columnist David Brooks recently said, "Many of our society’s great problems flow from people not feeling seen and known. … There is a core … trait that we all have to get … better at, and that is the trait of seeing each other deeply and being deeply seen.”  I would go on to say that people want to be seen. They want to know that you value and care about their experience.  in this lecture, I offer tips to be more present and really see the people in your life.

As people feel respected, they are more likely to perform well and achieve more. This is a natural consequence of believing in people and treating them with respect. In this lecture, I'll explore the meaning of respect and how to show respect in your day-to-day interactions. 

Empathy is at the heart of building great relationships. I think of it as the ability to take another's perspective or feel care or compassion for what someone else is going through.  In this lesson, we'll explore it's meaning as well as how to develop and express it through curiosity and listening.

Our assumptions about other people make a huge difference. In fact, you'll handle the same situation differently based on your assumptions. Even when people's behavior falls short, it's helpful to realize that, as a general rule, poor behavior is the result of poor tactics rather than bad intent. Most people want to succeed. They want to make a difference and experience harmonious relationships. In this lesson, I talk about the Pygmalion effect or the difference your assumptions can have on other people. 

Healthy relationships are not only a function of the people in your network but rather who you are or how you show up with these people. In this lesson, I want to keep building on that theme by talking about ways you can bring friendship and goodwill to your relationships whether we’re talking about family, friends, or people on the job.

In this lesson, I offer you 15 different strategies which you can begin implementing immediately to build relationships of goodwill.  Radiating goodwill is like a magnet. It will draw people to you in ways that increase your happiness and well-being as well as ability to influence them in good ways.

Resentment occurs as we hold onto negative feelings from the past that interferes with our positive feelings today. The baggage may be from the recent or distant past. It may not even be something in your current relationships. But it’s there and it interferes. Although a natural human emotion that we feel when we've been treated poorly, holding onto it is harmful if it becomes a chronic way of relating to others. In this lesson, I offer you strategies to let go of resentments that have held you back.

We've come to the end of the course and I respect that you have made it to the end. In this lesson, I ask some questions to remind you of the most important lessons from the course as well a prompt you to think deeply about how you are doing. This really isn't the end but the beginning as you step into the "real world" to live what you have learned. And, by the way, thanks for being one of my students.

Thanks for being my student. And let me share a few other resources I can offer you as you continue your journey of growing yourself and improving your relationships.