“If I had to read a lecture, I would have given most of my attention to the relationships between people. This is the most important what I have learnt working in a sea port and in all my subsequent life.”
Mikhail Zhvanetskiy, a Russian writer, TV host and comedian
Once I conducted a consultation for man who was depressed as his wife had abandoned him for his friend, leaving him with a daughter. An athletic-looking, successful businessman, has been completely shattered and seemed to be the embodiment of misery. It took me a few trainings and a serious consultation to bring him back to his senses.
Of course, this is an extreme case. Can you imagine a man with disfunctional relationships in the family, at work, or with friends, being happy and successful? It is impossible.
Imagine you have a huge luxurious house, five cars, best clothes, food, as in heaven, but you are alone and stranded on a desert island. Would you agree to have this kind of life?
Many people don’t know how to communicate properly and do not agree with the idea that relationships are more important in their life. They can feel absolutely lonely despite of living in a modern city and significant network of social contacts.
Moreover, most pain can be caused through communication, especially with close friends. Buddha said that a word can kill. Nothing hurts as bad as an offensive word from a close person.
Also, sometimes even a look or intonation is enough to cause pain.
The way a person relates to others, especially loved ones, is the indicator of the way he treats himself.
Many of you know the importance of the relationships, but only few are able to build them in a right way.
First of all you need to realize that any relationship is a very gentle and precious thing.
There are no insignificant little things in relationships! Carelessness, harsh words, two minutes of anger can easily destroy ten years of friendship or a happy marriage.
Andrew Marshall, the famous British consultant on family and marriage, bestselling author claims that this stuff destroys most of the families.
“I think that love triangle or soul crisis is not something that you have to be aware of in your marriage, but little outburst of anger, tiny disagreements, hidden disappointments and gradually developing alienation. Those are the real killers of family ties.”
Many people were once fascinated by Dale Carnegie. Through his books, millions of readers have improved their relationship and, consequently, their quality of life. But that type of psychology in many ways serves for developing hypocrisy, artificial surface communication: “smile, pretend to listen, speak what the person wants to hear, do not argue in order to please him, and so on.”
If you don it insincerely, for the sake of manipulating people in vendible ways, then tactically you can and will win, but strategically you will lose completely.
Words, the way you act — is not more than 10–15 percent. The rest perception of the person goes on the inner level. You might have noticed , that sometimes when you meet a person of culture who smiles a lot and sheds compliments he awakes loathing in you somehow and unwillingness to associate with him again. And the reversed situations happen.
The fact is that significant part of our communication happens on a subconscious level, and there we know everything about each other. And if there is darkness, selfishness, greediness inside the person, then however he would have been acting on the outer level, he can never build happy long lasting relationship, at best he can just temporarily fascinate.
True relationships begin at the level of the soul. We all want communication from the heart, from the soul, isn’t it?
For that we should all see the God in everything and everyone. All that surround us is Divine.
And divine love means to love everyone as the manifestation of God.
You have to become self-sufficient person, respectful to yourself and to other people, person that doesn’t have painful attachments, understanding, that all relationships in this world are temporal.
Serve all, expect nothing from anyone, and do everything selflessly.
But if you see that the person is selfish, a consumer and your help will make him a parasite, so then on the outer level you refuse helping him, but on the inner level you are being compassionate towards him and send him love and happiness.
Many of you will say: “I helped so many people but they didn’t even thank me for that”. If you are expecting gratitude, then it is not altruism, and then the true love is above any duality.
For example, if a mother truly loves her child, she would never allows him to play with a socket, or taking into his hands or all the more in his mouth chemicals, even if she would have to hit him by the hands or punish. So that in relationship you have to show some restraint at a time, maybe even some level of force. If you do it from your soul, everyone would benefit from it.
Very good practice is to conduct sort of a bill with every person, just like in the bank. Constantly check the balance of this bill. If you provided some service to a specific person, did something nice to him, did a favour so then credit one point to your account. And vice versa: if you cause him trouble, behaved incorrectly, brought this person down, then record minus one at your expense with respect to this individual.
And the same relatively to that person: you got something from him — point to him, if this person hadn’t kept his promise, showed no attention to you, let you down, etc. — so then it is minus one to him. And it’s important that the balance was always within +3.
If the gap is large, it ruins the relationships a lot. Many people think: I do so much for him, helped him a lot, but he treats me that bad. And then you check if on your account you have plus 10, and on the account of this man minus 2, so those relationships are doomed.
You grow the parasite, which everyday disliked you more.
Or, on the other hand, you can be offended and do not understand why you were refused in your plea, and why that another person suddenly stopped communicating warmly. Then you have to check the bill: when was the last time you did something good to that person?
How to quickly check yourself: whether you can build harmonious relationships?
Test 1:
How do you behave when you need to ask someone about something or deny someone else, when you are unable to comply with the request or when you are confident that no one will benefit from it — how do you behave in those situations?
How easily you ask or refuse in something? If your answer is no, it means that you are a selfish, full of fears and “sick” concepts individual. It means that you grow parasites and destroy your life. There are very few people who respect and love, and those people are being neglected.
Test 2:
How many people did I make happy today, this week, this year and indeed in my entire life?
In our civilization everyone is anxious about becoming famous, rich, and sexually hyperactive, and consume and use everyone and everything. The value of the relationship is boiled down to “useful” contacts, and how much advantages we can get from those relationships.
I remember the words of one very pure monk while giving advices to a young couple, he told:
“Remember: in relationships it is very important to give more than you get, because lucre, concentration on oneself is something that quickly destroys any relationships”.
Also you have to remember that you should always invest in the relationships.
For instance, if you want to be healthy you have to always exercise, eat healthy, etc.
And same goes for every area of your life, especially it considers relationships.
Investing in relationships means:
1. To keep your promises.
2. Remember important dates for your friends, relatives.
3. Ask for excuse as soon as possible if we made an inaccuracy, if we offended a person, even if you didn’t feel sorry for that.
4. To look after our speech, mimic, smile sincerely, and be polite and benevolent.
5. In any case not to show any complaints, and in other way try to thank more.
6. To be able to listen sympathetically. Be able to hear the other person (or develop this talent). In addition, learn to listen to someone else’s opinion about you, and be open, to understand and to “hear” this opinion about yourself.
7. Give and accept presents and gifts. Never come to someone’s house or a meeting without a present, even a small one.
8. Be faithful in all respects to your loved ones.
9. And one more rule: never talk bad about anyone behind their backs. More precisely, we should protect the reputation of a person in his absence and keep silent. We should behave with respect to any person, and in particular to the people with whom we share close relationships. Moreover, we undermine our credibility on the part of the person with whom we are talking about it.
Most of the relationships were destroyed exactly because of this one last point…
Do you find it difficult? And how about learning something that we don’t need for years — is that easy?
Remember: Quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships with other people. If something is placed above the relationships: money, careers, health, principles, etc., then one day we will lose all of that and we will have to be plunged into the cold dark chasm completely deprived of love.
Ayurveda says that there is just one method to see if the person progresses in his life:
1. A person becomes happier and happier every day.
2. Personal relationships with others are getting better.
Build harmonious relationships based on love and be happy!
Thought for reflection:
1. For completing our mission successfully, we should in every possible way help people on their path. By helping others, we help ourselves. Establishing and maintaining relationships with other people are being blocked when we start to cherish our own uniqueness to such an extent, that we become completely obsessed with our egocentric world.
2. Establishing contact with someone to whom you do not feel any emotions, just for the sake of not being alone, in fact, leads to more loneliness than when you are alone by yourself. (Dr. Michael Newton (Quotes from the book “Destiny of Souls”)
3. Do not have a hundred roubles, have a hundred friends (Russian proverb).
4. Very often, in order to begin to appreciate a person or a relationship with him, we need to lose this person…
5. Recently I have read a comment of one famous psychologist conclusion regarding years of research about which nation is the most intelligent one.
“In fact, the development of the civilization depends not only on the average IQ, but on the social intelligence — ability to build effective communication (relationship), to establish contacts and to learn from other civilizations — that is nation’s pledge of prosperity…”
Rami Bleckt
For more information, read Rami’s book Alchemy of Interpersonal Communications
