Unleash Your Potential #34 - Improving Relationships

Douglas: Welcome to the Unleash Your Potential Blog, what question can I answer for you today?

LifeAlly: What can I do to improve my relationships with others? 

Douglas: Thank you for asking! This is a question where more information is needed. If I were in a coaching session, my next set of questions would dig deeper into finding out which relationships are not fulfilling you and identify what about those specific relationships might not be reaching your expectations.

Let's isolate the first question. Be honest with yourself about which relationship is causing you to feel this need to improve the quality of your relationships. Chances are there is one that is leading the charge. Improve the one and the others will get better. Perhaps it is a romantic partner that you are struggling with and it is bleeding over into other areas. Maybe you are having a challenge with a superior at work. It doesn’t matter, as with most things, you have to determine the root cause before you can work on a solution. Think about the people who require the most mental/emotional energy from you. Is there someone at work that you spend a large part of the day around? Or maybe they have a significant impact on your day-to-day work. What about at home? Is there a friend or family member that capitalizes on a large chunk of your time? When looking at your relationships, the one that makes the most “noise” is probably the root cause (the squeaky wheel gets the grease and all). Remember that this doesn’t have to be a person you are with all the time, but if you are devoting a lot of mental energy, it's like being with them all the time.  With this question, you have to be willing to be very honest with yourself. Often, we have trouble with this question because we don’t want to acknowledge that someone's actions might be creating challenges for us.

Once you have identified the relationship that is creating the most difficulty it's time to figure out what about it is problematic. Relationships of any type are difficult. Whether it is a friend, relative, lover, or colleague, often when we feel we need to improve the relationship it is because, in some way, the relationship is not meeting expectations. That is the next question, what about your relationship with person X is not meeting expectations? We have expectations around everything.

Sometimes we don’t want to admit it, but we always have expectations in the back of our minds regarding our relationships. You have to do some self-work to figure out if there are expectations you have of the other person that they are not meeting. Then you have to ask yourself, are these expectations fair? Are these expectations something they have the power to meet? And most importantly, do they know that I have these expectations? If we are because someone else is not living up to an expectation they don’t know about, we are setting ourselves up for failure and stress.

On the other side of the expectation question is what they expect from you. Do you feel that this person has expectations of the relationship that you cannot, or will not meet? If you feel that your boss expects you to work until 7 pm every night and you are only willing to work until 5 pm then you will likely develop some negative emotions around that expectation. The trick with the other person's expectations is that the only way to find out is by engaging in conversation. You need to sit down with that person and clarify if what you think their expectations are is really what their expectations are. Then you need to decide if those are expectations you are willing to meet. If either person in a relationship is unwilling or unable to meet the expectations, then either the expectations have to change or the relationship may need to be re-evaluated.

Just to recap, when you want to improve relationships there are three questions you need to consider:

1. Which relationship is at the root of the feeling?

2. What about the relationship is not meeting expectations?

3. What needs to change to enable the relationship to meet expectations?

This is a big question and I hope my answer sheds some light on it. If you want to dig into this concept further, I encourage you to reach out and set up a conversation. In the meantime, check back tomorrow for the next question in the Unleash Your Potential Series!

Be Well!

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