RELATIONSHIPS

You will  always gyrate around anyone who increases you and move away from anyone who decreases your value as a person.

- Ola Joseph.

There are different kinds of relationships that we engage in everyday at different levels. Some are business relationships, some are romantic and some are just social relationships. Whatever type we engage in, a relationship can be viewed in three different ways.

A relationship can be seen as a BRIDGE that connects your life with someone else’s. It is a bridge that you choose to build and it is a bridge that you choose to cross.   The funny thing is that you never know where that bridge is going to take you and how long it will take.

This kind of relationship is not the kind of relationship you have with your in-laws. In-laws are good as long as they live in another city or in another state.

I’m talking about relationships that not only make you feel good, but relationships that make you feel great.

A relationship can also be viewed as a PLANT that you must water to keep alive. My point here is that a relationship is a relationship, whether casual or serious because a relationship must be kept alive if it is to achieve any purpose.

I have seen casual relationships that evolved into multi-million Dollars business and I have seen casual relationships that evolved into marriages. Therefore, relationships in any form and at any stage should be taken seriously.

 A relationship is a BANK ACCOUNT.  If all you do is visit your bank to withdraw money from the account everyday, sooner or later, it will be overdrawn. Therefore, a relationship needs to be invested in. We must constantly make deposits into it to keep it alive.

Some of the problems in relationships come from the fact that most of us enter a relationship in order to get something: we are trying to find someone who is going to make us feel good. But in reality, the only way a relationship will last is if we see our relationships as a place that we go to give, and not a place that we go to take.

Your aim when entering into a relationship, therefore, should be to bring out the best in people that you come in contact with. Your life will be filled if you learn to give off your best in whatever relationship you find yourself.

No, I’m not talking about money. I’m not talking about material things and it is not about sex. But about the way you make people feel when they are around you.

A good relationship should be about encouraging others to reach for the stars, it should be about helping others get what they want in life and it should be about helping people believe in themselves.

Hayward once said that “for every action, there is an equal opposite reaction.  If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the end, he will be compensated in the exact proportion that he gives.

I sincerely believe that the word ‘relationships’ is the key to the prospect of a decent world. At every opportunity, strive to create a flourishing relationship.

I was at a Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest a few weeks ago. After the contest, trophies were presented. There was a young Chinese lady who didn’t win anything.  Being a foreigner who speaks English with an accent; I knew what she must have gone through to put her speech together.

At the end of the meeting, I raised my hand and announced that I would like to re-present my trophy to someone who deserved to be encouraged. I turned around and handed the trophy to her.

Her emotions came out. She thanked me profusely. Her husband shook my hand while muttering his thanks. “Thanks for encouraging us,” he said.

That is what I call relationship. When you go out of your way to bless somebody and help him/her feel great about him/herself.

Calving Coolidge said “No person was ever honored for what he received.  Honor has been the reward for what he gave. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.”

In every relationship, seek to build a bridge just in case you need to cross it. Water the relationship and nourish it or else it will wither and die. Above all, always make a deposit into your relationship to avoid depleting it. See it as a place to give and not a place to take.

As the elders in my village would say, “We live to meet and meet to part but if we are related we shall meet again.”