by Keith Hafner
Life is sweet when you get along with the people around you…and miserable when you don’t. Many people don’t realize that there are skills that can be developed that empower you to improve your personal relationships. Here are some of my favorite strategies…
#1. Seek first to understand. Listen and think before you speak.
#2. Don’t be so quick to correct everybody. Just because you know the right answer doesn’t mean you always have to say it.
#3. Learn to make softer choices with your language. “Son, you didn’t take the garbage out, AGAIN!” …is sometimes better expressed, “Son, what went wrong with getting the garbage out?”
#4. Don’t make it about you. You notice this in other people, don’t you? …The relative that shows up at your kid’s birthday party…and makes it all about them. The co-workers who can only see how things affect themselves… When it’s not your show — enjoy the back seat.
#5. This is an important one: be nearly impossible to offend. The opposite? Taking offense at every real or imagined slight…
#6. Upset with somebody? Speak to them privately. Don’t air the dirty laundry in public.
#7. Enjoy, respect, appreciate the differences between you and your way of doing things — and everybody else’s. For some, those differences are a constant source of irritation. You get to choose your response.
#8. Sometimes — just don’t say anything. Learn to anticipate the situations where you are likely to put your foot in your mouth…and head them off!
#9. In the song “Yesterday, When I Was Young,” the singer, on his deathbed, is despairing of living a wasted, self-focused life. He says, “And every conversation I can now recall, concerned itself with me and nothing else at all.” Check your conversations. If you find that most of the talk is about you, work on directing conversations back to the other person.
#10. Develop skill in questions like these:
“Whatcha been up to?”
“How’s the family?”
“What’s going on at your job?”
“What are your plans for your vacation?”
“Have you been reading anything good lately?”
There is a skill in focusing on the other person…Practice!
#11. Remember people’s names; birthdays; parents names; where they go to church…
You get it. Make a point to learn and remember these bits of info. By the way: nothing wrong with writing these bits of information down in your planner…
#12. Always respect the people in your life by being on time; by being ready; by being dressed appropriately, and by using appropriate language.
