Still reminiscing a bit back on the previous year, I found the world rallied around one great takeaway: building and maintaining strong, healthy relationships. In a time when all of us have been cooped indoors longer than we’d like, I’m sure many of us have taken the time to reassess our relationships that has long been overdue.

Personally, I had to take a long hard look at assessing my own relationships, especially that to my own self. I believe many of us have pushed to the wayside so many unresolved issues that we would always tell ourselves we’d address eventually.

Was that time ever going to come if it wasn’t for the pandemic? I have a hard time thinking the answer is yes. What happens when we see a loved one going through some issues and telling us that they’ll eventually figure it out later sometime in the future. We don’t tell our friends and family to stay stagnant in that circumstance, so is it healthy for us to do the same?

That provided the impetus for me to harken back to the core value system that I created back in March 2020. If you’re interested in that system, you can read more about it here.

It’s amazing what can happen to your current and future relationships once you self assess, and reassess, your core values and align, and realign, your life choices back to them. However, this still leaves you feeling somewhat lost in the midst of differing opinions and ideas around how to develop healthy, authentic relationships.

As a result, I decided to recently start a podcast called Between Us which aims to delve deep into the inner workings of various relationships in our lives by learning from people’s experiences from all types of different types of backgrounds and upbringings. Here are some of the common themes I’ve learned thus far to developing healthy relationships from the podcast:

1. Celebrate Your and Others’ Differences

   One of, if not, the biggest challenges to healthy relationships is learning to embrace our differences as human beings. As human beings, we naturally go into relationships with the working assumption and expectation that everyone will think and act like we ourselves do.

   However, people come from all different backgrounds that lead to differences in the way we perceive and experience the world. Imagine how life would be like if we were all the same - quite boring if you ask me! Learning to cherish and celebrate your unique differences and those of others is a great jumping pad for developing a more sincere, healthy relationship.

2. Give People Your Time

   Being able to give people, including yourself, time is a tremendous gift. I may be slightly biased here given my love language is quality time, but I believe we’ve gained a firmer grasp on the true essence of time more recently and see how we should spend our time wisely by giving as much of it as possible to our loved ones, friends, and colleagues.

   I’ve also taken away how important it is to be intentional and present in the moments you do spend time with your loved ones or for yourself. Connecting with others and ourselves is the cornerstone of our livelihoods, so it’s important that we put in the effort by removing the trivial life distractions during these precious moments.

3. Communication is Key

   As obvious as this may be, communication can make or break a relationship. Think about a relationship that has been weakened in your life and how much communication, or a lack thereof, played into the relationship decaying.

   While we understand communication is important to maintain strong, healthy relationships, it’s more important to understand the fundamentals of communication. The biggest danger when it comes to communication, and I’ve fallen prey to this many a time, is that we assume the other party clearly understands the message we’re trying to get across.

   Building empathy into your communication psyche will work wonders! Think about the fundamental pieces of how to start and finish your message as well as what your audience wants to learn from the message - it truly can be that simple.

Building, developing, and strengthening relationships do not just happen overnight. It takes time and discipline towards learning what works best for others and what works best for you.

On that note of what works best for you, it’s just as important to develop a healthy relationship with yourself as it is with others. If there’s anything I’ve learned thus far from my time reassessing life during the past year and learning from my guests on the podcast, it’s that we often forget to develop a meaningful and healthy relationship with ourselves.

Funny enough, I’ve spoken with a friend or two about the concept of being demotional in order to better understand self and make healthy choices and decisions for yourself. It’s this weird idea that we can be detached from our own emotions, hence the idea of being demotional, in order to assess our own self as if we’re stepping out of our own head and psyche.

I know.. it’s definitely a weird, abstract concept to grasp, and I’m not serving the idea as much justice or clarity as it deserves. Maybe I’ll write a post and/or do a podcast episode specifically on the idea - let me know down in the comments if that’d be something you’re interested in learning more about!

Anyways, I hope you all that you are all able to find the common foundation in the three themes I’ve discovered thus far in building healthy relationships: being intentional with your values and human interactions. I hope that you all have been able to follow this message and idea and incorporate it even more into your relationships. It has made all the difference for me, and I know it can have the same impactful effect for you.

If you’re interested in learning more about other’s experiences in order to build healthy/healthier relationships all around you, please check out the latest episode of the podcast here!