Take Care of Your Relationships
It is Great to Tell, to be Listened, to be Understood
It was not until the suicide thoughts came to my mind. I was okay passing my time alone. I was good at that. I could improve myself on anything. I could read books, play online games, study for my courses. All was fine. Yet, it came, I started thinking about it.
Imagine that you are fighting on different areas of life alone. It is okay unless you are able to do so; however, after some age, it is not possible anymore. After some age, the problems are much bigger than the previous ones. Although you could handle them before, the older you are, the more serious problems are; therefore, you cannot go more yourself, alone…
Well, what to do when you got that you cannot live by yourself anymore? First of all, it is awesome that you understood the importance of being together. You understood the significance of your friends, family, other people around you. You are no more someone who does not care other people. Now, you know that every single person in this life is worth to meet. Everyone has their own story and you want to involve others’ stories. Understanding these all is important and if you are at that point, you have done the most of the job.
Next comes to build or repair the relationships. Now that you know every single person has a unique story just like you, it is time to learn listening. I agree that it is not easy but you really can improve yourself on listening. I have two ways of learning listening. First one is easy but very useful and everyone can easily start with this. The second one is also easy and much more efficient and practical but you may need some chance. First one is reading books and the second one is to meet and watch those who are good at listening. There are really useful books and I can suggest Thomas Gordon’s books if you prefer, you may have a look. The other way of learning listening is, as I stated, related with some chance but be careful and start watching people. See, how they cope with this difficult communication skill. Watch how they listen you, what they say while listening, when they interrupt you, do they interrupt you, how they ask questions to you and so on.
After understanding the importance of relationships and learning listening, which is the very first communication skill caring big importance for relationships, you would see that the number of people around you is increasing thanks to the power of listening. However, it is not enough to listen for a sincere relationship. You need to share your inner world at the same time. So, you need to go with talking skill. Indeed, we all naturally have the talent of talking about ourselves. It might be problem when you need to talk about a topic or you need do discuss on an issue. In such cases, you can have a look ‘I’ language instead of ‘you’, yet, since we are talking about ourselves, it naturally would flow as long as you are sincere. Yes, intimacy is really important. It would ease your talk and building a relationship with the person who listen you.
Until now, we handled three issues: the importance of the relationships and the two important communications skills, listenine and talking. Next, you can ask who to choose to have a relationship? My answer is very personal comparing to other issues I have mentioned until now. I would say anyone can be a good candidate as long as you trust yourself. What do I mean trusting yourself? To me, any life story is worth listening, therefore, everyone is a good candidate to have a relationship. However, the person you are talking to for example may not be a good listener and you may have sensitiveness on listening, therefore, this person may not be a good friend for you. In short, if you think that the relationship will hurt you, you can prefer not to start it at all.
What about your previous relationships, how to fix them? To me, it was easier to start with my friends. I forced myself to share with them more, and to listen them and learn about their inner worlds too. It was not easy for me to open myself since I was closed for so many years, but every time, I forced to go some further. Then, I see that nothing is happening. I was expecting kind of big bang when I talk about the issues I was not mentioning for ten years but, it didn’t happen! Having my listening better took some time too. At the beginning I was not able to focus on the talk and I couldn’t ask true questions most of the time most probably but, the more you practise, the better you are. That was the way I followed to repair my old relationships: I forced myself for both sharing and listening.
After my old friends and the new people I keep meeting, my family came in. It is seriously, the most difficult part with which I still struggle a lot. Yet, again sincerity is important and helps a lot. Obviously, I cannot open myself as I did with my friends, at least not right now, but again, sharing even little may have great help. You can at least talk about the books you are reading or ask some deeper questions about the movie you have watched together.
So, we got the importance of relationships. We improved ourselves on talking and listening. We take care about old friends, new friends and the family separately. After all we came to the last point: repeating. In time, after having some problems, naturally, we can forget the importance of people we have. Therefore, it is important to repeat. You may have a look at the pages of your diary. You can see how difficult those days when you were all alone. I do this sometimes. Now this article will be another way of remembering for me, I will put a bookmark and hopefully everytime I see my bookmarks, I will remember the importance of people I have or I will have. I hope you too benefit from this article at least as much as I did and you will take care of your relationships…