This is a guest post by Barry Demp.

No one undertakes a journey alone. We cannot succeed without the help of others.

Rich relationships lead to greater success – period. Our relationships help us reach our fullest potential, in both our professional and our personal lives.

Improved relationships can increase profits, reduce turnover, improve customer satisfaction, and increase your chances of getting promoted.

Divorce rates are dramatically lower when both husband and wife have excellent relationship skills. People with strong relationships tend to be much happier, too.

Here are seven ways to build stronger relationships right now:

#1: When Listening, Be Fully Present

Listening draws people to you. It lets you show that you value them and what they have to offer.

During a conversation, look at the speaker and make good eye contact. Ask open-ended questions and show your interest; when you ask for someone’s wisdom, advice, or experience, you’re creating the foundation for a potential relationship.

Don’t interrupt: silence gives others the opportunity to fully express themselves. Allow others to finish explaining their point of view before offering your own.

#2: Show Appreciation for Others

Value the people around you. Keep your promises, and focus on others, rather than on yourself.

Try to see the world from the other person’s perspective and appreciate your differences, instead of casting them in your own image. Ask yourself how you’d feel, in their position.

When you’re working with clients, create an optimistic and enthusiastic environment. Your company will get a reputation for good customer service if you can ensure that your clients feel good about working with you.

#3: Be Loyal and Have Integrity

Stick to your moral principles. Don’t betray confidences, gossip or criticize. Your actions and behavior demonstrate your integrity to others.

Go the extra mile for your organization, whether or not your boss is watching. And stay the course even when the going gets tough.

Take responsibility for any negative relationships, by recognizing the part you may have played in causing the current situation. Let others know that you’ll work with them towards a better outcome.

#4: Help Others to Grow

Emphasize people’s strengths, instead of pointing out their weaknesses. By believing in their potential and having faith in them, you help them think more highly of themselves. Expect the best and they’ll live up to your expectations.

Look for opportunities to praise others. Recognize them for their good qualities and their accomplishments; take time to show your appreciation.

#5: Treat Your Relationships Carefully

Avoid getting angry. If you do feel angry, count to ten, sleep on it, and consider the consequences. If someone wrongs you, be forgiving (my wife says that the inability to forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies).

If you insult someone or yell at them, it’s like releasing poison into the air. This sort of behavior is toxic to relationship-building.

#6: Network Effectively and Regularly

Effective networking can turn strangers into friends and build a world full of people who will take our calls, give us their time, and answer our questions.

Make a habit of learning and remembering names: a person’s name is the friendliest word in the world. During conversations, use “please” and “thank you” often, and avoid generalizations like “always” and “never”.

#7: Gain the Trust of Others

Be consistent and do what you say you will do. This lets others know that they can depend on you.

Keep conversations confidential: that way, your colleagues, clients and friends will feel safe when sharing personal information or discussing difficult issues.

Remember that body language influences relationships. Smile, make eye contact, lean forwards, stand or sit up straight, and avoid crossing your arms.

Strengthen Your Relationships

These are just seven ways to establish strong new connections and to build on current ones. Try some of them out this week, and watch your relationships grow.

About the Author

Barry Demp is a highly-experienced Business and Personal coach based in Michigan. He is author of three short workbooks, including Masterful Relationships, which goes into more depth on the areas covered in this post. You can find out more and get your copy of Masterful Relationships here.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

Do you trust yourself enough?

On the surface, it is easy to spout off a quick yes to this question, but are you being completely honest with yourself?

Do you trust yourself enough to risk it all or are you hesitant to pursue your dreams with your full vigor?

If you want the best life has to offer, then sometimes you’ve got to step out on the edge and believe that you can make it work.

The Need for High Self Trust

I recently wrote You Have What It Takes: Act Boldly on another site that I do some writing for.  In the article, I challenge you to believe in yourself enough to act boldly.

I say that you are strong enough, smart enough and capable enough to achieve great things.

It is one thing for me to tell you this.  It is all together another for you to believe it and have enough trust in it to actually act upon it.

Nothing ever happens in life until you actually do something.  Until you take that first step.  I’ll admit it is often a leap of faith.  That’s why a high degree of self trust is so incredibly vital.

What You Have Working Against You

When you have a great idea that you want to pursue, your lizard brain starts interfering trying to keep you safe.  It wants you to stay still where nothing bad can happen.

You have to learn to battle these feelings of inferiority and insignificance if you want to break the stalemate and reach a higher level of success.

In order to do this, you’ve got to trust yourself.  You’ve got to rely on the fact that you are strong enough, smart enough and capable enough to see it through even when difficulties arise because they always do.

You see it isn’t really the problems you encounter along the way that generally hold you back from higher levels of achievement.  There are numerous ways to overcome obstacles to success.

So, what does hold you back?

It is your lack of trust in yourself.  You listen to your lizard brain and get scared and then you don’t act on the very ideas that could propel you to what you want.  They are too bold, too risky and they would leave you too vulnerable.  Phooey!  Trust yourself and go for it.

How to Learn to Trust Yourself

A lack of self-trust can begin in many different ways.  Failed relationships, businesses or other endeavors can erode your belief in yourself.  However, I want to assure you that no one succeeds at everything.  Therefore, you are not alone in needing to increase your level of self-trust.

Here are three helpful ways to increase how much you trust yourself:

1.  Actively Forgive Yourself and Others

As I said, no one succeeds at everything.  None of us are perfect.  We all have skeletons in our closets.  Some of yours may haunt your thoughts and create feelings that cause you to doubt yourself.  You need to make it a point to forgive yourself and others for past mistakes.

I encourage you to write down as many of these old missteps and wounds as you can think of.  This can be a cathartic experience.  Get it all out in the open in the light of day.  Once you have all the ones you can think of recorded, and especially the ones that are the most troubling, then actively forgive yourself and others for them.  Vow to never make the same mistakes again and move on.  Burn your list or dispose of it in a manner that symbolizes that you are letting it go completely.

2.  Start a Success Journal

You likely have a tendency to overestimate your failures and underestimate your successes.  To remedy this, I’d highly encourage you to start a success journal.  Keep track of all the times that you succeed at something large or small.  By the way, nothing is too small to write down.  If you feel good about it, then add it to the list.

This process will reassure you that you can trust yourself.  You will see how fast this list grows and you will begin to realize that you really do have a lot of strengths.  This is also an excellent way to zero in on what you are best at.  Leverage these strengths to rise even higher and don’t forget to celebrate all your victories.

3.  Challenge Yourself

What scares you?  Is it heights, public speaking or something else entirely?  Whatever it is, challenge yourself to face it head-on.  For example, I know I have a fear of heights.  One way that I’ve increased my level of self-trust is by purposefully choosing to participate in some adrenaline-pumping adventures that involve heights.  I’ve gone rock-climbing, zip-lining and parasailing.  In each instance, I get really nervous beforehand, but afterwards, I feel powerful because I faced my fear and overcame it.

This is a great way to build self-trust.  By overcoming a simple fear, you reinforce in your mind the idea that you are strong enough, smart enough and capable enough.  You have what it takes!  Through these efforts, you will build the self-confidence and trust needed to do anything.

What do you do to build trust in yourself?  Please share your ideas in the comments below so everyone can benefit.

Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com

Regardless of the answer, most people believe there is still a higher level of happiness out there for them.  However, they have no real, concrete ideas about how to go about increasing their happiness.

This leads them to all kinds of crazy pursuits that almost always turn out to be dead-ends.  Finding happiness can definitely be a frustrating experience.

However, it really isn’t as complicated as we make it out to be.  There are some very simple building blocks for happiness that once recognized can significantly increase our feelings of well-being.

The Wrong Ways to Try to Increase Happiness

It is important to begin by identifying some of the wrong ways that we seek happiness.  These will serve as a contrast to the real building blocks that we will discuss later.

Most of us apply the trial and error technique for finding happiness.  We go wherever our whims and desires lead us hoping and thinking it will make us happy.  Unfortunately, this very behavior is usually what leads to unhappiness.

We try a thing believing it is the solution to our happiness dilemma only to discover that it is a false promise.  This produces feelings of despair, confusion and sometimes embarrassment.  Of course, all of these reduce our happiness level leaving us less happy than we were before.

In addition, we often confuse pleasure with happiness.  We think more food, money, possessions, prestige, recognition, adventure or sex will appease that insatiable hunger inside us.  These things may produce a temporary high, but generally they are not long-term solutions.  Why?  Because it continually takes more and more of these fixes to produce the same good feelings.  It is not sustainable nor is it the path to real happiness.

Others of us have turned to trying to numb the hunger for more happiness.  We bury ourselves in work, hobbies, television, drugs, video games or alcohol trying to deaden the desire.  Of course, this never works either and instead just leaves us feeling burned out and desperate.

These are all counterfeits.  They can never really make us happier.  They are deceptions.  Think of them like mirages in a desert.  They only offer false hope and fail to deliver true satisfaction.

The Real Building Blocks for Greater Happiness

What are the real solutions for finding greater happiness?  Well, there is a unique recipe for each individual.  Therefore, I can’t tell you to do this or do that and you’ll be happy.  No one can. 

What I can do is give you three building blocks.  These lay the foundation for creating happiness.  They are the groundwork and from there you can add your own unique style to the final outcome.  Real happiness starts with these three essentials weaving them uniquely into your own tapestry.

Here are the three real building blocks for greater happiness:

1.  Trust

In order to be happy you have to be in an environment where trust exists.  Trust is where you derive your sense of safety.  If you don’t feel safe, then you can’t really begin to be happy.  You need to know that you aren’t going to be taken advantage of around every corner.  Societies where trust is very low are some of the unhappiest countries on Earth.

To experience greater happiness, we need to be able to trust and feel a relatively high degree of safety with:

• Our spouses and family
• Our government
• Our job security
• Our financial means
• Our access to basic necessities

I’m sure this list is not 100% complete, but it gives you the idea.  We have to be able to trust that we are safe and that our basic needs are going to be met in order to experience greater happiness.

This is the first building block.  If you are in a situation where your sense of trust is low, then you need to rectify that before you are going to be able to find more happiness.  This means that you might need to improve your relationships or find a new job or get on a budget to better your financial situation.  The point is that if you increase your trust in your well-being, you’ll begin to increase your happiness.

2.  Community

We all desire a sense of connectedness.  I know there are differences in this area when it comes to introverts versus extroverts, but it is really just a difference in scale.  Introverts want a small, intimate group of close friends where extroverts want a large, looser group of what a lot of us introverts usually refer to as acquaintances.  The point is that we all want to feel like we belong somewhere.

This is why there is such a strong social element in schools, workplaces and churches.  Of course, you also find people flocking together at pubs, around hobbies and even online.  Once we feel a sense of trust, then we are free to start building a sense of community or connectedness with others.

Community gives us a sense of affirmation.  We feel loved and accepted by the group and this is very important to our overall well-being.  Your community could be your family, a club, a church

You might think that you like to be alone, but this really isn’t the case.  It is an avoidance mechanism.  You have likely been hurt by others in the past and don’t want to subject yourself to the possibility of future pain.

If you desire a greater sense of happiness, then you have to find that place where you fit in and can become a part of the community.  I know it is sometimes risky, but your happiness depends upon it.

3.  Purpose

Once we have trust and community, then finding our purpose is essential to greater happiness still.  Generally, people find this purpose in their community, whatever kind of group that is.  For example, if you belong to a club of some sort, then you might seek to become president or serve in some other capacity necessary to the group’s proper functioning. 

Purpose gives you a sense of being needed and valuable.  This is a crucial part of feeling happier.  We all want to know that we matter.  We want to feel like we are contributing to the greater good.  We also want a few pats on the back from others.  All of this gives us a warm feeling inside that is a part of our overall happiness.

There are a ton of ways to find purpose in your life.  You can volunteer.  You can help family.  You can work at a career that you feel fulfills a worthy cause.  Again, this purpose is unique to your personality and desire, but finding it will definitely boost your happiness.

Use These Building Blocks to Create Greater Happiness

I challenge you to consider these building blocks in your own life.  Where are you lacking?  Where do you need to concentrate to increase your happiness?  What do you need more of?  Explore these building blocks and you will find that it really is possible to build a better life.

Photo by StarMama

We all want love.  Love satisfies our deepest needs.  We long for the nurturing, accepting and forgiving nature of love. 

You must give it to receive it and you have to live smartly to be lovable.  These requirements are non-negotiable. 

A life without love is empty and dark.  Open your heart and let the light shine in!

A little refresher on how to love and be loved before we go on

Love is a verb not a feeling.  Love is how you act toward someone.  It is nurturing, caring, forgiving, providing, encouraging, leading and supporting others.

We often say things like, “I just don’t love him/her anymore.”  What we mean is that for whatever reason our emotions don’t support the action of loving this person right now.

Often, this is because we don’t feel loved by that person.  We don’t act in love toward others which makes them not act in love toward us.  This downward spiral can be hard to stop.

Again, you have to give love to receive it.  Love is selfless.  It is giving of yourself even when you don’t feel like it and even when it doesn’t appear to be appreciated or returned.

This selflessness is the hard part about loving people.  It is easy to start feeling like you aren’t getting a good return on your effort.  You aren’t being loved enough.  This is selfishness creeping in.

This is how a lot of loving relationships fall apart.  One partner or the other starts feeling like they are loving their partner more than they are being loved.  They convince themselves that they are being cheated.  Again, this is a slippery slope!

Selfishness is the opposite of love!  Selflessly loving others before they love us back is the best way to ensure we, ourselves are loved.

Therefore, it is important that we choose a lifestyle that expresses love to others through our actions and makes us more lovable at the same time.

Smart living is a great way to express love and be lovable

I would suggest that smart living is a great lifestyle for expressing your love for others and for making yourself lovable.

If you look back over the rules for smart living, you will see things like:

• taking responsibility for your actions
• having a positive attitude
• acting charitably
• being a good steward over money
• leading by example
• growing and learning
• taking care of yourself
• seeking adventure and exploring

I would argue that these actions both express love for your family and also make you more desirable to love.  These are the kinds of behaviors that make true and lasting love possible.

Trust must exist for love to flourish.  Smart living makes a person trustworthy. 

Sure, there is a romantic side to love in a marriage too, but that is not all that love is about.  It is a lot easier to be romantic with someone when you feel well cared for and secure in your life.  Therefore, I would say that smart living also contributes to romance.

Am I wrong?

I think a person that takes good care of themselves, their children, their money and their community is a lot more attractive to love than someone who doesn’t.

A person that lives a irresponsible lifestyle might be fun and exciting to hang around for awhile, but eventually that is going to get old.  People want and need the sense of security and trust that comes from smart living!

Smart living is a lifestyle that is loving toward others and allows you to be loved.

You reduce the risk involved in someone loving you which increases the likelihood that you will be loved.  This is a win-win situation!

Assignment: Love others and let yourself be loved by living smartly

This is the final assignment in this series.  All along I have offered ways for you to start applying these rules to your life.  After all, if you don’t live the rules, then what’s the point in reading them?

Here are the assignments for this rule:

1. Dig deeper into the meaning of love – Our society has given most of us many false impressions about love.  We have to unlearn these erroneous notions.  Here are some articles that will help you uncover what real love is all about.

   Choosing to love every day
   Love is a verb
   Real Love Again

   I hope these articles help you unpack the true meaning of love so you can start to love others more deeply and also receive the love we all crave.
   

2. Begin loving others – I hope by now you get it that you have to first love someone else with your actions before you are going to be loved.  Therefore, it is time to start loving the people around you.  Here are a few articles to help you express your love as a verb.

   101 Ways to Show You Love Somebody
   25 Things Every Father Must Teach His Daughter About Life
   Frugal Ways to Show Your Love

   Ideas are priceless!  Hopefully, these will help you to improve your relationships and feel more loved!

Love is the pinnacle of smart living!

The best we can do in life is to love and be loved.  It is the summit we all seek to conquer.  Applying all the smart living rules in your life will help you to achieve this victory!

Photo by  TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.  ~Zig Ziglar

We must do the right thing in our life even when it’s not convenient for us.  This is called integrity.  Here are several ways that we can build trust and do the right thing.

1.  Do what you say you will do.

This seems simple enough, but how often have you experienced people doing the exact opposite?  As a customer, I have seen this numerous times.  I get told the work will be done tomorrow and then it is not.  We must set the right expectations with others and then live up to those expectations.  Make sure that your actions exactly meet your words.  If they do not, then people will not trust you.  Another way that people fail in this area is by not giving their employer a full eight hour workday.  You agreed to this when you took the job so do it.  We must be sure to do what we say we’ll do in every area of our lives.

2.  Work at an honest profession.

Do you firmly believe that what you do for a living is benefiting others?  If not, then I would suggest seeking other employment.  We can’t really get ahead and be happy in life if we aren’t doing something that we feel has meaning.  Does the company you work for conduct its affairs in an ethical manner?  Are you fair and consistent with your customers?  If not, these things can come back to bite you.  People will eventually discover these disparities and then your reputation will be tarnished.  Be sure you work at an honest profession.

3.  Meet your financial obligations as agreed.

Pay your bills!  I think most people know they should do this, but they often fail to manage their finances appropriately to avoid getting overextended.  Do you have a written budget?  Do you keep track of what you spend and manage your money so you can pay your bills on time?  Meeting your financial obligations is a key indicator of your trustworthiness.  I mentioned in Reality Check – Are You Doing What It Takes To Get Ahead in Life? that employers now run credit checks prior to hiring people.  This is one way they check to see if you can be trusted.  It would be terrible to miss out on the next great job offer simply because you didn’t pay your bills on time.

4.  Make sure your handshake is better than any contract.

If you made an agreement with someone verbally or otherwise always, always, always fulfill your end of the bargain.  You must do this even if it turns out not to be in your best interest.  If you give people a reason to doubt whether your word is good or not, then you will miss many great opportunities in life.  Your handshake on a deal should be better than any contract.  People must know without a doubt that you will not go back on your word.  This is crucial to your success!

5.  Show up on time to every appointment.

Sure, I’ve been late before, but it is the rare exception.  In my mind, if someone shows up late, it plants a seed of doubt about whether I can trust them with important things.  You need to be where you said you’d be when you said you’d be there.  Again, this is not difficult, but if you are consistently late, it sends the wrong message.  People will talk about you behind your back and they will not trust you.  Without trust, you will miss out on chances to improve your life.

6.  Be faithful to your spouse.

Don’t give anyone a reason to doubt you in this area.  Look at how failures in marital fidelity tarnished Bill Clinton’s reputation and the legacy of his Presidency.  What you do in your personal life will spill over into your professional life as well.  Maybe you don’t cheat, but do you flirt?  Don’t even create the perception that you might break your vows.  People want to do business with those that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt they can trust and that will project a positive image for their organization.

You must do the right thing to be trusted with greater opportunities.

Doing the right thing is really not that hard, but it is critical to balanced success.  The more consistently you do what is right, the more often doors will be open to you.  Being trustworthy, you will experience greater happiness and build more meaningful relationships.  These relationships will assist you to expand your influence and live a richer, more abundant life.

Photo by Andyrob