According to Brain Stacy, in the study of superior human relations, one of the most important laws is what is the law of indirect effort. The law of indirect effort says that in our activities with other people, we get almost everything we want in an indirect way.
We achieve happiness not by trying to become happy but by engaging in activities on a day-to-day basis that we find valuable and worthwhile. The finest way to impress another person is to be impressed by him. If we want other people to respect us, the surest way to achieve that is to respect other people.
An individual has a healthy personality to the degree which he can get along with the greatest number of different types of people. A person with high, genuine levels of self-esteem and self-acceptance has naturally and without effort, the ability to get along with the greatest number of other people.
What can we do on a day-to-day basis to improve the quality of our relationships with others? Aside from working on ourselves, what can we do to, with and for other people to improve the quality of our interactions with them? Everything we do to raise the self-esteem of others will increase the quality of our human relations.
If we go through life doing everything possible to make other people feel good and valuable about themselves, we automatically fee valuable and good about ourselves.
What can we do to make other people feel important? Tracy believes that, first is acceptance, which is one of the deepest cravings of human nature. We can accept another person totally and unconditionally without judgment.
The second thing we can do to make other people important, according to him, is approval. We can praise and reinforce everything a person does that is right or good. Another thing we can do is express appreciation or gratitude, which causes other people to feel that what they are doing and saying is of value and consequence. “Admiration is a tremendous way of building the self-esteem of another person. We can admire traits, such as punctuality, or possessions – things people own.”
If our aim is to develop high levels of self-esteem in others, to make other people feel valuable about themselves, we must never criticize. Nothing destroys human personalities, undermines self-esteem, lowers self-confidence and causes negative – if not hostile and violent reactions – more than destructive criticism.
Never argue with other people. When we argue with others, we are saying to them, in effect, that their thoughts, opinions, and values are wrong.
The more attention we pay to other people, the more we convey to them that we consider them to be valuable and important. We pay attention primarily by listening. It builds trust between the two parties. Listening builds character in the listener because active, concentrated listening takes self-discipline. Listening builds self-esteem in the person listened to.
There are several techniques involved in effective listening. Face the person squarely, lean forward and concentrate totally, without mental wandering or interruption. Pause before replying which conveys to the person that you are giving careful consideration to what he is saying. If a person has made a point and is unclear to you, say “What I understand you are saying is this,” and feed it back to him. Ask open-ended questions to the person express himself fully.
The most important place to start developing superior human relations is in marriage and relationships. The first problem that arises in marriages and relationships is lack of commitment. A lack of commitment in a relationship suggests to the other that he or she is not good enough for total commitment. If one person has the courage to commit himself wholeheartedly to the relationship, it often gives the other person the same courage.
Another problem occurs in marriages and relationships when one person tries to change the other or expects the other to change. Nothing puts more stress into a relationship than the suggestion that one person is not quite adequate the way he is. Unless a person sincerely desires to make the change, there is nothing you can get him to do.
Jealousy is another problem that occurs in relationships and is the result of low self-concept, because a person with high, positive self-concept and genuinely high level of self-esteem does not feel jealous.
Another cause of problems in relationships is self-pity – feeling sorry for yourself for something the other person has or has not done to you or for you. The way to deal with self-pity is to work on your self-concept, get busy on your own goals, accept yourself as a valuable person and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
The basic rule in relationships is always to expect the best from the other person. From the law of expectations, we know that our expectations, whether positive or negative, of the people close to us always tend to be fulfilled. Always expect others to be successful, continually tell others that you believe in them and trust them, and encourage them to go for their goals and to believe in themselves.
Another problem in relationships is incompatibility. As time passes, people may find they have less in common and more characteristics, attitudes, and values that are incompatible with each other. When two people find themselves no longer compatible, when they find there is not enough love, happiness, and excitement, the best thing they can do is realize that nobody is to blame, move on and get on with their lives.
There are several important, basic principles of relationships. The first is that similar self-concepts attract. A second principle is that liking and respecting another person is more important and more enduring than loving him. The third factor is that opposites attract, but only in temperament – the outgoing person must be matched with the less outgoing person and the more dominant person with the more recessive. In every other aspects, nature requires similarities – similarities in values and in attitudes towards children, money, family, politics, living standards, and all aspects of life.
The relationship between parents and children is a very important special one. We are marked for life by the quality of the interaction that takes place between us and our parents in our formative years. The role of parenting is to nurture high self-esteem.
To the degree to which parents nurture high self-esteem in their children, that is the degree to which they have been successful as parents. There is nothing that more permanently impairs a child’s lifelong effectiveness than destructive criticism by a parent.
Nothing builds children into strong healthy, self-confidence adults more surely and more rapidly than a continuous flow of love and approval from their parents. Make your love unconditional; make it crystal clear to your children that there is nothing they could ever do that would cause you to love them less. We show our children that we love them through physical contact, through hugging, kissing them and making it clear that we consider them valuable.
The more we look at our children with love in our eyes, the more they grow as people.
Spend totally uninterrupted, quiet quality time with your child every day. Children who know their parents love them unconditionally do not have problems in school and have strength of character to resist peer pressure in destructive directions.
The purpose of life is to develop loving relationships. When we look back over our lives, we find that the most enjoyable times were shared with those we love. Love grows on sharing. The more you give away, the more you get back. If we can learn to love ourselves and others, we can then go to the full realization of our human destiny
BY RTD. CAPTAIN SAM ADDAIH
