How to improve relationships at work and in personal life

Posted on July 23, 2007 
Filed Under Relationships

When somebody of colleagues is unbearable and you can’t stand him or her, or you simply steer clear of meeting or talking with them, this may reflect negatively on your own attitude towards work and finally on overall progress in your career. The same is truth for personal relationships. Tensions between you and others make your life a misery. How to avoid these problems? In fact, much easier than you could think.

Choose at least 10 minutes of uninterrupted time when you can stay all alone.

Take a comfortable posture — for example, settle back in your chair.

Recall as distinctly as possible a happy event of your life. Answer yourself the following questions:

Regardless of the actual visual picture of the situation, imagine the same scene in a large light sunny room. How do you feel now? What do you hear?

Vividly imagine a friendly smile on Bob’s face (let’s suppose that’s the name of the person you want to improve relationships with).

Now place Bob in your mind into that light sunny room. Bob is smiling looking at you. What do you see? What do you hear?

Repeat this exercise a few times until you feel comfortable switching image in your mind from the happy event to the light room to smiling Bob’s face and then to Bob in the light room.

Next time you catch sight of Bob in the real life, imagine him smiling in that light room. And smile yourself.

Basically, the idea is to break your stereotypes and look at people you know from a new positive perspective. It’s easier to do this in an abstract way in a comfortable situation and then apply to the real communications with these people.

Anyone becomes friendlier when he or she feels a positive friendly attitude towards them. All people instinctively feel attitude towards themselves. Therefor sincere sympathizing with somebody will inevitably result in returning kindly feelings for you.

Have a good time!

Comments

2 Responses to “How to improve relationships at work and in personal life”

  1. Tom Brown on July 30th, 2007 1:50 pm

    It’s funny how few people realise the power of positive thinking. Speaking about improving relationships at work, I’ve found a really quick test you can take to see if you can really connect with people or not. Here it is: http://www.theidfactor.com/connectedleader.php

  2. adviser on July 30th, 2007 6:56 pm

    Tom, thanks for your comment!
    Tried the test, it’s actually entertaining (although a bit long).
    Liked the dynamic thermometers on results pages.
    The test and the book apparently appeal to “S” type leaders in terms of DISC model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment). Anyway, one probably cannot write a book equally influential for any person. So I liked this one.

    BTW, I apologize for holding your comment for moderation! I’m a novice WordPress user and blogger and did not get it configured properly. Now I hope I’ve fixed the configuration.

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