Pursuing Perfect #3: Relationships… the good, the bad, and the marshmallow… Level up your relationship game to level up your life
Developing relationships takes time and energy.
Relationships are universal.
We all make them and have them.
They are a common thread in all of our lives.
The question becomes are they an asset or a liability for you.
Relationships can be one of the greatest investments we can make.
We have relationships with people, food, activities, objects, clothing, pets, jobs, cars, and everything in between.
Successful relationships which fill the asset column in our life are priceless and the value cannot be overstated.
Transparency and trust are crucial in these successful, beneficial, long term relationships.
When we work with others, it is crucial we learn to recognize how our goals and interests align with others.
Many of us choose to see the differences between the people outside our immediate circle. Instead of looking for the similarities amongst people who may think, look, and act differently than us, but maybe have what we desire to someday have as well.
Many people end up with people who make them comfortable, and people who think how we think, act like we act, eat what we eat, etc. etc. etc.
We find exactly what we look for.
And we end of leaving much of our potential untapped because of our relationships.
The issue for most people is they fall into a comfort zone of people based around where they’re born, who their family is, or what they do for money.
Nothing wrong with that, most of the population falls into this category and if you’re okay being average, not by choice, but simply by chance you can stop reading.
But, if you’d like to reach new heights, achieve bigger goals, or simply be better today than you were yesterday, keep reading.
Winners choose to win.
Winners surround themselves not with comfort but with things and people that allow them to win.
It is a habit.
Just like brushing your teeth, eating healthy, or working out. People do it by choice.
Winning is a feeling and once you feel it and realize it can be duplicated, you will do what it takes to achieve that feeling again.
A theory first created by B.F. Skinner called Operant Conditioning explains the phenomena. It can be summed up like this, behaviors which are reinforced with reward tend to be repeated while behaviors which are not reinforced tend to die-out.
People who are rewarded with quality relationships share certain things in common. They have trust and transparency.
They feel challenged but also loved.
They experience new ideas.
They can communicate openly.
They want to be at their best.
Freedom to express thoughts and feelings.
When we seek to connect with people who stretch us and make us better. Although at times it is extremely uncomfortable and sometimes even a bit painful, we do t just go through it, we grow through it. We become better and realize something about ourselves. We develop a bit more confidence and we see that more is possible if we seek it.
But we must expose ourselves to higher quality in order to get there.
This will mean you become a bit more selective with friends, mentors, and trusted confidants. You’re more cautious and protective of your thoughts, time, money, and energy. You choose to put it in places to get a better ROI (return on investment). Instead of having a group of 10000 friends but no one to talk too you have a group of 10 friends but you fully trust them and can go to them for anything.
The challenging part of this is being uncomfortable for some time because they stretch you and challenge you, but not because they’re being cruel or have bad intentions but because they see what you’re capable of and they hold you to a higher standard.
It’s no different from a good parent who doesn’t allow their child to eat candy for every meal, it’s not because the parent is mean, it’s because they know the candy is bad for the child’s teeth and health and will make them sick if they eat it at every meal. They don’t allow them to give in to a temporary pleasure for a long term pain.
The same is the case with quality relationships.
They will encourage you to be strong, to choose the hard right over the easy wrong. They know you will have a greater benefit through winning the long term game than winning the short term pleasure of “eating the candy”.
There’s an experiment, called the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, it studied the effect of a child’s ability to delay immediate gratification for a greater reward later. They noticed the children who were able to delay longer ended up being vastly more successful in a variety of areas later in life. But upon further investigation they learned the children also had mechanisms in place to help them and in many cases they came from stable family environments, where promises were kept and they could trust they would be rewarded for their efforts. Those children who came from more unstable homes were more likely to grab the marshmallow and eat it immediately because even though they were told the exact same thing, they did not have the same ability to trust what the adult in the scenario told them.
This shows the importance of relationships.
Quality of relationships matter for long term success.
The children who were able to TRUST the words of someone were much more likely to experience success later in life. This shows a type of strategic waiting, when it makes sense. For example, when they were able to trust the adult they were able to wait longer based solely on trust. It was also shown the children developed this trust relatively early and the prefrontal cortex was extremely active which is the primary part of the brain essential to planning, decision making, moderating social behavior and controlling certain aspects of speech and language. The main activity of this part of the brain is understood to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in connection with internal goals.
We need high quality relationships in our lives in order to achieve our goals. We need trustworthy people and we need these people to hold us accountable at times when we could lose sight of our priorities.
When we are able to overcome the possible challenges of relationship building, perhaps from previously failed relationships or toxic relationships. We have discovered a hidden gem, a secret to us achieving more, creating more, and becoming the best version of ourselves.
It becomes easier to avoid the WRONG people.
It becomes easier to connect with the RIGHT people.
7 tips for creating, finding, and developing great relationships:
Set high standards for yourself
Create boundaries and non-negotiable behaviors you will not allow
Vet people without exception
Move on with love and grace when people violate your non-negotiables
Forgive those who were in your life before your standards and love them
Do not be a victim of your environment, if it’s not working, find a new one
Be honest and good to your word, always follow through, and leave people better than you found them
***Bonus
Always remember, you attract what you are, not what you want. Develop in yourself what you’d love to see and find in others.
Example: If you want to be around people who eat healthy foods and work out, become a healthy eater and start working out for yourself first, and soon you will connect with people who also share these values.
I am not saying people are better than others.
I am saying certain relationships in life serve us better than others.
Learning the skill of developing these beneficial relationships out of purity is crucial to the pursuit of perfection. Once again, knowing we can only get close, and by getting close to perfect we can attain excellence.
