7 Principles for Better Relationships

Our relationships with the people around us directly affect how we feel about our lives.

The better our relationships, the better our lives. The opposite is also true.

I have struggled so much with building good relationships in my life, and I used to think that my extreme introversion was the cause of this.

I’m happier to say that now, I have meaningful, but super few (I can count on one hand) relationships with those I hold dearly (you know who you are), and almost no bad relationships with people I wouldn’t want.

This didn’t happen overnight.

One of my favourite authors, Dr. Jordan Peterson, sent out a newsletter some time ago titled ‘Seven Principles for Relationships’, which I will break down here in my own words, and share stories which hopefully will be relatable to you. *(Since this was sent in his newsletter, there’s no public link to the original piece)

All lessons here can bring about positive change to every kind of relationship in your life, including spousal, parental, personal, and professional ones.

Just like how there are principles for running a business, managing your finances, or working out - I hope these principles for better relationships will help you nurture the relationships you have with those close to you.

1. Don’t Delay Conflict

Whenever you delay a conflict to sometime in the future, the effects of that conflict, along with its delay, will bite you in the ass later on.

And its bite will bite you harder and harder with each delay. If you think you can delay conflict forever, you’re kidding yourself because delayed conflict will most certainly come to bite you when you least expect it.

Sweeping issues under the rug does not mean the issues are solved.

I carry so much potential unresolved conflict with my parents, especially on topics related to how they parented me and the life choices they made for me when I was younger. I know this will bite me in the ass one day when I no longer have my parents around.

You’re probably thinking that if I’m not following this principle, then why should you?

Because I’m choosing to follow this principle with the people I want to carry with me into my present and my future.

My parents cannot change the decisions they’ve made, and they’ve been operating on certain frameworks that aren’t really open to these kind of conversations, so I don’t feel opening this can of conflict with them will solve anything for me.

Does that mean the unresolved conflict has gone away? Hell no.

I really want to shove it into their faces one day that choosing medicine for me was the worst decision they made in my life and that I am bitter for having wasted 5-6 years of my life in medical school.

But I don’t think that’s worth it. For this conversation to be worthwhile, I should have had the balls to tell them that all those years ago, but I didn’t.

Eventually, there will be a time where I’ll feel immense grief for never having this conversation with them, but I’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Also, I don’t think it’s my responsibility alone to resolve this conflict and they haven’t really been the most open to these kind of conversations anyhow, so I don’t think this is worth my time right now.

Do I feel resentment from this? Definitely, and it’s another principle which I’ll touch on later. But the resentment doesn’t bother me because I’ve found other ways to be at peace with my life (helped by many, many hours of therapy).

So what’s the lesson here?

If you face conflict with those you’re close to now while the conflicts are still small, have the courage to have those difficult conversations. Do this especially if you’re surrounded by open minded people who are good for your mental health.

More importantly, aim to build a life where every person you have a relationship with has a level of open mindedness to have these kind of conversations.

I am very lucky to say that my close friends are leaves of the same tree. And, I’m also very thankful that my girlfriend and I are getting quite adept at solving our small conflicts as soon as they emerge.

2. Don’t Fix People who Don’t Want to be Fixed

Not everyone who is at rock bottom is poor, uneducated, unfortunate, or had something bad happen to them.

Sometimes, people who are at the bottom want to be there because they depend on others pulling them up.

For me, it’s simple. I don’t keep friends who aren’t interested in levelling up their lives.

I love to live my life in the best way possible, but I never feel compelled to raise others up with me because that’s up to them.

I used to struggle with this a lot while I was in college because I felt that all my peers were lazy wasting their time doing typical student stuff while I was busting my ass off trying to grow my personal training side hustle.

I resented this a lot because I felt that if only everyone was like me, then I would have more friends and more people I could relate to.

How narcissistic I was lol..

I was operating on such a broken mindset that it caused me so much suffering when it would have been easier to accept people for who they were.

Eventually, I did get over this poor thought processes and came to enjoy enough of my college life without falling into dark places, and I made some good friendships along the way (even though none of them were similar to me on an individual level)

All this to say that, you don’t need to get those around you to be like you, to feel included.

You can simply have friends or relationships that are different from you! (Which I think is a very healthy thing to do because it keeps you on your toes)

Or, you could just drop the need to having to make others be like you, because, as much as we think the way we see the world is ‘right’, everyone else sees the world in a completely different way (I really took a long time to understand this)

Most importantly, focus on yourself. Because you are the only person that you’re truly responsible for.

3. Have Urgency

The best way you can build a healthy relationship with yourself is to have urgency with building out a good life to live.

This means you should set goals, make plans, and take actions towards the things that you want in your life. You shouldn’t sit on inaction waiting for something to happen.

The people I know who are living their best lives, made their lives into such a way. No one living a good life stumbled upon it by accident.

You can have as much urgency with the relationships you want to keep as well. If there’s a friend you want to speak to, reach out to them and invite them out. Don’t put yourself in a situation where the both of you are waiting for each other to make the first move.

Above all, when it comes to having healthier and more meaningful relationships (including a relationship with yourself), default to action whenever you can. You can always improve on a mistake in the future, but you’ll most certainly never learn if you never do anything from the start

4. Give Precise, Meaningful Praise

I think many Asian parents suck at this (mine included). As a child, I grew up in an environment where praise was restricted to the absolutely out of the world achievements - basically, getting smashing good grades and sitting top of my class.

I was never praised on other aspects of my personality. I had a feeling that I was only worth the praise if I did well in a super small area of expertise.

I had a lot of self esteem issues as a teenager having grown up that way. What’s worse was that I often tried too hard to compensate for this with a need to over-impress others or a need to be liked by those around me.

I didn’t have a good sense of who I was and what values I had. This, took a lot of inner work to fix.

I don’t blame my parents entirely, but when I look back, I can say with a degree of confidence that had they been more attuned to me as a person than just a ‘high-scoring student’, my overall psychology would have fared a lot better in the long term.

While they weren’t wrong with giving precise praise for getting good grades, I would have loved to have gotten the same praise as a person too.

This is why giving precise, meaningful praise is extremely encouraging.

Encouragement is something that many of us could use to live a better life.

So, if there’s someone you love in your life who did something that you liked, tell them that specifically, and let them know how that made you feel. Even better, give them praise for something that you like about them as a person - encouragement doesn’t necessitate an action for it to be sincere.

5. Pay Attention to Your Conscience

Deep down, you need to be clear of why you hold on to the relationships that you have. If they serve you, then that’s no issue. But if they don’t, then you need to take a good look at yourself.

Most ‘bad’ relationships are codependent, in which one party mistreats the other because the former knows the latter is sticking around for the fear of being left alone. This is common in romantic relationships, but codependency also happens between friends, and between employees and companies.

While it’s easy to point a finger at those who hand out the mistreatment, you also have to take a moment to think, ‘what did the mistreated do (or not do) that allowed them to be mistreated in the end?’

This is why knowing your values, and acting them out will significantly improve your relationships.

One value I hold for maintaining relationships is the respect of another’s person time. If I know someone on the other side is not able to meet these expectations by showing signs of flakiness, having poor time management, and never settling on an agreed meet up time, then I simply drop the relationships.

This isn’t something easy to do, because if I set the bar too high, I could end up dropping all my relationships.

What I’m trying to say is that you need to pay attention to yourself, and what you value. Because if you ignore that and lie to yourself, you pay a huge price with subpar relationships.

It’s also true that the person who lies is the one who gets damaged the most by their own lies because they’re deceiving themselves.

6. Avoid Resentment

Whenever you can, and whenever it doesn’t damage you psychologically - don’t hold grudges.

How do you not hold a grudge? Well firstly, don’t let resentment build in the first place.

How do you do that? A good first step would be to not delay conflict. (see principle #1)

When you delay conflict in any relationship, you’re subconsciously telling yourself that you’re having to put up with something in order to maintain the peace of that relationship.

While this is useful in situations where engaging in conflict may be inappropriate (like in a public setting), this is going to be bad for you long term because deep down, yuo will start ‘keeping scores’ on who tolerates who more.

This act of keeping score is the beginning of all resentment. And trust me when I say, resentment can build up for a long long time before showing itself. And usually when it does show itself, it’s a monster you don’t want to face. For some people, it breaks their relationships as well.

How can you avoid resentment? Firstly, don’t keep score with those you have relationships with.

Well, how do you do that?

You have to know what you value (see principle #5), and speak your mind with what you disagree with. You need to be courageous enough to negotiate for what you want so that you and whoever you’re in a relationship with can have some sort of agreed upon peace.

The price of negotiation is going to be some short term bickering and having to deal with upset feelings, but it’s a lot less damaging then having to shoulder resentment for the long term.

7. Don’t Worship People

If you go out with someone and they worship you, and they agree with your every word, and there's nothing but positive feedback coming from them, you lose respect for them almost instantly, and you wander off and find someone who's more exciting.

I tell my girlfriend this all the time - ‘don’t blindly accept what I say as fact even if I seem very convinced of it’.

No one in this world is worthy of worship, not because I view humanity as bad, but because everyone is as flawed and as damaged as you are, so there’s no need to lift others to a higher pedestal than what’s necessary.

When you worship people, you also fail to treat yourself as a worthy enough individual. Maintaining your own sense of self is extremely important in any relationship. And you can do that by being with someone who can challenge you and keep you on your toes, just like how you should for them.

Part of the reason for that is that you want the person that you're with to challenge you so that not only do you do reasonably well together but so you can coexist in the same space with a reasonable amount of peace. However, you also want there to be enough tension in the relationship so that you're both involved in the process of mutual transformation.

Wrapping Up

There have been times where I failed to live by these principles in my relationships, which is why I revisit them whenever I feel necessary in order to keep my relationships healthy. My wish is that you benefit from the same and now have a clearer ‘guide’ on keeping a good relationship with yourself, and those close to you.

Nicholas
Not Normal