The habits for getting along well with others

Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said: “For true love is inexhaustible: the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.”

Fully 85 per cent of your happiness in life is going to come from your relationships with other people. As Aristotle said, “Human beings are social creatures.” We live within the context of the people in our lives. How well we get along with them, and they with us, largely determines the quality of everything that happens to us.

Your most important goal in life is to assure your own happiness. If you do not place your own happiness as the central organising principle of your own life, no one else will do it for you. Each person is intensely focused on doing the things that make him or her happy. As much as we care about the happiness of others, in a natural, automatic and instinctive way, our happiness always seems to take precedence over that of anyone else’s.

You can only give away something you have

Often, unhappy people say that they are sacrificing their own happiness so that they can make others happy. But the rule is that, “You cannot give away what you do not have. You cannot make other people happy if you are unhappy yourself.”

If you want to have happy children, be a happy parent. If you want happy employees and coworkers, be a happy boss and colleague. If you want to have happy customers, be a happy salesperson. If you want to improve the quality of the life of anyone else, begin by improving the quality of your own inner life.

Make others feel important

In one of the Tales of the Arabian Nights, there was the story of a treasure cave that could only be opened if the person said the magic words, “Open Sesame!” At that sound, the vast wall would move aside and unlimited treasures would be revealed and available to the person who had uttered the magic words.

In putting people first, the “Open Sesame!” of human relationships is to “make others feel important.” Making others feel important satisfies the deepest subconscious cravings of human nature. Everything you do or fail to do can be judged against this standard. Does it make people feel more important or less important? That is the question.

Sometimes Brian Tracy asks his audiences, “What percentage of the time are people emotional, and what percentage of the time are people logical?” They respond with various answers and proportions. But the true answer is that people are 100 per cent emotional. People decide emotionally and then justify logically. But emotion comes first.

With regard to your emotions, the rule is once more that, “Everything counts!” Everything that happens in your life affects you emotionally in some way. Everything that affects you makes you happy or sad, motivated or de-motivated, loving or angry, fearful or confident. Nothing is neutral.

Become a relationship expert

On the other hand, because we are primarily emotional, we are positively affected by people who say and do things that make us feel important and valuable. Everything that a person does or says that raises our self-esteem and feelings of personal value causes us to like and respect ourselves more, makes us feel happier about ourselves. As a result, we feel positive toward the person who is saying and doing the things that make us feel better about ourselves.

Your job is to become a “relationship expert” by developing the habits of speaking and acting that make people feel important and valuable. When you develop the habit of doing and saying the things that cause people to feel good about themselves, their lives, their work and families, all kinds of doors will open up for you. You will be welcomed everywhere you go. People will like you and respect you and want to be around you. They will accept your influence and leadership and give you power and position in your work and in your community.

“Everything you do or say that causes another person to feel better in any way also causes you to feel better to the same degree.” When you motivate, encourage or inspire someone else, you feel motivated, encouraged and inspired yourself. Everything you do to raise the self-esteem of others raises your self-esteem as well.

The reverse is also true. Everything that you do or say that hurts another person, makes them feel less important, or lowers their self-esteem, also has the same effect on you. This is why negative people always seem to be angry and unhappy. They suffer from low self-esteem. They have negative self-images. They are frustrated and difficult to get along with. They are ineffective in their human relations and usually poor at their work. Everything that they do or say that hurts another person in any way also hurts themselves.

Practice the golden rule

The starting point of becoming a relationship expert is to develop the habit of practising the golden rule in everything you do, and with everyone you meet. The golden rule, which is the one principle that all religions have in common, says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

In Buddhism it says, “Do not do unto others what is hateful to yourself.” This principle is so simple, yet so powerful, that if everyone were to apply it, the world would transform overnight.

Emmanuel Kant once propounded what he called the “Universal Maxim.” He said “Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law for all people.” In other words, imagine that everyone was going to do and say the very things that you were doing and saying at that moment. When you set this kind of standard for yourself, you begin to transform your life. You immediately become a better person.

Four great questions

Brian Tracy offers four great questions that you can ask and answer on a regular basis to keep yourself growing and developing toward becoming an excellent person. The first question is, “What kind of a world would this world be, if everybody in it was just like me?” The failure to ask this question, and the inability to answer it with, “This world would be a better place” is the cause of most of our problems in the world today.

The second question you can ask is, “What kind of a country would my country be, if everyone in it were just like me?” If everyone could answer that this country would be a better place to live if others lived the same way they did, we could quickly eliminate crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, corruption and all forms of behaviours that can only exist as long as the vast majority do not engage in them.

The third question is, “What kind of a company would my company be if everyone in it was just like me?” If the executives at the hearts of the corporate accounting scandals had asked and answered this question on a regular basis, the problems in their corporations would never have occurred. Every day, you should ask and answer this question about yourself and your work habits to see if you can answer in the affirmative, or not. If not, what could you change immediately to begin becoming the very best person you could possibly be?

The fourth question is, “What kind of a family would my family be, if everyone in it was just like me?” If everyone in your family treated everyone else exactly the way that you treat the people in your family, would your family be a happier, healthier and more loving place in which to live and grow? When you ask this question of yourself continually, you will find yourself treating the people in your family better and better. As you improve the quality of your family life, your relationships at work will improve as well.

BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)

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