From my point of view and experience, healthy relationships can be rare and difficult to maintain at points in our lives. Whether this relationship is with a person, job, substance, or routine: quality bonds that benefit both parties in some way are hard to achieve. Here I will examine how healthy relationships with objects, things, and people could elevate our quality of life.
It is a tricky game to apply healthy relationship standards to a thing. How do I set boundaries with nicotine or the amount of screen time that I consume in a day? Am I satisfying my desire for healthy relationships to the fullest extent? Throughout this article, I will not pretend I have the most healthy relationships with people or things, but I will examine how and why I have gotten to a balanced place within some of these relationships.
When Googling what a healthy relationship means, qualities like honesty, mutual respect, and compromise are the first things we see. Building relationships that we find satisfying and valuable aren’t found by defining them with Google. One of the first steps anyone should take while searching for quality relationships is to define them yourself. Get out a piece of paper and separate it into two halves; one for people and one for inanimate objects. Start to list the qualities of relationships (connected to specific people/items) that you practice a healthy connection with already. Examine how and why those qualities make you fulfilled. For example, one of my best friends lives in my hometown (while I’m in Philly). We have always had a great relationship, but when writing out why our friendship is so strong and why I hold so much value in it is because we take time every other week or even every week to actively listen to each other, reciprocating that energy, having a mindful conversation about each other’s weeks, struggles, conquers and, hopes for what is to come. By taking a step back and breaking down simple gestures we make to people and things, we can identify what makes us feel good, and how exactly we go about reciprocating that.
Dive deeply into that list of qualities that makes you feel great about relationships. As this list grows we are able to section these items and people into categories and even times of the day. This leads me to a major point: healthy relationships start with the one who desires it. When writing this article, I wanted everyone to find a part of themselves they want to improve, very broadly speaking. So, a healthy relationship I challenge you to craft this week is throughout your day. Most of us don’t have the best relationships with the morning, waking up moody and irritated, or maybe the nights are more changeling, filled with substance and restlessness. Either way, I encourage you to apply these simple steps whenever you feel that your healthy day may be slipping away.
A grounding method used for overstimulation and anxiety is called the 5-4-3-2-1. To bring this into practice throughout our day we are allowing ourselves to be mindful and aware. The Behavioral Health Partners at Rochester Medical School have laid out the method perfectly, so go check out their article for more details, but to put it simply: acknowledge five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
To acknowledge the minuscule parts of our day that build up to make our entire day shouldn’t go unseen. When you wake up and aren’t feeling like taking that hike to campus or work, try this method, ground yourself through your surroundings and senses, building a relationship where you feel safe and secure in any space. This method brings a new sense to the meaning of healthy relationships. To examine where you physically are and acknowledge how certain things make you feel, enables you to create a relationship with your space that you might not have had before.
A final step that I still struggle to continue is maintenance within the healthy relationships we build. It is a crucial part of building our desired healthiest relationships. To maintain the healthy relationship you build means to keep doing what feels good and repeat it until it doesn’t! This is easier done with people than items, considering two people are contributing rather than you and an inanimate object. For example, if you started a relationship with your morning to stretch for five minutes, and that starts to make you feel really good throughout your days, don’t stop! If you stop smoking during the week, and you start to see a positive difference in behavior, try to carry that relationship into your weekends.
All in all, don’t stop calling the people you love to tell them about your day, create a personalized relationship with your morning or night routine, and learn to build healthy relationships with everything you favor in your life, or start a healthy relationship with something you hate!
Healthy relationships should be defined by the person seeking them, actively applied throughout our days, and maintained throughout time. Share this article with someone who hates mornings, or someone you want to build a strong relationship with. I encourage anyone who seeks healthy relationships to start within and work your way out.