3 Ingredients to Successful Relationships – Anil Salick

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our 10th year wedding anniversary. It feels like just yesterday that we stood in front an altar and pledged commitment and vows.

I admit that I believed in the one sided illusion that marriage would mean sweet happiness, joy, bliss and continuous elation. Alas! We learn through experience that it’s needful to have a bit of both...keeps us sane and balanced.

Successful relationships: husband-wife, parent-child, manager-employee, friends, brother-sister and all inter-personal relationships are based on fundamental principles that when honoured produce desired results.

What matters most? Here are my views on the three most important ingredients for successful relationships:

1. Love

That feeling of compassion and tenderness, of intending no harm but protection, nurturing and giving is essential to form as a cornerstone. Love is spoken of in every religious and wisdom literature as the supreme principle and purpose to our being.

Love is more than emotion. Love is a verb, it’s a doing word. Our actions, especially the little ones, matter. Further, love can be viewed as a commitment that stands in spite of conditions: unconditional love. How many of us are approving of others when they comply with our standards, and disapproving when they don’t. Genuine love for another means we accept them exactly as they are; live and love in the present and allow this to be the catalyst for the change we seek in another.

In practice this means: Stop trying to change others. Love them exactly as they are. Beware when we love conditionally. Don’t let our self-righteous behaviour deceive our inability to love fully sometimes.

2. Trust

Trust is achieved when those involved in a relationship are trustworthy i.e. worthy of trust. Whilst we may and could love, we may not trust.

If relationships are like an arch formation composed of many stones, the most important would be the keystone. It is the centre piece on top which keeps the feature together. Trust can be likened to the keystone. Take out the keystone, and the entire arch crumbles.

Trust is earned. Trust is the greatest form of motivation. Every effort to improve ourselves is an effort at developing a high level trust in an inter-personal relationship.

3. Shared Values

Each of us has values that we choose to live our lives by. People have different values. Winning relationships require parties to understand and respect the values of each other. The values of another should be as important to us as it is to them. How else are we to understand and satisfy their needs and wants? (Only in sales training are we taught to understand (qualify) the values and needs of our customers and find customised solutions to satisfy the need.)

Research tells us that relationships based on sound values are stable and enduring. Shared values triumph in the long run over physical appearance, status, money and other immediate and gratifying needs.

May we consider the relationships we have with another. Maybe it is a true principle: ‘My relationship with another with you has got nothing to do with you. Your relationship with me has got nothing to do with me.’

Everything points back to us.