We’ve all hoped for a formulaic explanation of what makes the best relationships work. Today, we’ve got one. Here’s how to build harmonious relationships.
Extraordinary relationships are loving relationships, and loving relationships require loving people. Who you are, your character, and your level of awareness and personal development are the forces that determine the quality of your relationships, as well as the quality of people that you attract into your life.
Below are five daily principles to live by that will shape you into someone who can make your relationships loving and great, romantic or otherwise. They all involve specific virtues—the building blocks of character—to transform you into a stronger, more compassionate, and caring person who creates meaningful relationships in all areas of your life.
1. Radical Integrity
If part of the fundamental basis of all relationships is trust, then you must be a trustworthy person to experience the same quality from other people in your life. We can all intuitively sense if someone is trustworthy, whether or not we consciously believe they are or arenāt; and there is only one true way to become a truly trustworthy human being: through practicing radical integrity.
Radical integrity means you live by a strong moral compass and you are always seeking to do what is in the highest good for everyone involved. Integrity is about pure caring, compassion, and goodness; and your level of integrity is an essential factor in determining whether or not you are trustworthy (and, therefore, if you will attract the same in a partner).
As such, make it your standard and one of the most important focuses in your life to live with radical integrity in every moment, whether someone is watching your behaviors or not.
In order to attract aware, loving, trusting people into your life, be it a friendship or a romantic relationship, you must be loving, aware, and trusting. Simple, right? Show others you embody these qualities by demonstrating your own radical integrity—this is a prerequisite for any deeply loving relationship that lasts.
Integrity is an extension of your love. It means you love and care for others enough that you will do whatever it takes to not only do no harm, but also to do what is in the highest good for everyone involved. If that isnāt trustworthy, then what is?
2. Ā Practice Gratitude
āTrade your expectation for appreciation.ā —Anthony Robbins
The whole purpose of a relationship is to deepen and enrich your experience of life;Ā in order to do that, you need to practice genuine gratitude for the relationships you have in order to allow them to enrich your life. Gratitude is a form of love.
Gratitude fosters bonding;Ā gratitude makes everything enough. It makes the people in your life āgood enoughā to you, imperfections and all, eliminating any sense of āless thanā or āmore thanā that keeps you separated and offering anything less than unconditional love. That sense of appreciation, non-judgment, and non-criticism will be felt by the people in your life. They will trust you more for it, put their faith in you more easily, and will feel innately valued for who they are. Being around you will genuinely make them feel good, which will cause them to link pleasure to being with you, causing them to want to be with you moreā¦ and more time spent together opens the doorway to a deeper relationship.
3. Foster Innocence
The quality of innocence is a combination of purity of intent and unconditional love. When your intent is pure, free of all ulterior motives, dishonesty, or manipulation, and your intent is backed by the force of unconditional love, you embody innocence and unleash the true power of authentic love in your relationships. The expression of your purity and honesty opens a space for the people you are in relationship with to trust you enough to go deeper and expand into a space of trusting vulnerability.
Not to mention, embodying these two character traits simply feels good and will nurture a spirit of bonding between you and the people who mean the most to you. Coming from a place of innocence will make you to stand out as a rare beacon of true love, playfulness, and light, atracting the same into your relationships.
4. Come From a Place of Heart-Centered Sincerity
āThe way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.ā —Buddha
The glue and center of all lasting, meaningful relationships is sincere, unconditional love. What I am writing about here is not so much a set of actions, but a way of being and feeling.
Learn to rest in and live from your heart, with love for all people and with a majority of your behaviors being love-motivated, rather than fear-motivated. With love-motivated behaviors, the intent is always pure and the desire to serve is sincere. That heartfelt sincerity will be apparent to the people who matter most in your life, and theyāll thank you for it. The true magnet for astonishing, loving relationships is being centered in your heart. You will attract love wherever you go.
5.Ā Make Time for Ongoing Personal Development
If the quality of your relationships and everything in your life result from who you have become, it only makes sense that the stronger and more aware you become, the better your life will be. You are the creator of the circumstances in life that you are experiencing. When you shift yourself, everything that you create is shifted, as well. When you improve yourself, all of your relationships will be naturally and effortlessly uplifted in direct proportion to the changes you make. The quality of your relationships in many ways directly reflects your level of mental, emotional, and spiritual development.
Focus your life on growth, on being all that you can be in every aspect of your beingāon the development of specific character virtues, on your own physical well-being and inner healing, and on your self-actualization. You will become happier, healthier and more loving as a result, which will have the same effect on all of your relationships.
One of the cornerstones of any serious spiritual path is the expansion of love and the ability to develop and experience truly meaningful relationships. You will find that as the quality of your relationships grow, your experience of life will also be enhanced. Relationships magnify the human experience, and the more harmonious and loving a relationship, the more it magnifies and enhances the experiences of beauty, freedom and love that we all seek for all of our lives.
[image:Ā via shutterstock]
About the Author
Forrest Leichtberg is a leading edge thinker and visionary whose mission in life is to serve and impact people and society in extraordinary ways. His vision and high hope for humanity is a world of health, peace, happiness, justice, fairness, prosperity, sustainability, non-violence, wisdom, and enlightenment. His sincere love for humanity runs deep, and some of his other loves and passions include laughter, playing with friends, being in the sun, playing music, writing, and teaching. He is a holistic lifestyle coach and teacher of a radical wellness master class that teaches people how to design and live the ultimate lifestyle for fulfillment and well-being. He is a staff writer for Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
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