Whether you like someone or not there are going to be times when you have disagreements with your friends, family, partners, spouse, co-workers, or neighbors. Here are some powerful tricks to make sure your relationships are healthy and balanced!

1. Bring Up Problems ASAP

Many people will try to walk on eggshells or avoid bringing up how they feel but this will actually cause a lot of extra stress and issues in your relationship.

When you don’t tell someone how their behavior made you feel it is actually a form of manipulation.  It is holding on to the power or energy instead of passing it back so that they can learn and grow.  If people don’t know how they are affecting you then they cannot fix it.

If you don’t catch it in the moment or it is not an appropriate time make sure you bring it up with them as soon as you can.  The quicker you address issues and resolve them the better everyone will feel.

Have a hard time catching problems in real time?  One trick is to trust your gut.  If someone says something that creates a strange feeling in your stomach that is a sign that something happened that affected you.

When I get that feeling I will make a point to stop the conversation and if they are a close friend or loved one they will typically help me figure it out.

Example- In a calm balanced tone I will say: “Just a min please, when you said that I felt funny.  I am not sure why but I would like to figure it out before we move on so I can understand what you mean.”

Remember that what you say and what people hear is always going to be different.  This is because our mood, focus and perceptions are always filtering information.  Tone and energy can also be a huge factor in how information is transferred between people.

When issues are brought up stay calm and try to see what really happened instead of getting defensive.  I will go more into this later.

2. Be the Real You

It is very common to act different with friends and loved ones than you do alone or in public.  Part of feeling whole and being true to ourselves it to try and make these versions us as consistent as possible.

Be the real you, do what you feel compelled to do.  Say what you are really feeling.  If you aren’t interested in what someone is saying either find a way to truly get interested or find a topic you are both interested it.

Pretending to listen and be interested isn’t being true to yourself and is harmful to the people around you.  Be honest, polite and genuine in your interactions.

3. Treat People the Way THEY want to be Treated

Thats right, because we are all different we cannot treat people the way we want to be treated.  We have to learn more about the people around us and treat them the way they want to be treated.

We can’t feed a room of people our favorite flavor of ice cream and expect them to be as happy and excited about it as we are.  We need to reach out and make sure the people around us know that we know them.  We prove that to them by really getting to know them!

There is a very powerful article written by a hero of mine that goes into this topic more.  Check it out here!

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