Have you ever thought about rekindling the passion and zest that was part of your relationship with your best friend at one point in time?
Maybe it was the relationship with your parents you want to be resuscitated. Or you may want renewed love and commitment in your relationship with your spouse.
And that desire prompted you to learn a few healthy relations tips. But those tips couldn’t work for you because of time constraints.
There can be tens of relationships wanting our time and efforts but we keep hiding from the joy we get by meeting our people.
Well, that’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? We know our purpose in our lives is to love and be loved, create nurturing relations, and support our and our loved ones’ happiness. Not only do we know our purpose, but we also take joy in living this purpose.
Yet, when it comes to making our relationships our priority, we fail miserably at giving our best to our most loved commitments. Why is that? Is it because of the volume of our relations? Or does the problem stems from our fear of being vulnerable?
Whatever is the reason, we keep blaming the resulting meek relations on lack of time. Let’s end that pattern. Let’s practice a few hacks to create time for your relationships.
Here are the 17 Hacks to Keep Prioritizing your healthy relationships:
1: Forget about Creating Time
Really! If you want to create time to attend to your relations, stop searching for the time. The fact is we all have enough time to enjoy our interactions with friends and family. It’s only that we waste it in telling our brains that we don’t have enough time.
Instead of thinking how you can meet that long-lost friend, pick up the phone and call, message or text them. Create a note. Share a relatable thought over social media. Or go traditional and write a letter (you can send them a snap of this letter to express your feelings).
Just tell them you are thinking of them.
Break the ice!
2: Start Saying Yes
Most of the material answering how to build healthy relationships, and other self-development questions, focuses on saying no and erecting boundaries. Saying no is a great way to live our lives. Although it might seem to work in the opposite direction to strengthening great relationships, it does help you to create deep, soulful interactions and connections.
But do you know the key to, effectively, saying no? It’s saying yes.
Start prioritizing what matters most to you. Know who you are and what activities, traits, and passions strengthen you. Grow your tribe based on that knowledge.
Start saying yes to joyful moments today so you have to spend less time saying no tomorrow.
3: Say Yes to Joy
Don’t think about why you should spend time with any of your relations! Don’t push yourself!
Such forced meetings will lack the enthusiasm needed to rebuild the connection.
What you need is soulful meetings- meetings where both of you feel joy and connection. And you can do this, by planning the meetings around, places, activities, and passions you both share.
Think about it: a get-to-gather at a nearby park will be useless if your friends enjoy most on a road trip.
Sometimes, you can focus on destinations. Other times, a journey is what is needed to come together and relax.
4: Enjoy Healthy Relationship with Self
No! That’s not our goal. When we are working on our relations, we influence almost all our proximal relations in one go. We want to taste those forgotten tastes and hear those forgotten laughs in one go to feel our commitment.
But you have to start somewhere. And that start should be a single relation not a bunch of them.
In fact, don’t even dream that you can work on any relationship external to you before you have a strong, loving relationship with you.
So, nurture one relationship as a start and that relationship should be with your inner self.
5: Say Yes to Screens
Admit it! You are not going to completely wash out screens from your life anytime soon. You have to rely on them for a lot of your daily tasks.
Give it its due importance and plan some time for social media and useless scrolling. We give more power to screens than they deserve in our life by labeling them as addiction. So, instead of adding toxicity to these devices build a healthy relationship with it and remain focused on its positive outcomes.
Take them as another chore among your daily chores and keep it restrained within those time boundaries.
Allow it in some parts of your day to suppress its craving for the rest of the day.
6: Be Present
Time, again, is not an issue keeping us from building a strong connection. The problem lies with our over-thinking and anxious attitude.
Make a habit of relaxing your nerves after every hour and intentionally shifting your attention out of your mind and into your environment.
It’s easier to be more aware of the surroundings when screens are tucked out of sight.
7: Be Absent
It’s okay to lose out on some of the fun.
And it’s okay to miss seeing your relationships if you are not feeling like it. In fact, it’s better to be absent from a gathering if your physical presence means mental absence.
Allow yourself to miss your relations. This way you will remember their worth in your life. And they will reconnect with you from a place most meaningful to you.
8: Be Honest
Honesty is the pre-requisite of trust which, in turn, is a base on which healthy relationships are built.
Allow yourself to be honest while saying no to friends and relations. Tell them upfront that you are unable to attend an event because it will be mentally straining to you.
Keep your mental space clean and healthy. And set strong assertive boundaries. Being assertive is miraculous because it allows you to attract only those folks who appreciate assertiveness and, eventually, allows you to be you without saying no a hundred times.
9: Be with You
We have mentioned that our healthy relationships in our outer world depend on our relationship with our inner selves. And the best way to nourish our relationship with self is by spending time and communicating with the person living in our mind.
But that’s not the only reason for which you should spend time with yourself. When we clear our mental space and flow with our mental energies, we connect with those moments and interactions which brought smiles in our lives. These moments give us reasons to reach out to people while our ego is asleep.
10: Use Technology
One of the primary reasons which used to hold the human race from interacting with each other in previous eras was the lack of proper means of communication.
Nowadays, overemphasis on mannerism has taken place of these reasons. Now we think twice before making a call. The recipient could be busy, in need of space, or was enjoying his life in some other way.
All these reasons are valid and should be considered. But none of them should prevent us from picking up the phone and sending a simple reminder to our beloved that we are thinking of them.
11: Put Your Ego to Sleep
It’s no brainer that ego is a silent killer of any healthy relationships.
Maybe you think that it’s you in the relationship who is shouldering all the burden. Well, to be honest, it’s awful to be taken for granted.
But it’s okay to support a relationship when the other person is simply busy rather than busy in front of you.
Allow yourself to be the anchor your friends want when they are in distress. Keep in mind: a friend in need is a friend indeed.
12: Let Your Emotions Rule
Sometimes, we have to stop listening to our over-stimulated brain and start listening to our hearts.
Allow yourself some time to feel! And use the same time to connect, in-person or virtually, with your loved ones.
Seriously, don’t you think that instead of wasting your time on Netflix, you can go out and meet your companions?
13: Get Outta Door
That’s the difficult part! After a full day of hard work, we deserve some relaxation and fun, don’t we?
Yes! And that relaxation is more long-lasting when we combine fresh air and fresh laughter with it.
Step out of your door and join your neighboring pals for a walk. Or maybe you would like to hang out with them on your way home.
14: Consider Ridesharing
If it’s your colleagues you want to strengthen your relations with, carpooling is a great way to enjoy some quality time with friends.
You can also try ridesharing with your neighbors whose offices are in the same areas as yours.
15: Pursue Old Hobbies
If you want to revive the fun that belonged to some forgotten part of your life, consider pursuing the same activities as you used to pursue in those eras.
If it’s you BFF from college you don’t want to lose in adult life, consider connecting with them through volunteering your teaching or coaching services in the same area of expertise which was common among you.
Step out of your comfort zone and involve your organization in it. Think about some community service where you can include your pal.
16: Use Journals
It would not be difficult for you to incorporate in your routine if journaling already forms a part of your routine. All you have to do is to be vulnerable and express how some activities, chores, and engagement reminds you of your interactions with your relatives or friends.
Once you have mentioned how you remembered them in a day, send them an image of your writing so they can also cherish the same memory.
17: Use Journal – Again!
The connection is important for building a healthy relationship. But that’s not the only thing you should focus on. Another area of relationship strength lies in emotional bonding.
Normally, frequent healthy interactions result in happy, strong emotions towards the relationship. But you can take your relationship’s emotional growth personally without depending on the number of recent interactions and their quality.
You do it by paying gratitude (it doesn’t need to be communicated to that person) to some of your relations on a daily basis.
Whenever you journal, select a few of your relations (keep rotating) and remember their best interactions with you. You may or may not journal the whole interaction depending on the commitments of your time. But you surely have to feel the emotions that connected the two of you.
Take Away
There are hundreds of ways you can create time for your relationships but these ways will only work if you are clear on the answer to why healthy relationships are important.
So, before rebuilding your relationship with any of your loved ones, focus on the mindset which is required to attain and maintain a healthy relationship.
Here is a quick recap of 17 Hacks to Keep Prioritizing your Healthy Relationships:
- Forget about Creating Time
- Start Saying Yes
- Say Yes to Joy
- Enjoy Healthy Relationship with Self
- Say Yes to Screens
- Be Present
- Be Absent
- Be Honest
- Be with You
- Use Technology
- Put Your Ego to Sleep
- Let Your Emotions Rule
- Get Outta Door
- Consider Ridesharing
- Pursue Old Hobbies
- Use Journals
- Use Journal – Again!
