MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS

We are born with certain existing relationships. Even before we come on to this world there are pre-existing relationships like father, mother, grand father, grand mother, uncle, aunt, cousin brother, cousin sister, brother, sister, etc. These pre-existing relationships are given to us and we do not have a choice.

When we are growing through the childhood and adulthood is when we add some more relationships in our life and these come by choice. The added relationships are always based on our choice and cannot be forced on to us by anyone. We also drop some of these along the way and pick up new relationships. This happens both at work as well as in personal life.

I have always believed in maintaining a good work life balance and I feel the relationships that we develop would also be crucial in determining how well we are able to balance our time and energy towards work and personal life.

The pre-existing relationships with which we are born in this world continue to grow with us and gets stronger as we grow older. These pre-existing relationships are blood relationships and hence even if we are geographically separated these relationships remain deep rooted. There are possibilities for someone to de-link from the pre-existing relationships, for whatever reason. In some cases I have seen the new relationships that we add will be responsible for de-linking with the pre-existing relationships.

We have to be extremely careful in choosing the relationships as we grow - both in our personal life as well as at work. As human beings we are all filled with emotional feelings and thus are susceptible to mood swings. It is in this context that the management of relationships gains importance.

We have to be extremely careful in choosing the new relationships whether it is a friend or life partner or business associate or business partner. If we are careful at the time of choosing the people it becomes that much more easier to manage these relationships at a later point in time. If the choice made at the beginning is faulty then managing and maintaining becomes a huge challenge or a battle on daily basis. Some of the relationships break because of the mis-match in thinking and on hindsight we feel we made a wrong choice.

I have come across some individuals who maintain excellent relationship with people around them. They keep in touch once in a while and nurture these relationships very well. They never get into any conflict with others and are quite smooth sailing. One of the things they do is to completely avoid individuals who are not in sink with their thinking or style. It is easier said than done as I have seen it through my own experience.

The younger generation should be very careful when choosing their long term relationships like life partner. There is no point in jumping into relationships for the sake of it or because of any materialistic pleasures. The life time partner that a youngster is choosing will have to be a well thought out personality in order to choose the individual and family circumstances. The number of break-ups and the number of divorces have increased substantially in the recent decade becuase of the reckless attitude shown by the youngsters. I feel the youngsters should show little bit more restraint and think rationally before choosing their life partners.

Getting into new relationships, maintaining a cordial relationship and managing the various relationships that we have in life is a very challenging and tough task. The Golden Rule which I picked up from Swami Dayanand Saraswathi lecture is "I don't want to be hurt by anyone and I will not hurt anybody".

T.P.Anand
Dubai, U.A.E.
21st February 2012