SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIPS: A MEASURE OF SOCIAL SUCCESS

Our life's story is all about relationships. Their occurrence and effect in our lives is nothing less than overwhelming. We begin to make relationships from the very minute we are born and as we progress on our life's sojourn we keep on exploring, inventing, building, breaking, and repairing relationships. sometimes when I think of it I realize that we cannot imagine a life without a network of relationships, all going simultaneously. perhaps the success of our lives depends essentially on how smoothly we connect with people and how efficiently we manage and sustain our relationships. Social life is all about relationships and interaction within and outside relationships and making new relationships every moment.

As we step into the outside world, we get exposed to and immerse in many people from different walks of life, at different social levels, and in different age groups, other living beings and inanimate objects thus getting into many relationships consciously or unconsciously. Growing into adulthood would in fact mean learning how to make meaningful relationships in life and how to maintain them meaningfully. Some relationships are so obsessive that they begin to hurt. Certain relationships are very very complex, such as workplace relationships- relationship with colleagues and stakeholders. It is not easy to find a balance among superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. Throughout the course of our respective lives, we struggle to find a balance among all our relationships. sometimes we succeed and yet there are times when we do not.

Our success in striking meaningful and sustainable relationships depends on many factors: the place where we are born, our cultural values and traditions, our religious affiliations, the language we communicate in our perceptions of our own personal values and faith, and, last but not the least, our life's unique experiences. a more expanding circle covers the world in which we live and the environment. Life itself is an extended learning experience that we draw from our relationships. Our understanding of relationships first seems to start with the relationships with our primary school teachers and childhood friends while it is the family that lays the primary foundation of most of our social behavior. From there on it expands through the higher school system, university, working place, and community dependence.

Perhaps the importance of relationships in the family and the primary school level is the most profound as it unarguably lays the foundation of our future in relationship skills and our success in life as adults. Our future relationships will be strong if in childhood it is directed towards the positive goal of enabling the individual to expand and thrive in an environment of appropriate give and take.