Today we are going to talk about the 7C’s that will help you to create better relationships. But I want you to remember this: Creating deep relationships take time. Don’t try to rush through them like they are quick fixes. You don’t get a best friend in a day or a week or even a month. It takes time. Any relationship that is going to last, takes time to build. I can’t stress this enough, don’t try to rush.
As with anything, quick fixes never stick. If you want real change, you need to realize that progress starts to happen when you:
1-Learn skills that show you what you are thinking and how to change it.
2-Develop confidence because of the control you have of yourself.
3-Internalize the ability to change instead of relying only on external help.
So, with those tips, I’d like to share with you the 7C’s to create good relationships. These 7 C’s are a compilation of what I learned as I have been trying to create a strong relationship with myself and from my time learning from Dr. Matt Townsend, who is a relationship expert.
You’ll be just as amazed as I have been that these 7C’s work not only for your relationship with yourself, but also to begin creating great relationships with others.
The first C is:
Character: the dictionary defines character as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, described as the way someone thinks, feels, and behaves.
Your character is made up of your best qualities.
There is power in understanding your best qualities and using them to help you live your life.
Not everyone has the same character strengths.
Character strengths are different for each of us, and that is good news! We need different strengths so we can help each other in unique ways.
Using your strengths to help others is a great way to create good relationships.
Letting someone else use their strengths to help you is also great for relationships.
Using your strengths to help you overcome some of your weakness can be a very powerful way to make progress in your life and helps your relationship with your SELF get stronger too.
Next is:
Commitment: Commitment begins by creating a relationship with yourself that helps you know when to say no and when you really want to say yes. You begin to improve your relationships by making and keeping commitments to yourself.
You begin to trust yourself. When you trust yourself, you begin to extend trust to others. And they can begin to trust you too. Isn’t it cool that more trusting relationships can begin by making and keeping the commitments you told yourself you would do.
Would you tell someone that you would pick them up and then not show up because someone else asked you to go to the movies? I hope the answer to that is no.
But how often do you tell yourself you’re going to do something, like, go workout, and then when you get up in the morning you decide you’d rather watch YouTube videos instead.
That is breaking a commitment to yourself. You broke trust with yourself.
You wouldn’t do that to a friend. Stop doing it to yourself.
Communication is the 3rd C:
Real communication, whether it be with yourself or another, is what leads to true understanding and connection. This ultimately eliminates the fog of confusion, and it is what will ultimately help you discover what YOU want.
Get REAL is a process I teach that leads you to true understanding and connection by getting past the fog and getting to the deeper issues that are keeping you stuck. Communication in this way will eliminate the fog.
This is the best way to get to the heart of any issue.
It is the safest and most effective system of communication.
I can’t have a list of C’s without the next one:
Connection: The most basic form of connection is with yourself. When you feel connected to YOU, you are more able to connect with others. When you learn to connect with YOU without judgement, shaming, blaming, or comparing THEN you will be surprised how much easier it is to show up for others without all that stuff too.
Seriously, it works!
You’ll feel stronger and more able to connect with others when you’ve connected to yourself.
Journaling is one of the most powerful ways to connect with yourself. It gives you a safe place to practice non-judgement, to really decide if you want to shame, blame or compare. Compare you with past you and no one else. Writing it out helps you to see how that’s possible. Thinking about it in your head just results in your brain taking you off into a bunch of different tangents. It see’s all the problems that needs to be solved and tries to solve them all…which results in nothing being solved.
Writing it out slows it all down so the brain doesn’t get hijacked.
The more you practice journaling, showing up for yourself day after day, you begin to trust yourself. If you trust yourself, and you know that you’re going to be able to figure this out and then actually feel better, you’re going to want to write even more.
C #5 is Change:
Change: Seeing the purpose to the joy and the sadness that we feel in our lives is what produces growth. Growth brings change and changes brings hope.
Instead of digging your heals in and thinking you’re ok the way you are and don’t need to change for anyone, allow yourself the opportunity to become something new.
I know how much growth hurts. It really, really does.
But when you can see how the hard things you’ve experienced actually gave you the opportunity to feel more joy in the end, it’s worth the painful journey you had to go through.
Sadness is the price that we pay for love. The only way to never feel pain the pain of growth is to never feel love. That’s not a life worth living.
Seeing the purpose to the joy and the sadness that we feel in these times in our lives is what produces growth. So try not to shy away from change, and see it as an opportunity for growth, happiness and a fuller life.
This list wouldn’t be complete without:
Compassion: Self-Compassion is learning how to take care of you in a kinder way.
One of the habits that has helped my relationships, both with myself and others, is to talk to myself. Yes. Like a crazy lady! Instead of expecting others to tell me I did a good job, I tell myself that I did a good job. Instead of expecting my husband to know exactly what to say to me when I need some encouragement, and let’s face it, he flubs it up most of the time, instead, I give myself encouragement because I know what I want to hear. Why put that pressure on him to read my mind? I already know what I need. But I will say, when I took the pressure off of him, I started to recognize how hard he trys to show up for me. And that makes me feel good.
Look for ways that you’re expecting others to take care of you, and see what you can do for yourself. And do it in the kindest way possible.
The final C is:
Coaching: A coach is an unbiased listener that can help you see what you can’t. The best coaches are teachers that share skills to improve your most important relationships, help you to practice them in your daily life until you can do it yourself.
I went to bed the other night with something on my mind that was causing a lot of worry. It was spinning in my head and I couldn’t find a place of peace with it.
I’m not going to go into details about the problem, what I wanted to share with you is what happened throughout the night. I woke up 4 or 5 times with the same worry on my mind, but instead of feeling the worry I had when I went to bed, each time I woke up, one of the coaching tools I have taught to others, popped into my head. I woke up and journaled about it and between the journaling and the self-coaching I did during the night, I am feeling lighter about it.
It’s not all the way gone, but this is what I’m trying to tell you. When you have worry in your life, do you have tools that you can use to help you work through the problem or do you just stuff it down, let it spin, try to zone out of it by scrolling, or eating or any of the multiple ways we try to just stop thinking about hard things?
I’ve taught you many tools on this podcast over the past 3 years, but if you’d like individualized help for your specific “hard things”, that’s what I do in my one on one coaching program.
I specialize in helping with those getting out of the fog of depression, but the same skills can be used in so many different situations. I’d love to help you with your “hard thing”.
If you feel like this is what you are needing so you can finally feel peace and hope in your life, I would love to be your coach. Schedule a 15-minute call with me and I’ll tell you the honest truth if what I have to teach will be helpful for you. If we decide together that I can help, we’ll get you on the schedule for my 4 month program. Schedule that free 15-minute call at hunkeedori.com/minimentor.