I have been working with children, families and in the education space for over 38 years, and written many articles on many topics related to education, personal development, relationships, families, empowerment, leadership and parenting. This blog alone has over 1,400 original articles that I have written over the years.
During those years, I have been asked many questions about my philosophy and in this series, I wish to bring to you my philosophy about different topics in an interview format. Questions and Answers and today’s topic is “Art of relationship” as I see it.
I invite you to share with us yours and comment on the box below.
Why do you think we need relationships at all?
We are all born into the world where other people exist. The second we are conceived, we have a relationship with our surroundings. The second we are born, we have a relationship with our mothers, and every day of our life, we have more and more relationships.
Our purpose in life is to “use” those relationships to our benefit. Without it, we would die. You see, if we didn’t use our relationship with our mothers to get food, for example, we would literally die. In my opinion, relationship is a connection between two or more entities who manipulate each other to suit their needs.
We are born manipulators, and the quality of the relationship depends on our ability to manipulate well.
In all relationships, people manipulate each other to feel good about themselves
Ronit Baras
Manipulation in Relationships
Think of a couple’s relationship. They manipulate each other, to feel good about themselves. If they feel good, they say it is a good relationship. If they don’t feel good, they have bad relationship.
Think about parents and children, they manipulate each other to feel good about themselves. If parents enjoy their parenting, that means they “benefit” from it, they get “satisfaction” from it, and if kids enjoy their relationship with their parents, there we have it, a happy family!
Think about bosses and workers, they manipulate each other to gain something. The boss gains work, the worker gains pay (hopefully also some interest, satisfaction…).
If they do it well, it means they master their art, the art of relationships.
So, relationship is a give and take transaction that is considered “good” when the gain on both sides is enough for the two or more parties, to stay in the relationship.
I’ll say it again, relationship is a give and take transaction that is considered “good” when the gain on both sides is enough for the two or more parties, to stay in the relationship.
Every transaction we have with others or with our surroundings falls under the category of relationship and knowing how to make a good use of those relationships is what determines our health, wealth, success, and happiness. The more you practice this art, the more successful you become at it.
I tell all my clients, you are a manipulator, I’m a manipulator, we are all manipulators. We do it anyway, why not learn to do it well?
What does love have to do with the art of relationships?
Love is the best way to manipulate our surroundings to suit our needs. Many people think that love is a feeling. I used to think so too. I now believe that love is a verb, an action. Love as a feeling, is not enough for the relationship to work.
Love as a feeling is the brushes and paint of the painter, if you do nothing with those brushes or paint, you won’t come out with a wonderful picture. They call you an artist, when you actually use your paint and brushes, not just by having them.
People, in the name of feeling “Love” will do hurtful things and they use “love” as a justification. Half of the movies you’ll ever see will be about it.
Love, in my definition, is the intention and actions we take, with acceptance, respect and kindness, to make others (or the other part of ourselves) healthy, happy, and successful.
You want the world to work for your advantage, love!
When you are a parent, you understand what love is the second you hold your first child in your hand. This helpless creature does nothing at all for a long time and you can watch him or her for hours and your heart is full of love. You know it because you are willing to do lots for this baby.
Love is what makes the relationship beneficial for the parties. This willingness is the same love we need towards ourselves, our partners, families, friends, colleagues and even towards our environment.
Some people ask me, Ronit, what do you get back from the environment and I say, fruits, green, oxygen, sun, water…
So, love is an action that makes good manipulation, good relationship. It is what turns it into a form of art. The art of relationships. Love guarantees that the parties, would want to stay in the relationship because they benefit from it. Yes, I know, it sounds like a cold calculating transaction, and it sounds like it because it is.
Our mind has a “calculator”, I call it the “accounting department”, all chemically, constantly monitoring our feelings and dividing the transactions we have with ourselves and others as “good transaction” “bad transaction”, adding “more good feelings in the account” or “deducted good feelings from our account”. It happens anyway, I believe we just need to be aware of it.
OK, so love is the action that makes good relationship, what is the best action?
There are many actions that will make good relationships, and this blog has hundreds of articles to get some ideas. I believe the greatest action is kindness.
Think of Love as a bucket; we feel love when it is full and feel fear/anxious/disappointed/hurt/sad when it is empty. The best way to fill up our love bucket is to fill up other’s bucket. We do it by making them feel good about themselves.
Dale Carnegie wrote about this concept in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you want to feel good, make others feel good. Simple!
About 27 years ago, I learned the same model when I did my Reiki course in Singapore. When I Reiki others, I don’t give them energy, I am just a vehicle of this energy and while it is passing through me, it heals me too. Same with love. When we give love, we have more of it.
If we want to have good relationships, we need to make others feel loved. We need to actively do it and at the same time, we fill up our own love bucket and strengthen the relationship.
The problem with relationship and with the love bucket is when we empty other people’s buckets by hurting them, being aggressive, rude, yelling, threatening, trying to change them, by criticizing, judging, complaining, or expressing disappointment, we make holes in their buckets but also in our own bucket.
Simple, isn’t it?!
Give and you shall receive.
In the book How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath, there is a beautiful and easy explanation of this idea, which is also easy to explain to children.
Good relationships are a transaction between two or more parties with full love buckets and not good relationship is when one party has an empty bucket. Yes, one party with an empty bucket who thinks by mistake that he/she can fill up their bucket by “taking” from others, is enough to ruin a relationship.
So, full love buckets build relationships. What ruins relationships?
Humans born dependent and pleasing our parents is a survival mechanism. Our parents smile and are happy when we do what they want us to do and are upset when we don’t, and this is how they condition us to do what is expected of us. When we do not comply, they punish us. As I said, this is a survival mechanism. No one is doing it with bad intention.
Sadly, the second we leave home into the system, early childhood, education, higher education, jobs, this conditioning gets even worse. We spend years of our lives in the desire to please our teachers, friends, bosses. If we do what they want us to do, they give us a reward and if not, they punish us.
The Approval Trap
We all have the “disease to please” and are addicted to approval. It is a trap. A dangerous trap. I call it the approval trap.
Approval is a drug and much like a real drug, it pollutes our mind and body. We get a small kick, it fades quickly, and we need more and more of it.
All humans are drug addicts, and all parents are drug dealers. Well, they were the first drug dealers, and they are those who introduced us to the drug. Drug addicts are addicted to approval and drug dealers are addicted to being pleased. Both develop dependency on their drug and when they don’t get it, they lose it. You can easily imagine what kind of a relationship any two parties who are addicted have.
Drug addicts, function from a fear position, from lack, and not from love. If the idea of love is to make others feel good about themselves, then pleasing them or giving them approval does not make them feel good but only increases their feeling of being dependent. While in love, the more you give, the more you have. With approval, the more you give approval, the more they want and most of the time they live with withdrawal symptoms. Every discomfort we have and the way we react to it, is in fact, withdrawal symptoms.
Good relationships cannot exist between drug addicts because what rules their life is their drug, not love. They will do anything, absolutely anything, to get their drug and relationships will always come after. They will have a relationship, there will be a “transaction” but very bad and debilitating transactions.
Many people ask me at this point, “How do we know if what we do is to seek approval or just to make the other person happy?”
Great question!
Well, this is when your feelings can be used as a guide. When you do what you do and feel good about it, it is love, if it doesn’t make you happy doing it, it will result in resentment. That’s the disease. You are trapped. This is your drug.
Having the disease to please results in resentment and when the accounting department starts working, then restatement is a huge minus transaction, when your “bank” reserves or love are depleting. Remember, empty love tank/bank account will destroy the relationship.
Good relationship is between two sober people. To be sober, we need to be aware of our addiction and remind ourselves: the only person who needs to please me is me!
How can we make sure all our relationships are good if some people in our life have empty buckets or addictions?
That would be the ideal, that we all are loving, that we are all with full buckets, kind to others and sober.
How do we get there?
Slowly. One by one!
When I was 16 years old, I made a huge change in my life. This is when I started my social activism to make the world a better place. I was in grade 11 and was a school captain, head of the school newsletter, class representatives, grade level representative and one of our teachers, his name was Reuben, he spent hours with us, leading us in the “art” of leadership and changing the world.
We met him in breaks, evenings and even weekends (we were a group of about 10 students) One day, one of the girls asked him, “Why are you doing this? Why are you investing so much in us?”
He smiled with pride and joy and said, “If I empower 3 of you to be the best version of yourselves and each of the 3 I help, go, and empower 3 more people and each of them will do the same to 3 more people, eventually, we’ll make the world a better place”.
I was 16, when I understood the power of compounding kindness, compounding empowerment, compounding love and care.
We can do it, slowly! One relationship at a time.
The role of education in building relationship skills
I think kindness is a ripple and it always starts with self. First, we need to learn to love ourselves. Consider ourselves as perfect, with all our flaws. That is the antidot to the disease to please. Self-love is something that needs to be taught, self-kindness needs to be taught. It is possible that because I’m an educator, I believe that we need to learn those things at home and at school.
I think schools have a big power because it is centralized. Kids can come from different families, with parents who are “drug addicts” and with “empty buckets” but we can make sure teachers are trained in case parents can’t.
Sadly, education systems focus so much on academic achievement, literacy and numeracy, and forget “emotioncy”. We need to give more attention to EQ than to IQ. We need to teach them, the art of relationships. We also need to care for what I call the triangle of supporting kids, supporting parents, supporting teachers, and strengthening the relationship between those 3 parties as a mini example of all our future relationships throughout our life.
I like considering the society as an eco-system. If one thing is out of balance, the whole system is out of balance.
We can’t make sure that all our relationships will be great. If we are doing “accounting” we need to make sure we have more good relationships that fill up our tanks than bad relationships that empties our tanks. It is not about 100% full buckets but more full than empty.
We can use our first relationships (parents, siblings, family members and teachers) as examples of how relationships need to be, and the rest will follow. If I learn at home, from the moment I am born that self-love, kindness, and filling up buckets is the way to do relationship, then I master the art of relationships, and this will be the way I run all my relationships.
Are relationships that simple?
God, no! Relationships are challenging. Wonderful, but challenging.
Think of relationship as an exchange or energy. Think of us as batteries. Two people or more with their own batteries, searching for others to help them recharge. Our relationships can charge our battery or deplete it. When relationships are good and happy, respectful, kind, and loving, everyone is charged. When the relationships are sad, angry, resentful, and hateful, it depletes everyone’s battery.
The concept is simple! Making it work is not!
We can’t be in charging mode at all times because we are just different people with different needs and wants but we need to charge faster than it takes us to deplete our battery as I said before, it is not about having it 100% charged all the time. It is about having more good than bad (preferably a lot more good than bad).
Recharge your battery
We are like smart phones. We must be plugged in to the electricity from time to time in order to charge, and some apps and programs are very demanding on the battery. Relationship is a transaction that either charges us or discharges us.
We need to surround ourselves with charging people and stay away from situations that empties the battery fast like arguments, judgment, conflicts, and anger. Using feelings as a barometer is a good way to check how much charge you have in your battery.
Every transaction, in every relationship has weight/charge/discharge. If we are aware of it, we can steer our life. We master the art of relationships when we learn to avoid behaviors that empties other’s buckets (and ours) and can increase the things that fill up buckets using expression of love, encouragement, compliments, caring, support.
We can refine our art even when we reach the understanding that a person we have a relationship with is a drug addict, or empties us from good feelings, and we can choose to minimize our transactions with him/her. Awareness of what is happening to us in each transaction is the key.
Wishing you happy relationships,
Ronit
This post is part of the series Interviews with Ronit:
- The Art of Relationships