{"id":860,"date":"2011-12-25T15:00:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-25T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chadstutzman.net\/?p=860"},"modified":"2011-12-25T15:00:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T15:00:23","slug":"three-keys-to-good-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/?p=860","title":{"rendered":"Three Keys to Good Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Life is all about relationships.\u00a0 When our relationships are healthy, our lives tend to be healthy.\u00a0 When our relationships are strained or broken we are strained and broken.\u00a0 Our closest relationships are the ones that affect us the most.\u00a0 Having and maintaining healthy relationships takes work and constant learning.\u00a0 The reason relationships take work is because each of us tend to be selfish at times and that hurts our relationships.\u00a0 When we stop trying to improve ourselves, the people around us suffer.\u00a0 That is why we should always be working on ourselves and how we can strengthen our character.\u00a0 As I think about keys to healthy relationships, it really boils down to these three areas:<\/p>\n

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  1. Understand People – <\/strong>This is no small task, because people are very complicated.\u00a0 We all have different experiences, beliefs, hurts, habits and hang-ups.\u00a0 As we grow older these things all come out in our relationships.\u00a0 Things that happened to us as a child effect us as adults.\u00a0 Whether it is lies we are believing, hurtful experiences or our worldview, it all effects our relationships with the people around us.\u00a0 To better understand people we need to be curious about the people around us.\u00a0 We need to be able to connect on a deeper emotional level by talking about those past experiences, core beliefs and worldview.\u00a0 We need to discover what their love language is and then speak that language with them on a regular basis.\u00a0 We also need to read books about relationships that can help us to better understand why we do what we do.\u00a0 Here are three books that have helped me a lot in the area of relationships:\u00a0 “The DNA Of Relationships”\u00a0 By Gary Smalley<\/a> – “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman <\/a>– “Love & Respect” by Emmerson Eggrichs.<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Love People –<\/strong> Not many of us love people well.\u00a0 We tend to be judgmental, hold grudges, be selfish, rude, sarcastic and jealous.\u00a0 How to love well is clearly explained to us in the Bible.\u00a0 The Apostle Paul wrote about the importance of love in 1 Corinthians 13.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He basically says that we can have all kinds of gifts and abilities, but if we don’t have love we have nothing.\u00a0 Listen to these words about how to love:\u00a0 “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”<\/em>\u00a0 Read that again and put your name in place of love, does that describe who you are?\u00a0 If not start today to change that.<\/li>\n
  3. Help People – <\/strong>To have healthy thriving relationships we need to have a servants mindset.\u00a0 We should be thinking about how we can serve and help the people around us.\u00a0 We can only do this well if we understand the people around us and are loving well.\u00a0 To help people we need to be able to add value to their lives.\u00a0 Are the people around you benefiting from knowing you, or are you the only one benefiting?\u00a0 When we add value to others we are building up our account with that person.\u00a0 They will want to be around us and spend time with us.\u00a0 If we are only taking in a relationship people will not want to spend time with us.\u00a0 Helping people starts with the mindset of serving.\u00a0 This does not come naturally to us because we are wired to look out for ourselves and not others.\u00a0 This needs to be balanced with taking care of ourselves, so that we are healthy emotionally, physically and spiritually.\u00a0 When we are healthy, we can serve and add value to those around us.\u00a0 So that means going to a counselor, meeting with a mentor and working through our junk.\u00a0 That can be a great way of helping others by helping ourselves.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Relationships really matter and the harder we work on ourselves and our relationships the happier and healthier we will be.\u00a0 One last thought about relationships.\u00a0 Forgiveness is needed in every relationship in order last over time.\u00a0 We will hurt each other and let each other down, and the ability and desire to reconcile and forgive is vital to long term relationships.\u00a0 I will talk more about forgiveness later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Life is all about relationships.\u00a0 When our relationships are healthy, our lives tend to be healthy.\u00a0 When our relationships are strained or broken we are strained and broken.\u00a0 Our closest relationships are the ones that affect us the most.\u00a0 Having and maintaining healthy relationships takes work and constant learning.\u00a0 The reason relationships take work … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Three Keys to Good Relationships”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-personal-growth","category-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadstutzman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}