Building Relationships, Commitment, And Love - Continuing With P

We continue our series on how to build interpersonal relationships, whether with family, coworkers, friends, or that special someone.

Commitment and love are important to all of us; they are worth fighting for; they are worth working for. You also should know that in spite of many promises there is no secret for success, no checklist of things to do, and just as importantly no checklist of things not to do. But we do have suggestions, now continuing with the letter P. We actually have a double series of articles for the letter P, sneaking in a Q as well. The focus here is on plan, praise, and qualify.

P is for plan. If you want to get somewhere to have to plan for it. Since there are so many different ways to fail, and relatively so few ways to succeed you won’t get where you want to be without planning. On the other hand we must always remember the phrase, Man Proposes, God Disposes. You can plan all you want but something may always come up to make mincemeat out of your plans, and minced meat out of your steak. The stakes are high. So does that mean we shouldn’t plan? Not at all; on the contrary we should plan and also prepare a famous Plan B. The better prepared you are to meet the future you expect, the better prepared you will be to meet the future that you didn’t expect. Plan on it.

There's nothing like planning ahead.

P is for praise. Don’t be stingy with your praise. When someone has done something fine let them know. And if it wasn’t perfection, you can wait to tell them what was missing. It seems that some people feel praise will poison the praisees, that the praise will go to their heads. These people insist on the but, you did a great job but. It’s their way of butting in, but they should but out. Why stint, why not say “You did a great job.” And please avoid the famous damn with faint praise. It seems so unfair. By the way, the praisees might misunderstand and feel they are truly being praised. Instead of being kicked in the butt.

Arms raised in praise.

Q is for qualify. Do what you have to do to qualify. I am not qualifying this statement. So you have to work on it, work on it. Of course just because you qualify doesn’t mean that you will get what you want. But it’s a start.