Pitfalls In Building Relationships, Commitment, And Love - K Is For...

We continue this series suggesting how to avoid many pitfalls in building interpersonal relationships, whether with family, coworkers, friends, or that special someone.

Committed, loving relationships do not just happen. You may know that there is no success secret, no checklist of things to do, and just as important things not to do to make such relationships happen. But we do have many suggestions that focus on potential problems. We center on king, kneel, and knuckle under.

K is for king. Don’t think of yourself as a king. You aren’t royalty. Even if you were a royal frankly that’s not much to brag about with a few exceptions. As a digression, one of my favorite royals was the Queen Mum. I liked her because she stayed in London during the blitz of World War II. Where was the King? This paragraph is not about actual kings, but about people who take themselves for kings. These blokes are going to have a hard time to sell themselves in today’s world. For the sake of the argument, let’s say that you have a royal delusion. What happens if you run into someone else who also sees himself as a king? Are you ready to duke it out? Would you put on some armor and joust, perhaps for the hand of fair lady?

King Cheetah, not king of the beasts but close.

K is for kneel. Stand up straight. You don’t need to kneel to anybody, and that includes the would-be kings and queens of the previous paragraph. Kow-towing doesn’t make much more sense than bow-wowing. Unfortunately many workplaces still believe in yes-men and yes-women. If you can’t present your point of view without risking a serious setback or even losing your job say yes but don’t kneel. And see if you can’t transfer to a job where you don’t have to kneel standing up.

There is knothing like a knuckle ball.

K is for knuckle under. Knuckling under is another way to say kneeling. Almost. To me knuckling under implies that you put up a fight and then collapsed. People do that, as explained in the previous paragraph. Of course, the boss may have been right. Stranger things have happened. You certainly don’t want to put yourself in the position of changing jobs, or even considering changing jobs every time that one of your ideas is rejected. Many such people would end up with a very long but shallow resume. Is that what you really want? When you think about it, leaving a good job when someone tells you no is another way of knuckling under, knuckling under to your immaturity.

Are you tired of all this negativity? Take a look at our companion series that accentuates the positive.