Pitfalls In Building Relationships, Commitment, And Love - R 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 actually have a double series of articles for the letter R. The focus here is on race and rage.

R is for race. I obviously don’t have to tell you to avoid racism. We are in a different world than the one I grew up in. On more than one occasion when I commented that the most powerful woman in America was Black, meaning Condoleezza Rice people thought I meant Oprah Winfrey. Who can deny their talents? But there’s more to race than racism. Don’t race through life. Don’t race through your meal to get back to your Blackberry. There’s a time for picking strawberries with your kids and a time to pick through your Blackberry messages. And picking strawberries with your kids hardly counts if your mind or your fingers is on your Blackberry. On the other hand, the one without the Blackberry (unless you have two in which case read my advice twice), you shouldn’t race through your work. Take some extra time and make sure that you do it right. Guess what, this may require you to bring your Blackberry home.

Guys, do you really think that you could race in high heels?

R is for rage. Don’t go into a rage, even if it’s all the rage. There’s only one letter separating rage and rag. Raging is a ragged way to ride through life. There’s only one letter separating rage and age. Losing it can have a serious impact on your health. I’m no doctor but I can guess that the spike in your blood pressure from a rage attack isn’t good for your health. Usually. Story time: My brother-in-law, let’s call him Joe worked for some people, let’s call them thieves, in Los Angeles, three time zones away from us. One evening his ex-boss’s wife called us in the middle of the night. Like it was midnight in L.A. and three in the morning in our neighborhood but she got the time difference wrong and thought that it was nine at night for us. Anyway, I kept calm and couldn’t fall asleep for hours. A few weeks later she repeated the mistake, this time prefacing her conversation with “Do you know what happened to Joe?”. She wanted us to “invest” some money. As soon as I found out that Joe was OK, I went into rage mode. I slept like a baby. And she hasn’t called back since.

Rage against the machine, rock band.

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