By Penny Power – Business Author & Human-Centred Speaker
This week I am pondering with you the art of committing to the people that matter to you in our life. This is the 4th stage of building relationships that I have pondered over the past few weeks.
- The First – Curiosity
- The Second – Compassion
- The Third – Contribution
- The fourth – today – is Commitment.
Over the past year I have delivered my keynote about ‘Significance- ensuring that people that matter to you know they matter’. I have spoken to over 2500 business people and delivered workshops to around 120 delegates, in small groups.
It has been fascinating and illuminating how much we are all aware that we are overwhelmed with connection, and at the same time underwhelmed by the feeling we matter. A lack of emotional connection and sensing that to matter as a customer, a supplier, a parent, a friend, a sibling, even a spouse is being challenged.
Time, technology, tasks and doomscrolling has impacted all our ability to connect as closely as we wish we could.
So how do we know which relationships are deeply significant and give our commitment, and which are looser, more casual, less important relationships to us?
And – how do those people that matter to you know they do?
When we are young, almost all relationships feel critical to our safety, we invest in them and they hopefully give back to us, and significant relationships are built. As we get older, something changes, we start to have our own values, our own humour, our own beliefs and we also see the transient nature of relationships. The saying ‘A Reason, a Season or a Lifetime’ is so clever.
It helps us to learn and understand the passing of people through our life. It also helps us to examine the closeness of the relationships that are important and guides us to hold onto them.
I think this ‘reason, season, lifetime’ analysis was easier pre-technology, pre-quantity of everything and pre-choice. The days when close, small communities served us and when we had more time and less demands on us.
Now, we all have less capacity for the volume of people that come in and out of our lives. We also have less skills in keeping people close.
– Overwhelming Connections to manage
– Underwhelming emotional connections and a sense of mattering
These are two highly opposing challenges.
Loneliness, as we all know, is high, and this is the word for a lack of significance. A lack of being seen and noticed and a lack of anyone committing to us.
A balanced, ‘significant relationship’ is the one where we can give and we can receive. Where two people share openly and each feel they can contribute to the other, where the feeling of mattering to one another is mutual.
Imbalanced, or ‘insignificant’ relationships are when we feel unseen for all that we give, or perhaps where we are a consumer of others, receiving and not knowing how to give back, or perhaps where we are indifferent to the person, and they feel the same to us.
Let’s go deeper on this…
- I know the people that I cannot imagine life without, in my family, my play and my work. They are highly significant to me and me to them. My husband, my children, my granddaughter, my daughter in law, my nieces and nephews, my siblings, close friends, my clients and my team at work. I hope they all know that they matter hugely to me. When you add them all up, that’s a lot of people to care for and communicate with.
2. I also know those relationships where I give and give and give, and I am often pouring from an empty cup, but I keep doing it. Is it duty, lack of self worth or habit? I feel unseen a lot of the time, I know I don’t matter to them.
3. I know the places where I receive a great deal, I consume more than I give. My Church for example, where one day I will have time to volunteer, but for now, all I give is my Sunday mornings and a financial contribution. Most volunteers are retired and their work with the church gives them a massive sense of purpose. I have a healthy, honest relationship with them, and they understand that I work hard all week and come for peace but that I appreciate them enormously.
4. Finally, I know the places where I have had to accept an ‘indifferent’ relationship, with low give and receive, perhaps because those people have hit their capacity and we have a functional relationship. It could be due to time, or due to a sense of unrequited commitment and it is better to place them neatly in the ‘indifferent’ box to save the pain of being needy. A casual relationship with no imbalance of giving or receiving.
The important thing is to know who to commit to. In order to hold onto a deep, long lasting relationship with anyone, be it in work, home or play requires time. A strong relationship requires curiosity, compassion, contribution and commitment.
When I deliver this in-person with groups of people or in a 121 conversation, there is always an aha moment. Realising that there are people that are not receiving what they deserve as a person that is deeply significant. People have written words like this to me afterwards and it has made my heart sing.
After yesterday, I’ve been messaging lots of people to tell them what they mean to me, out of the blue I may add. It feels good. Most have been really touched. It feels very profound that something so simple can brighten people’s spirits so much.
So perhaps this week, think about the people that matter to you, in work, play and at home, and perhaps ensure that they know it, as we can be in a chronic state of denial and then have huge shocks when someone slowly quits from our lives and perhaps we could have stopped it from happening.
With love,
Penny x
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