The habits shaping your relationships

Written by Debra Joy

What if I told you that a simple habit shift could dramatically improve your life?

For years I’ve been teaching my clients that:

“The quality of your habits determines the quality of your life.”

Most of what you do all day is out of habit. From how you get out of bed to what you do next:

• Whether you drink coffee or not

• The way you drive your car

• The routes you take

• The foods you eat

• The ways you move

• The way you speak

• And especially…the thoughts you think.  

When something is a habit it’s automatic. It’s the way your brain saves energy and works efficiently. If you do the same things over and over again your brain will turn them into habits. That means you no longer waste energy deciding whether or not to do something, or how to do it. When something’s a habit you’re doing it without thinking about how or why – it’s automatic.

Your brain will turn anything into a habit. That’s both good and bad.

All of your habits throughout the day are either moving you towards your goals and the kind of person you want to be, or they’re moving you away from that. 

Changing little habits can have big impacts on your life.  That’s why I say the quality of your habits determines the quality of your life. Not just your life now, but your future.

Now, this is where your relationships come in:

While research suggests that “relationships have the biggest impact on life quality”, I believe habits are the foundation of those relationships.

Let me explain...

Are you in the habit of:

• Expressing your appreciation or holding back

• Celebrating your friends’ successes or feeling jealous

• Sharing in their pain and grief or disappearing until things get better

• Listening when they need to feel heard or trying to fix them

• Responding to texts and calls or letting them linger

• Smile when you pass a stranger or look the other way

Each of these habits can strengthen or weaken your relationships.

Right now do these two things before you read any further:

1. Think about an important person in your life.

2. Choose one simple habit that would improve the quality of that relationship.

Don’t create anything complicated. I recommend a “micro habit”, something you can do daily, no matter what.

When we want to make improvements, we usually over commit. Most people who join a gym in January, committed to going 5 times a week, have stopped going altogether before spring. They’d be better off building the habit of doing 10 squats every hour, and once that became a habit, adding onto that.

When it comes to relationships we often think of grand gestures and, while those can be memorable, they don’t change the quality of your life day to day. The most romantic wedding vows last for moments - it’s the daily acts of kindness that keep a relationship strong.

So, when a relationship habit comes to mind, see if you can keep simplifying it down to its essence. Something so simple it’s hard to imagine it could ever make a difference – like smiling, or saying thank you.

Micro habits build like compound interest, creating an ever-growing bank account full of well-being. And if your most important relationships are already rocking, doing a little extra can produce exponential results.  

My husband and I appreciate each other in simple ways all the time, and several years ago we added a habit of expressing some things we appreciate from that week on our Sunday morning walks. It keeps us looking for the good in each other all the time.

What's one small habit you can build this week to strengthen a relationship?