6) Make It a Habit

Have the adjustments you’ve made so far helped? Keep working at it! Check-in and measure your progress. Sometimes you may only check-in on your social relationships. For example, if you notice that spending time with your parents makes you happy, do more of that. If going hiking with your friend Sarah makes you feel fulfilled and well, so do more of that. Your relationships make a big difference in your well-being levels so consistently check-in on them to make sure they are the ones you want. Having healthy, satisfying, joyful relationships is critical to your well-being.

Prepare your day or week ahead. That’s the best way to manage relationships. When you wake up in the morning or the evenings, write down how you want your relationships to change that day:

1. I will only respond to Facebook messenger at 4 PM.
2. I will only talk to my friend for 5-minutes.
3. I will spend 30 minutes with my sister to help on her project.

In level 1, you will assess your relationships and make some changes. You will learn the circles of relationships and how to move people in and out of your life. You will also learn how to map out your network so it plays to your strengths and supports you as needed. Those are more or less logistical changes.

As we dig deeper into this variable, we’ll start looking at the roles we play and the time allocated to each. We all wear so many different hats. For example, a single individual might identify as a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, professional, temple member, outdoorswoman, and dog lover. Each of these roles comes with a set of duties, activities, time commitments, emotional engagements, and desires.

Finding balance amongst so many responsibilities and “wants” can be challenging! Often, we don’t really give enough conscious consideration to how we are going about this balancing act, so some things end up stealing more of our attention while others get neglected. UWB helps you shine a light on your roles so that you can achieve flow in your relationships and ultimately foster personal and communal harmony that benefits everyone you interact with.

Last, we will do some communication exercises. Communication is fundamental to relationship management. Topics include how to cultivate new relationships, have difficult conversations, and empathetic listening. There is so much to learn in communication that we won’t stop there and hope to offer many communication classes for relationship management.

Now, go check-in and jot down in your journal: “How are your social relationships the past few hours and is there anything that needs to change?” (Ignore the prompt below.)