Backyard barbecues, outings on the lake, community parades and fireworks displays, beach trips, and poolside gatherings are just a few of the summer activities that may come to mind when you think of ways you would like to spend your summer. The summer season offers many opportunities to gather with family and friends. While summer activities provide much enjoyment and fun, they are also fertile ground for cultivating deeper and more resilient relationships that build community and ultimately contribute to a more compassionate and peaceful world.
The Space Between
Relationships take root, grow, and are nurtured in the space between two or more people, but they begin within each of us. Our ability to connect with others depends on our connection with our own True Self. The True Self is who you are at your deepest, most authentic level. When you are connected to your True Self, you are able to express in the world as uniquely you Your close relationships with family and friends are extensions of your relationship with yourself. As you come to know and trust the truth of who you really are, it is easier for you to extend yourself to others.
For relationships to develop fully and thrive, they must be nurtured in an environment of trust and love. Think of your relationships like a garden that must be carefully tended and maintained in order for fulfilling relationships to take hold and fully blossom. It is important to tend the whole garden so that the entire system is nurtured and flourishes. Because we are all connected, we must not overlook any aspect of the whole or the entire system will suffer. To connect to community, connect often and in meaningful ways with family and friends. Consider how you might create a space for your relationships with family and friends to flourish and grow.
If you were raised in a nurturing environment, you likely find that making meaningful connections with others comes much easier. Even if that is not the case, draw deeply on what you know about who you really are as you connect with other individuals and groups. As you begin to bring your True Self forward fully in your relationships with others, enjoying time together, discovering your commonalities, sharing values and a vision for tomorrow, you naturally cultivate the experience of community.
Your relationships with family and friends will afford you many opportunities to find meaningful expression in the world. These closest connections are a key to discovering new dimensions of living and thriving in community. The space between our lives and the lives of our closest friends and family members is a rich and fertile ground for learning more about who you are and about the natural connections that support and sustain your relationships with others. As you move through your days, value the space between, knowing it supports your full flourishing in relationship.
Cultivating Joyful Relationships
Connections with family and friends can bring us into the experience of great joy. These relationships help us connect to greater meaning and purpose in our lives. As satisfying as these relationships can be for us, they also can be complex and sometimes conflicted. Thriving and resilient relationships do not just happen; they must be cultivated and nurtured in loving and supportive environments.
Each of us bears a responsibility for the creation of community through our choice to tend to and nurture the quality of our relationships with ourselves and others. Take a quick inventory of how you are showing up in your closest relationships. Ask yourself these questions:
- How am I bringing my most authentic self to each of my relationships with family and friends?
- How do I choose to invest my time and attention in the these important relationships?
- Am I cultivating a sense of safety and belonging, joy and compassion, trust and happiness within each of these primary relationships?
- How can I nurture strong and lasting relationships that support my full thriving in my community?
12 Key Characteristics for Resilient Relationships
Relationships are as unique as the individuals who form them. Thriving relationships share key characteristics, which create the conditions for resilient relationships. Consider how and to what degree these core qualities are present in your closest connections. Take note of those which may be missing from your experience of community with your closest connections.
1. Love. Love is the basis of all human relationships. It connects one thing to another. All things are connected and held together in the energy of love. Many people think they have to seek lasting love. As such, they may spend a lifetime looking for the love that is already within their hearts! For positive, loving relationships to blossom and grow requires only that you open your heart to the possibilities inherent in the coming together of two or more people. Relationships with family members and close friends provide many opportunities for you to experience the flow of giving and receiving love, and love flows most freely when hearts open to the full experience of love.
How open are you to the fullest experience of love?
2. Authenticity. When you live from the wisdom of the True Self and align your actions with who you really are, authenticity is the natural and predictable result. When you are authentic in your relationships with others, you do not hide behind pretense or falsity. Instead, you have a deep inner knowing of who you really are and show up in relationships by expressing your truth.
How are you showing up fully as your authentic self in your relationships with family and friends?
3. Intrinsic Value. As you experience the world through your connection with who you really are, you see that every living thing has intrinsic value because you understand that we have all come to express our BE-ing in the world. No one of us needs to do anything to earn value. We are all created equal. You have value simply because you are. When you come to this realization, your heart opens to embrace the world. The relationships that are born of your open-hearted willingness to be a part of the world and to meet others where they are add more value to the world and help create the conditions for True Community. Watch your world expand as you experience ever-deepening connections with those around you!
How can you open yourself to embrace the intrinsic value of each of your family members and close friends?
4. Sense of Safety. We feel safest in relationships built on a solid foundation of love, support, authenticity, and openness. Our connections with family and friends thrive and grow when we feel secure and protected—even when we are confronted with threats of danger. When you feel safe in relation to yourself and others, you are more willing to open yourself to experience the world around you—to include connecting more closely with your family and friends. Rather than constricting yourself due to fear, you feel safe enough to lean in to life. You begin to open yourself to new experiences of friendship and connection. When you experience safety, you are more likely to take risks that can result in living larger in the world.
How does your sense of safety allow you to form closer connections with family members and friends?
5. Trust. Trust grows in the held space of safety and security. As you begin to feel safe in your world and expand your life experiences, you come to realize that you are surrounded by people you can trust. Likewise, your cultivation of trust helps others to see that they can depend on you. A sense of trust deepens with each and every experience of being safe and secure in the field of love.
How do you hold a safe and non-threatening space for others to be themselves in their relationships with you?
6. Vulnerability. When you feel held in the spaciousness of love and trust, you feel safe and secure enough to be yourself, imperfections and all. Rather than hide behind your fear of exposing your imperfections, you understand that no one is perfect. In deep relationship with another, you begin to feel safe enough to allow the other person to see all of who you really are. Such vulnerability requires trust. It requires the courage to show up as the real you in all relationships. In supportive connections with those you trust, you feel free to lean into life even as you open yourself to new experiences you may have previously avoided due to the fear of exposing your perceived imperfections. True community can take root where we find the courage to embrace our whole selves and become vulnerable in relationship with one another.
Who are the people in your circle of family and friends with whom you can be vulnerable?
7. Compassion. Compassion for others begins with compassion for self. You cultivate this core quality for resilient relationships through the acceptance of who you are, by realizing your imperfections, and in knowing that none of us is perfect. As your compassion for yourself grows, it will become more and more natural for you to open your heart and hands to help those around you.
How does accepting your own imperfections open you to accepting the imperfections of others?
8. Presence. Your connection with another is strengthened when you are fully present to them. Being fully present affirms their intrinsic worth. Your attentiveness in relationships helps others to feel seen and heard. It conveys to them that they really matter to you. Likewise, when others are fully present to you, you feel seen, heard, and valued.
How do you feel when fully present with a close friend?
9. Listening. Listening is closely related to being fully present in your relationships. In full presence with each other, we open our hearts and listen deeply to what others say with their words as well as what they communicate non-verbally. Deep listening is about more than simply listening with your sense of hearing. It is also about noticing body language, facial expressions, and physical gestures. Attention to non-verbal communication can provide valuable cues about what the other person is feeling, needing, or trying to say. As you listen deeply, pay attention to periods of silence from the other person. Consciously holding space for silence in conversation and in relationship to one another can add richness to the overall interaction and help the other person feel affirmed. Silence delivers a powerful message!
How does your interaction with a family member or friend change when you listen deeply to what they are saying?
10. Integrity. Integrity infers a steadfast alignment between who you are and your outer actions. Being in integrity means that you do what you say you will do. Your integrity can be measured in part by your dependability. How dependable are you? Do you keep your word? Do you do what you promise to do? Can your children rely on you to be there when they need you? Dependability helps others to trust you and feel they can rely on you to do what you have said you will do.
In your relationships with family members and friends, how reliable are you? Do you keep your word?
11. Responsibility. You are personally responsible for your own choices and actions. This awareness can be incredibly empowering. Bringing that same sense of responsibility to the context of your relationships with others amplifies its effect. When you are in integrity and enter responsibly into relationship with others, your perspective expands. You see that in community you can discover common ground that embraces both the diversity and the commonalities of the group. Each participant in community has a personal responsibility to nurture and sustain the larger group and to see each person as a valued contributor to the whole. In the context of connections with others, being seen and feeling valued for your contributions to community can add another dimension of meaning and purpose to your life.
What are your responsibilities in your close relationships?
12. Acceptance. Acceptance means that you start where you are and meet others where they are. Begin with self- acceptance. When you can accept yourself and others as you are and realize that wholeness includes your imperfections, you are able to take the first steps toward forgiveness. You can move forward with confidence and ease as you contribute your unique gifts to the creation of True Community.
In your close relationships, how open are you to meeting the other person where they are, without judgment and with forgiveness?
Happy Summer!
This article was excerpted in part from the book Wholly Connected: Five Pathways for the Return to True Community, a publication of True Center Publishing and available for order by clicking here.
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