Ahmed Shaami
The excitement created around the advancing technologies to make humans more connected has in fact them lonelier than ever. We are living in a time where the researchers are starting to indicate the next biggest public health issue along with obesity and substance abuse would be the loneliness. The social media platforms have created a world of comparison. Every time a person scrolls down the social media page, they start judging their lives and comparing themselves to the picture perfect version of other people. It makes them retreat inward and developing a monologue about the inadequacies. But during the process, we lose interest in others, we don’t feel any need to empathize with others and stop making any effort to listen. This is something that weakens our relationships.
However, a successful life requires us to build strong relationships by shifting focus from ourselves to others. Once we remove ourselves from pitying, we become better able to connect with others. This is what helps to improve our life. Following are the habits to incorporate in our life to make it worth living:
Be present in your conversation:
The biggest desire of every person on earth is to be seen, heard, and understood. We can accomplish this by becoming curious in our conversations with others. Instead of forcing other people listen to us, we must learn to listen what is being said. It helps to understand the perspectives or experiences of the person who is talking to us. Also when we listen, it minimizes the opportunity for assumptions to develop. This helps to build better relationships instead of getting caught up in conflicts.
Learn through self-reflection:
For building strong relationships and improving our own life, we need to learn the art of self-reflection. It creates an internal awareness of our emotional triggers which is essential for building connections. When we understand ourselves better, we become more available to focus on others.
Listen without judgment:
We hear a lot about listening more and talking less but we are never guided on how to listen. For an improved life, we need to become an active listener. Mostly when we listen to others, we process the information according to our own thoughts. But when we listen to focus on learning something from the other person, we understand the speaker better. Once we allow ourselves to understand what is going on in their life, it creates a better space for true connection.
Practice empathy:
To understand and focus on needs of others, we need to start practicing empathy. We need to care for people and understand what they are going through. When we aid someone in an emotional situation, it helps us to see beyond our own thoughts and experiences.
Asking for help:
Isolation can make us feel frustrated at times. Although it is challenging to ask for help from others, but once we collaborate with others we connect with others on a better level. Collaboration is known to create better connections and makes us look at things in a completely different way. When we collaborate, we become able to achieve things which we would never have been able to achieve on our own.
