4 Habits To Give Up To Improve Your Relationship
Every single day, we judge people base on what we like and dislike, perceive to be good or bad about people and we allow our judgement to sink into our head. The more we are judgemental to the people around us, the further away our interpersonal relationship with the people around us.
The attitudes of judging people also affect our relationship with our partners and create some kind of discomfort in the relationship or marriage. Most time, we don’t realize this is taking us further away from people we are supposed to build good rapport with.
We don’t also realize the harm we do to our interpersonal relationship whenever we show our preferences based on the way we judge people, being positive or negative.
One influential psychologist named Carl Rogers once highlighted the damage we cause our interpersonal relationship when we judge people. He said “The major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group”
This tells us that, there’s a need to let go of our constant judgement about people and this will help us to become a more effective communicator in our relationship, marriage and our life in general.
There are 4 form of judging which were identified by Robert Bolton. These forms of judging undermine the quality of our communication with others in our life. When we begin to judge, it reduces the opportunity to grow our conversation with others around us, a conversation that could have afforded us lots of good is seen going down with no meaningful impact in our life. Such is what being judgmental about people will always cause us unless we don’t allow these forms of judging people as stated below become part of our habits.
To improve your relationship, do away with these 4 forms of judging others in your life.
1. Name Calling
Name calling is a form of judging that belittle another person about what the person did or said by insulting the person with derogatory names that’ll make him or her feel embarrassed. It’s really dehumanizing to be factual, it is one of the instrument used to prepare a conducive environment for genocide just as the way in happened in Rwanda, where the people of Tutsi were named called and labelled as “Cockroaches”.
No one will be happy with you when you label them with derogatory name; it will only further break down your relationship with them.
2. Criticizing others
The most common form of judging is criticizing others, when we criticize, we express some kind of negative expression or assessment of what other people do or says. We feel as if we can judge people with our knowledge and place ourselves on a higher moral standard than others. Most often, what we try to do is to tell the other person we are criticizing, that we possess the truth that which they need to conforms with; else they are on the wrong path.
3. False Praising
It is important to praise anyone for good job and highlight their qualities in other to encourage them to continue being their best. But when praising is use in a negative way, thus “False praising” the person in other for you to achieve your own aim, it eventually break or block your relationship with them, once they discover your intention. Manipulating people using praise to encourage them is a form of judging that break apart relationship. Also overpraising is possible to erode someone trust on you because, you’re perceived as insincere person and you’re only doing that, in other to get something out of them which can only be beneficial to you.
4. Analysing others
Analysing as a form of judging work in this way, when we act like a doctor that knows what affect other people’s well-being and their behaviours, we’re indirectly telling them that, we are healthy and something is wrong with them. We act as if we know best and can just talk down to other people who we analyse.
Your challenges now is to look into yourself and find out which of these 4 forms of judging do you use often in your day to day activities and in what condition do you normally found yourself judging people these ways, placing yourself on a higher moral ground than others?
For you to improve your relationship with others and even with your social network circles, you need to refrain yourself from judging people, allow them to express themselves fully as they desire, this will help you to be a more effective communicator and there’s going to be a greater improvement in the quality of your relationship with other people even in your own relationship or marriage.
