Who Is By Your Side?

Your relationships with family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and your community are a vital and important part of your life. It is my opinion that it doesn't matter what job you have, what kind of car you drive, how big your house is, or the size of your bank account. What does matter are the people that walk by your side and go through life's experiences with you.

The challenge is that it takes a long time to develop and grow relationships and yet you can literally destroy them in a moment. Relationships are something that need to be constantly nurtured, developed and protected. Consider these basic ideas for building the relationships that matter to you:

• Say "Please", "Thank you", "I'm sorry", "I was wrong", "Forgive me", "How can I help?"


• Be considerate, good, decent and courteous


• Bite your tongue. Count to 10 when you are angry. Think before you speak.


• "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." If this is the case, think really hard of something nice and say it instead


• "Turn the other cheek", "...go with him twain", "...let him have thy cloak also."


• Remember that love is spelled, T-I-M-E. It is all about quality AND quantity of time spent together

When you put more of yourself into your personal relationships you will find that you will get more out of them. If you do the minimum to "just get by" what kind of results do you expect? Don't settle for minimal results.