How To Tell If You Are Nurturing Positive Relationships

When we were much younger, developing friendships and relationships were much simpler. To a larger extent, it had to do with who was in your proximity, environment or available at that specific time in your life.



It is normal that as we grow older, our paths go different ways and we can now make choices on the type of people we want around us. It could be for career purpose, business or otherwise and sometimes just adjust to the rhythm which life is moving and sure our relationships changes too.

A vast part of our life is for cultivating various relationships ranging from family and friends, including romantic partners, colleagues at work etc.

As we grow into adulthood, it sure gets harder to keep up with our circle of friends developed over time especially when we now have our family to care for, developing our career and life generally.

To Nurture positive relationships, you must first accept that certain relationships will have to change or completely dropped – taking a walk out of it.


To achieve more in life, you must Nurture and maintain the positive relationships in your life.

Here’s how to check if you are nurturing positive relationships in your life.

1. How do you converse with yourself (your inner thoughts)
In nurturing positive relationships, our inner thoughts are less talked about. Apparently, they’re the most important of them all.

Most often, we speak to ourselves differently from how we speak to others. We may send positive vibrations to people around us while we’re harder, more unforgiving and completely negative to ourselves. In turn, this will affect the relationships we have with those around us because they’ll eventually see what you’re going through.

I totally agree to the fact that everyone goes through negative self experience, but it comes down to how we allow the experience to bend us and what we do with the experience.

One of the consequences that come from negative self experience includes poor or low self-esteem which will later affect our relationships.

Example of negative self experience includes:

Ø  “I’m single because I’m not good enough to be with anyone.”
Ø  “I don’t get invited because I don’t know how to keep friends.”
I’m sure you won’t tell a friend such things as to their predicaments. I’m sure not. So why allow these thoughts with yourself?

Our inner thoughts have a way of attracting themselves to us. So keep your inner conversations POSITIVE at all time to help you nurture positive relationships daily.


2. Invest in lifelong friendships that grow
I have a healthy long-distance friendship with my roommate from the University and some right from High School because we make it a point to check-in as often as possible.

A friend, Nyerhovwo told me of her longtime friend “Dammy”. I realized they’ve built their relationship overtime by having same interest in most part of their lives even though distance has kept them apart, the time spent together is still as fresh as it where and they keep tab on each other.

Whether it’s a quick ten minutes check on social media help bring bursts of energy throughout the day and even weeks for any relationship – world apart or not.

3. How do you converse with others
With reference to #1, have you taken time to listen to how you converse and carry conversations with your family and friends, your significant other, business partners, colleagues at work, that homeless man in the street, drivers etc and most importantly – YOU.

Most often we get caught up in other thoughts, that we literally don’t pay attention to the language that we’re using or how we’re using it while conversing with others. For instance:

Ø  Are you really present and attentive when having time out with your family?
Ø  How do you respond to gossip?
Ø  Are you on your phone chatting while on a date night with your significant other?
Ø  How do you respond to stress originated from people around you?
Ø  How well do you relate with colleagues at work and your boss?
Ø  Do you have a good relationship with your neighbors?

Knowing how you feel when these conversations are occurring is as important as the conversation. Part of nurturing positive relationships means making sure you feel good when you have them because it’s the experience we feel on a daily basis that shapes our days ahead.

Peradventure, you notice you’re surrounded by flow of negative energy, try separating yourself from those or try changing the direction of the conversation.

If you noticed you’re always on your phone during family time, look a little deeper and see what is taking your attention of what is so important and why it’s so.

It’s very important to be where our mind is at that moment.


4. How do you feel at work
Healthy and positive relationships with colleagues at work is always ideal, but it’s not always the case.

First of; ask yourself if you like what you are doing. Do you enjoy your current job? How do you feel about work? What kind of energy flow from your inside out when your job is mentioned?

Emotions and energy really matters here. If “you’re feeling good or bad at work” will either attract your coworkers to you or away from you. I’m sure you don’t want to invite negative Tosin to coffee and listen to her complain about all her colleagues in her department.

If you’re feeling good at work and enjoying what you do, you’ll feel more aligned and in tune with those around you which eventually leads to healthier relationships.

5. Recognize that relationship should be treated as partnership
Your significant other has seen the worst and best parts of you that makes you normal.

There’s no relationship without highs and lows. There are moments when the romance may feel fizzled or caught up in relationship tension and there’re times both of you’re just unstoppable.

Besides having a positive relationship, it also means having healthy arguments. There’s no relationship without arguments especially at the early stage when you’re knowing each other.

Funny enough, you keep knowing your partner in marriage. In other words, there’s no stop to learning in marriage. You don’t graduate from this school because everyone is a student.

If you’re able to have a disagreement without screaming and disturbing the neighbors while taking steps to figure out the problem together, then you’re on the right track.

Here are some things to keep in mind during an argument:

Ø  Is your partner still first during disagreements?
Ø  Do you agree to disagree?
Ø  Are you both looking for a solution to the problem?
Ø  Do you prefer a safe way out?
Ø  Are you able to place your pride / ego aside and listen during argument?

Nurturing a positive relationship means understanding the situation from the other person’s perspective, while coming up with a solution together. It involves good communication.

Relationship = Partnership – Dictatorship.

6. Do you share core values?
It can get harder to make friends – good friends as we get older.

Younger ones have a common bonding ground. Eg:  Favorite television shows, school sports where we reside. But as we develop careers, different life ideology, have families, and expand our growth on every facet, it may be hard to keep up with our inner circle, let alone ourselves.

Note that it’s not distance that keeps people and relationships apart, but the differences in core values.

Take the case of Nyerhovwo and Dammy in #2 above: though they’re world apart but they still keep tab on each other. This is possible because they share same core values in certain areas of their lives.

From research, we seek mental company over physical company, and this becomes more prominent as we get older.

Note: Not all core values have to be the same or related. Having different value and ideas also promote positive relationships.


The lessons we learn reflects on how we communicate with others. It helps us grow and understand the values that we are bringing into our relationships and in turn add value to those relationships.

All it takes is a few moments of checking-in with others as well as yourself.


Picture: Pexels
How To Tell If You Are Nurturing Positive Relationships How To Tell If You Are Nurturing Positive Relationships Reviewed by Juilal on 15:04 Rating: 5

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