Relationships are the lifeblood of humans. It helps us work, rest, and play.

They are vital to our very being and if you don’t believe me then here’s what Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist, and professor at Harvard Medical School says: “The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,”

This quote was taken from an interview when he was being asked about an ongoing Harvard study that is considered one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, having started in 1938 during the Great Depression.

Both creating new as well as maintaining existing relationships have been a challenge for all of us over the last 18 months. For most of us, the virtual world just isn’t the same. There are some advantages to being virtual, such as reducing or cutting our travel time thereby helping us be more productive, but going back to Robert Waldinger, when it comes to relationships, “it’s the quality of your close relationships that matters.” So, pick quality over quantity.

This approach is borne out by Robin Durban, a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist who is a specialist in primate behavior. He says you can only maintain so many close friendships. He is best known for his namesake “Dunbar’s number,” which he defines as the number of stable relationships people are cognitively able to maintain at once and this number is 150.

So, what does this all mean? It means that we need to be selective about our relationships and the amount of time we spend and with whom. Dunbar developed a Circles of Friendship graphic which helps us understand the close to not so close relationships and is a guideline to how we value these relationships.

We can use a similar approach to our relationships using family, friends, and then business colleagues, clients, vendors. Sometimes, when we get lucky, (or not) some of this merges.

The trick is that we need to ask ourselves which of our relationships do we really value, love and need, and then ensure we are nurturing those relationships in a way that is fundamental to all good relationships. Trust is the bedrock of all solid relationships. Without it, no relationship will last. And, without trust, there is no respect. Without respect, there is no credibility. Again, quality trumps quantity.

In my next article I’ll be discussing how we build trust and respect and what value in a relationship really means, and how we can be meaningful in the existing environment we find ourselves in.

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash