This article can help you improve your relationships and your life. Or not, it’s up to you. It’s your choice—each and every day.
Every day, you make dozens of choices that affect your relationships one way or the other. You won’t get them all right, but you can move in the right direction if you focus on those decisions one at a time. And if you keep making good choices, you build good habits along the way.
What will the outcome be if you don’t live that way? If you keep making short-term, self-absorbed choices every day? A good way to figure that out would be to ask elderly people what they regret about the choices they made in life. And then do something different.
Karl Pillemer is one of America’s leading sociologists and researchers on aging, and that’s exactly what he did. Pillemer’s team at Cornell University interviewed 1500 people over 65 about what haunts them about their life choices. The top 3 answers were about relationships.
Other studies had similar results, such as one that captured the 9 biggest regrets of hospice patients. Answers 1 and 2 were on relationships.
As you get older, how can you avoid looking back on your life with regret?
The good news is you don’t have to change your life all at once. The goal is progress, not perfection, and the way to make progress is one small step at a time. When you live that way, you can go to bed content: “I made mistakes, and I’ll work on them, but I made progress today.”
Your choices, repeated enough times, create habits with outcomes that grow over time. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results that has sold over 15 million copies, describes it this way: “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
In this series of articles on relationships, we have presented 3 life-transforming steps named Surrender, Transformation, and Empathy. This article is on the fourth step called Progress, and it will help you focus on taking one small step at a time to build positive relationship habits.
“The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.” (James Clear)
Learning How Steps and Habits Work
My life journey has had times of pain and darkness I will never forget.
I wrote a story once called “The Dark of Night” that captured what those times were like. I would often wake up in the early morning around 3:00 AM overwhelmed by fear, guilt, and shame. I could tell those thoughts would consume me if I let them, so I would take the only step I knew to try and pray for God to take care of my family. I would take that step over and over and over. Eventually, it became a habit.
Our family struggles put a strain on our marriage. At some point, my wife and I stopped showing unconditional love for each other. Trust and affection became conditional, based on how the other had acted recently. Negative thoughts often escalated to hurtful behavior.
As we slowly figured out how to rebuild our relationship, we had to relearn that most important things in life are a choice. The choices of unconditional love and forgiveness did not come easily to us. Most important things also take some work, but we moved forward a step at a time with the commitment to make our future together better than ever before—because we choose it to be.
The steps we take inevitably change our lives for better or worse. Which makes it important to learn how to take the right ones …
“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way.” (Psalm 37:23)
Many of us worry a lot about our decisions and the future. The good news is we don’t have to figure our entire life out now, just take the next right steps. There’s more good news that God will help us make good choices and build positive habits if we allow him into our lives:
- When we don’t know what to do, we can remember God is good and he has a plan for us.
- We can get directions for which way to go through prayer, meditation, and the Bible.
- God is always there with us along the way, each and every day, to ask for guidance.
- When negative thoughts come along, God will help us deal with them better.
It’s our decision—over and over—how we deal with our thoughts. Those choices and the thought patterns we develop form our habits and eventually our character. That may seem overwhelming, until we remember one simple reality: we can make progress one step at a time.
The Big Idea About Taking Small Steps
The “Big Idea” of this article is: “We can improve our lives one small step at a time.”
Amidst the clutter of life improvement approaches, are small steps that big a deal? Based on proven research and time-tested wisdom, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes!” This idea is supported in psychology, neuroscience, recovery, the Bible, wellness, and personal development.
BJ Fogg, PhD, is the founder of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab and author of the New York Times bestseller Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. His research with over 60,000 people found that anyone can develop new habits, however ambitious, if they start with small steps. Based on that work and other research, how does taking small steps work in real life?
Every day you have dozens of thoughts, some you create and many that pop into your mind. Then, for each thought, you make a choice.
If it’s a positive thought, do you encourage it and think about how to put it into action? If it’s a negative thought, do you discourage it and take it captive versus letting it control you? Or do you not consider your thoughts at all and allow them to invisibly influence what you do?
Why is this so important? Because how you handle your thoughts and the steps you take each day dictate much of your life experience.
Your thoughts lead to choices you make either intentionally or unconsciously. Each choice is a step you take in a positive or negative direction. These steps, when repeated, create habits in your thinking and behavior. Those habits become much of who you are in terms of how other people perceive you, how you see yourself, and the results you achieve in your relationships and in life.
Thoughts lead to Choices that build Habits that form Character that shapes your Life.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to learn and adapt throughout life. Your brain is made up of millions of neural connections that are formed from your thought patterns. These neuron pathways change over time, and you literally rewire your brain based on your thoughts.
Why pay much attention to neuroplasticity? Because that medical and psychological reality can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Aristotle said, “You are what you repeatedly do” which indicates how our character flows from our habits, choices, and actions. Ralph Waldo Emerson took this chain reaction further upstream to include our thoughts when he said, “You are what you think all day long.”
Which leads to our Big Idea: “We can improve our lives one small step at a time,” and we can improve our relationships the same way.
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Small Steps That Create Positive Habits
Things change for the better as we commit: “I will take small steps to make good relationship choices.” Improving your life is a process, so focus on progress rather than perfection and enjoy the journey. As you go along, remember you are building habits one decision at a time.
Here are 10 examples of good relationship choices you can make each day and how you can use them to create positive habits:
- Choose to be pleasant – Consciously or unconsciously, you choose your mindset each day. If you adopt a negative perspective, you will not relate to others as well. If you choose a positive mindset, the opposite will happen. Try it and you may be amazed by the results.
- Smile and say hello – This choice is so simple and easy you can do it dozens of times a day. Each person you encounter, look them in the eye, smile, and say hello. Even if you “fake it till you make it” for a while, it will improve both your mood and your relationships.
- Give out invitations – Reach out to at least 3 people per week. Ask them to lunch or coffee, call to catch up, or text to say hello.
- Accept most invitations – As much as possible say “yes” to: “Got a minute? Can you talk? Want to get together sometime?”
- Manage your thoughts – Actively and repeatedly discourage negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. For example, replace ideas about yourself such as “I’m stupid or hopeless” with affirmations like “I’m who I’m supposed to be, and I am special.” Change thoughts about others such as “Nobody likes me” to positive beliefs like “If I’m pleasant to them, it will improve their day.”
- Focus on your choices – We often make choices emotionally, impulsively, or compulsively. Instead, each time, do these 3 things: Pause versus reacting automatically; Evaluate how you feel and what you should do; and Choose to make the best decision for the long run.
- Get big choices right – Repeatedly choose kindness, empathy, and forgiveness to improve both your well-being and your relationships.
- Avoid bad choices – We all have feelings and emotions, but it’s your choice what you do with them. Here are things NOT to do: assume how others feel about you, over-react to small things, dwell on being hurt, hold onto resentments, feed your anger, or refuse to forgive.
- Take inventory – Each evening, consider how you handled your relationship choices that day. For things you didn’t do well, commit to do better and give yourself grace. For things you did well, feel content about those choices and happy that you can impact others positively.
- Build good habits – Remember, “You are what you repeatedly do.” Keep taking the next right steps one at a time to build good habits.
This step of Progress helps you improve your relationships and your life by building the right habits. The way to do that is to keep taking one small step at a time by making good relationship choices. If you do, you won’t look back on your life in regret, and you’ll sleep better at night.
“Your habits will determine your future.” (Jack Canfield)
Next Right Steps: As your next step, read the final article in this series on: “Relationships Happen When We Focus on Others.”
