Building Intentional Relationships

For thousands of years humans didn’t need to intentionally build relationships. We were forced to build relationships with those around us in order to survive. Today, we don’t need to have good relationships with our neighbors because we have insurance. And now more and more people are leaving traditional communities such as corporations and schools that force us to engage with others.

Today, the necessity for people to learn the skill of building intentional relationships is growing. The number of friends people report to have in their lives has dropped precipitously since 1990. An increasing number of people have been leaving the institutions that previously forced us to engage with others and build relationships whether that is families leaving the traditional education system, or adults working virtually or starting their own businesses.

Because of this, the need for building intentional relationships is strong, but most people don’t know how. In this project I will be covering why it is necessary and how to develop them.

Why Intentional Relationship Building Is Necessary

Building relationships intentionally is scary. You are opening yourself up for rejection, and that can hurt. However, as detailed in this “Friend Rejection Game”, it’s just a game of probabilities. A certain percentage of people will reject you. At the same time, a certain percentage will be excited to connect and collaborate with you! Don’t let fear of rejection prevent you from finding those that uniquely appreciate you!

Diversification

While many already have at least a few friends, this does not diminish the value of building intentional relationships at all. A mental model one can use for decision making is the difference between positive and negative skew decisions.

Negative skew opportunities have a capped upside meaning that the possibility of how good an outcome could be is very limited. For example, climbing an extremely dangerous cliff face. The best case scenario is that you are unharmed, but the worst case scenario is quite dire indeed.

However, positive skew opportunities have limited downside and high potential for upside. Building intentional relationships is a great example for this. The worst case scenario is that somebody doesn’t end up becoming your friend which has little to no impact on you since that’s how you started off in the first place. The best case scenario is you discover that they are someone that you love engaging with and make your life way better!

By continuously meeting new people you can diversify the number of people that you engage with which will also allow you to handle rejections more easily. This will allow you to not only have more relationships but increase your ability to grow the number of your relationships!

Exposure to Ideas

Engaging with new people is a great way to expose yourself to new ideas! There are certain concepts, ideas and subjects you may be unaware even exist. You want to be aware that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. This can be scary to confront, but is important to understand so you can engage in new activities like building relationships that expose you to new ideas and information!

Knowing Yourself

It’s very hard to understand yourself, but even harder if you don’t engage with lots of different kinds of people. Personality traits, natural tendencies, strengths and weaknesses are all relative. If you haven’t engaged with many different kinds of people it will be very hard to understand your strengths relative to others.

Revitalization

In this article I define a new term to describe new experiences that push you out of your comfort zone that allow you break from your routine and reevaluate your goals: revitalization. Meeting new people is one of the best revitalizing experiences that doesn’t require much preparation as an experience such as taking a month long trip to India.

Knowing How to Build Relationships

Building relationships don’t happen from coincidence or some magical “connection” between two people. There is a simple formula to building relationships with others that will help you in every area of your life. It is easy to get others to like you by following simple rules, many of which are outlined in the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

By learning and utilizing these strategies you can meet lots of people to then hone in on those that you really want to engage with. The purpose of intentionally building relationships is not to continuously invest in every relationship, but to spend a tiny amount of time and energy to see if they are someone that would be a good match for your given what you are looking for! The great thing about Positive Skew opportunities is that the downside is limited, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t plant the seed wherever possible to see which opportunities grow.

How to Build Intentional Relationships

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