How To Improve Your Relationships With One Text a Day
Humans are inherently social creatures. We rely on each other to teach us how to think and behave. We require social connection in order to lead fully fulfilled lives.
We all have a plethora of people in our lives, but how many of them can you really say you have a good, healthy relationship with?
Healthy relationships involve honesty, trust, respect and open communication. Both participants are respective of the other’s boundaries.
You can build these relationships by simply reaching out to one person in your contact list every day.
The problem with reaching out is you don’t always know what to say or are at a loss on how to get a conversation going. You can’t get the conversation past surface level. Most of your conversations look like this:
“Hey, how are you!”
“Good, you?”
“Good, thanks.”
And that’s it. There is no more to the conversation and it’s possibly done more harm than good. Because in your attempt to connect, you feel like you were shot down and now you feel more lonely than before.
You can rectify this by changing your approach. Ask different questions. Ask open ended questions.
Instead of asking someone how they are, ask ‘What was your day like?’ or ‘What was the best part of your day?’ The point of reaching out to somebody is to engage them in conversation. The best way to do this is to ask questions.
Here are some other jumping off questions you could try:
What are you most looking forward to right now?
What’s an interest you have that most people don’t know about?
Tell me about a time you were excited by something.
What’s an interesting thing you learned lately?
What are you most passionate about?
What’s something you’re really into right now?
What problem do you wish you could solve?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
The list goes on and on. The first question you ask is a good place to start because it can prompt a conversation. Now the power is in the follow up.
Don’t just ask a question and then ghost them because you don’t know how to respond. There are two good approaches to responding — validating and follow up questions.
Validation is important because it shows you understand and empathize with the other person. It affirms that the person’s feelings, opinions, and experiences are worthwhile and valid. This looks like ‘that does sound hard,’ ‘wow, that’s so interesting,’ ‘tell me more about this.’ It’s important to make people feel seen and heard and validation is the key to doing so.
Follow up questions are just as valuable. It shows that you’re interested in what the other person has to say and you want to know more about them. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. Some people might be shy to do so because they feel like the interest is fake, but if you keep pursuing chances are you will build a better relationship.
Ask them how they feel about their situation or what they want to do. If you’re confused about something, ask them to clarify. This shows that you’re paying attention and genuinely want to know more.
Now that you know what to do, let’s talk about implementing it.
You have contacts in your phone. Pick one person you want to know more about and send them a question. Ask them about their week. Ask them to elaborate. Make sure to follow up.
If they’re asking you questions back, this is a good thing. Answer them, but make sure you respond to what they were saying. It’s okay to send double texts. If they don’t respond right away, don’t panic. They might just be busy.
If you want, you can head the conversation up with something along the lines of, “You have some free time to talk?” That way you can keep a fluid conversation without feeling like it’s taking forever to respond.
Every day, you can try this with a new person. If you bombed at your attempts the first day, nobody knows and you can try again with someone completely different.
If you keep doing this, then slowly your relationships will start to get deeper. After all, that’s what we’re all after, right?
Set a schedule for who you’re going to talk to and when. You and the person could plan a time every week to catch up, whether it’s in person or virtual.
I video chat with one of my friends every Monday at 3:00 pm. Truth be told, I don’t always want to, but I almost always feel better afterwards.
The key is to not overcommit yourself. Don’t commit to having an hour-long conversation. You can talk for five or ten minutes and have a perfectly good conversation, without overstimulating yourself.
Just commit to sending one text to one person and see where the conversation takes you. Maybe you’ll establish a good rapport and start an ongoing text chain. You’ll never know if you don’t try.
