Some great music - Joshua Bell

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APPRECIATE YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Who and what you are today is largely a result of the myriad experiences you have had in the journey of life and the skills you have picked up along the way.

If you think of your life as a building, in the very early years a foundation was laid. There is, of course, the ongoing debate about whether our lives are genetically determined or whether our experiences during life play a larger role in determining who we become. There is ample evidence on either side of that “nature or nurture” debate to suggest that it is a combination of both.

However the foundation was laid, most of our life has been spent building on it. The choices we have made, the experiences we have had and the skills we have acquired are the structure which rises from the foundation. And what that structure looks like depends on what we have put into it. The structure of our lives as it stands at the moment is what we have to hand to continue building. In other words, we can only build on what is already there (and, if we so choose, we can demolish parts of what is already there).

As we look toward the building we intend doing in the future, it is best if we spend time looking at what is already there, become aware of what we have to build on and what it contains. In the structure that already stands we can find what we can use to build more effectively in the future.

Some years ago I stayed in a quaint bed and breakfast in Colesberg. The rooms had been built into what used to be the horse stables. Working from what was to hand, the existing structure, its shape and size, the designer had been able to model very comfortable rooms which still reminded the guests of the stables but which were, of course, far more luxurious than the horses had ever experienced.

That is how we continue to build our lives. We look at what is there, the combination of our skills and experiences standing on the foundation. Even if what is there doesn’t look that attractive we can still use it to develop into something even better. The bottom line is that we have to understand what is already there; we have to be aware of our skills and experiences.

If we don’t develop an appreciation of the raw material we have to hand, in other words the lives we have lived so far, we overlook and waste so many potential building blocks for the future. Keeping a record of your experiences and developing a knowledge and appreciation of your skills enables you to know what you can use as you continue to build your life. Each day you live and build is not disconnected from the days which have gone before. The skill is to learn to draw on what has gone before in order to build the future.

To develop a memory bank of your experiences, try keeping a journal. This can be written but can be a simple as taking photographs of things you would like to remember (yes, those holiday snaps are a record of your life), preserving them and revisiting them. Tell stories about your experiences, especially to the younger members of your family, so that your experience helps build their experience. Then develop a list of the skills which you have. Don’t short change yourself here. Brainstorm extensively about what you can do, what you know and how you think. These are all skills.

Once you have developed an appreciation of your life and abilities, you will be able to see more clearly where you should be building in the future.

RELATIONSHIPS NEED TO BE NURTURED

How much time do your spend nurturing your relationships? By nurturing I mean spending focused time with the intent to develop and improve the relationship.

While we are all involved in relationships of some kind, from family members to work colleagues, most of our dealings in those relationships are functional, in other words we use the relationship, rather than nurturing.

We ask people for things, we contact them because we need their co-operation, we want their support or we expect them to complete a task for us. Most of our dealings with work colleagues and clients centre around quick telephone calls or terse emails to pass on information or make a request. Even the longer contacts with these people, such as business lunches, sales calls and team meetings, are designed to get something out of the relationship rather than develop and deepen the relationship significantly.

And yet relationships are the building blocks not only of any society but also of any individual. They are one of the pillars on which our lives are built. We cannot develop as individuals in isolation. We need the giving and receiving found in relationships, the stimulus of competing ideas, the battles which lead to compromise, the knowledge that we are of value to others and the ability to build up other people in order to achieve a well developed life.

We need other people in order to grow, and other people need us. Relationships are vital and without them we implode in on ourselves, become self-centred, lose our sense of reality and blunt our creative edge. It makes sense, therefore, to spend significant time and intent nurturing relationships.

The way in which we treat relationships, as a means to achieving our ends, damages one of the most vital components of life. Reducing them to one minute phone calls, impersonal emails and mass produced SMS’s allows us to believe we are relating while we are doing nothing more than expressing our own requirements. In fact, in an age of information when we are bombarded with constant communication, we are more likely to become isolated in order to protect ourselves rather than develop true relationships.

Nurturing relationships requires that we pay attention to the give and take of a relationship. We need to ask ourselves what we are giving the other person in the relationship as well as be aware of what we receive from the relationship. Since relationships are vital to our functioning well as human beings we need to be aware of our significant relationships and spend time developing them.

Here are a few questions which might help you identify a few of your significant relationships:

Who do you turn to as a “sounding board” when you need to think through issues?

Who is the person you feel most at home with even when you are not communicating?

Who is the person who accepts you unconditionally?

Who do you most enjoy encouraging and seeing develop?

Who believes in your abilities and challenges you to greater heights?

If you have listed a name against each of these questions, these are the most significant relationships which you need in order to have a fulfilled life. And some of them are relationships with people who need you in order to develop their own lives. They are just some of the relationships which you need to spend time and nurture. Develop them by doing more than simply passing on information and asking for things in communications. Work on finding out more about what makes those people fell more alive, become aware of their hopes and aspirations. Ensure that your dealings with these people are not reduced to essential telephone calls, brief emails and the passing and receiving of information. And above all, when you are dealing with these people, check that you are not simply charming them or making them feel needed in order to get something out of them, but that you are genuinely nurturing that relationship for the sake of the relationship itself.