Relational Intelligence: The People Skills You Need for the Life of Purpose You Want

by Dharius Daniels

This is a problem that Stephen Covey says is incredibly damaging to our relationships. He writes, “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say no to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger yes burning inside. The enemy of the best is often the good.”

Other people, people we love, can become casualties of the decisions we make. They can either be burdened by our decisions or blessed by them.

In other words, we can easily find ourselves so busy judging our emotions that we don’t actually listen to them. I’ve personally adopted the following axiom for my life: What I feel is real, even if it isn’t right. I’ve made a decision to pay attention to how I feel, admit what I feel, and own how I feel before I judge what I feel.

The same thing that can happen when we don’t take time to evaluate what’s happening in our emotional life. If we find ourselves spinning out of control, heading in a downward trajectory, going to deep, dark places, it’s probably because we have not stilled ourselves to think about what is happening. When a person is unwilling or unable to adequately assess the path and the direction they’re going, they’re going to end up crashing at some point. Most of all, when we don’t take a moment to evaluate our relationships, we assume they belong in a category of our life that they don’t and end up damaging them, us, or often both.

Some people aren’t bad people; they’re just bad for you.

We must be so committed to the best interests of both parties—ourselves and the other person—that if our realignment of the relationship creates a relationship they no longer want, we must respect their choices the same way we want them to respect ours.