It’s important to prioritize your health and wellbeing. One of the most effective ways to do this is by establishing strong, healthy relationships with yourself and other people in your life.

Your relationship with yourself is arguably the most important existing connection. Learning to always love yourself and pump positivity into your mind will enhance the other areas of your life.

Similarly, your relationship with others is significant, having the ability to create more opportunities for both sides to grow and develop together.

These two types of relationships intertwine. Loving yourself will make it easier to love others. And if you love others, you’re building a foundation that can be used to invest the same love in yourself.

According to Northwestern Medicine, there are five crucial benefits to establishing healthy relationships in your life:

1. Less stress
2. Better healing
3. Healthier behavior
4. Greater sense of purpose
5. Longer life

If you’re able to manufacture good relationships and reap some of these benefits, your life will be positively impacted.

Putting in the effort – with yourself and with others – is essential in order to make this a reality.

Relationship with Yourself

The way you view yourself, treat yourself and talk to yourself will serve as a blueprint to the type of life you will live.

If you treat yourself poorly and talk down on yourself, it will snowball into your performance capabilities in life.

On the contrary, refraining from disrespecting yourself, and instead focusing on positive self-talk, will make you limitless.

When people think of relationships, they often think of a significant other or a friendship. Rarely does your own state of being come into thought.

The fact is, you need a solid relationship with yourself in order to maintain relationships with others.

“You have to love yourself before you can love someone else,” is a popular saying. And there’s a lot of truth to it.

Sure, you can show love to others while shaming your own self, but in the long run, it won’t be sustainable, as your mind will become totally consumed with the negative thoughts stemming from the result.

Therefore, start with learning how to love yourself. You will always have relationships with others – parents, family, friends, significant others and more. Some of them will thrive and last forever and some will fizzle out at some point.

But your relationship with yourself is ongoing and infinite. You will always spend the most time with yourself.

A few ways to show love to yourself include practicing healthy habits. Treat your mind to meditation, positive reflection and reading. Treat your body to exercise, healthy eating and sufficient sleep.

In addition, never be too hard on yourself during the bad times. It’s easy to be happy when you string together a few good days. But when the rough waters hit, it’s important to stay level and remain upbeat about the future.

In general, self-criticism mixed with motivation and challenge can be beneficial. The key is making sure it’s done in a positive, respectful tone so you don’t spark negative emotions.

Express supreme confidence and prioritize your personal wellbeing and relationship with your mind and body.

Love yourself.

Relationship with Others

The love you give to others and receive back plays a big role in your human emotions.

People that have loving relationships with their family, friends and others will generally live a more fulfilling life.

Sometimes, relationships are formed and prolonged naturally, and other times it takes some effort from both parties.

Let the natural ones flow, but make sure to put forth the effort towards making it work with the others, too, as long as they’re healthy relationships. It’s quality over quantity. But if you can achieve many relationships filled with quality, you will be well off.

Given the stress of everyday life, it can prove difficult to keep up on every relationship we have in life. Specifically, the ability to see everybody that we consider friend or family at a high rate is likely unrealistic.

Maintaining relationships can be as simple as a text or FaceTime to check up on the other person and keep that constant line of communication. There will come a time that allows you to see that person. But in that moment, this can be sufficient.

If you let a relationship go long enough without any communication, it will begin to fizzle out.

Sometimes, it’s good to reflect on whether or not some people are worth keeping around in our lives. But if that question doesn’t arise for certain people, don’t allow it to get to this point.

Additionally, it’s beneficial to continue establishing relationships as you go throughout life. Similar to the business world, networking and connecting with other people can affect your life in that moment as well as later on.

You never know what an interaction with another person will bring you. The potential opportunities are endless.

Give yourself the chance to experience this by engaging in the communication necessary to form relationships with other people. Also, put in the work to hang onto your current relationships that strive to make you a better person.

The Wrap Up

With most of the focus being placed on the craziness that life brings, the importance of relationships often gets lost in the shuffle.

Whether it’s with yourself or other people in your life, make sure you establish a solid base of relationships that build you up and challenge you to become a better person.

Doing this internally with yourself can produce amazing results and lead you down a road to prosperity.

Incorporating others into your journey will make things even better, giving you additional resources that can coexist with your own progress.

It also works both ways. You will add value to the person on the other side of the relationship and impact their life.

So, the next time you feel defeated and stuck, or the next time you realize you haven’t talked to a friend or family member in a while, make a change. Take a step towards improving and maintaining all relationships in your life so you can truly flourish.

“We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” – Joyce Meyer