Relationship Mindfulness

Our success, individually and collectively, is dependent upon relationships. The stronger and more healthy the relationships, the stronger the family, business, organization, neighborhood, community.....
Just one person can cause a substantial drag for everyone around them. Most of us can recall a workplace where one person wasn't pulling their weight or was constantly creating trouble and it affected everyone around them. Or that one person in the organization who consistently threw bombs to disrupt things or causing arguments among the group. Or that one family member who is constantly angry about something or at someone.
How we treat others matters. It matters most when there are problems to be solved or work to be done. There are always going to times when we see issues that need resolved. There are going to be times when we believe someone else is not pulling their weight. We're going to see wrong doing that need corrected. How we address it matters. We first need to be mindful of the relationship and the long lasting effect.
The difficult times are opportunities to build long term, positive relationships with long lasting success. Every time we choose to throw a bomb to try to fix it, we damage the relationship. We make it harder to achieve long term success. Often, the person on the receiving end throws a bomb back and the damage escalates. Nothing is solved.
At the heart of "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is relationship mindfulness. It doesn't mean we need to agree about everything. It means we need to be respectful in all we do and say. Even if we believe the other person is wrong, we need to ask ourselves how we would want to be addressed if we were the one in the wrong. And we have all been wrong.
Relationship mindfulness is the single most important ingredient to success. We need to ask ourselves how what we are saying or doing affects everyone around us. Is it building a stronger relationship or damaging one? It doesn't mean we always tell a person what they want to hear or fail to listen to things we may not want to hear. We may even need to keep a distance from some who are obviously bomb throwers. We just don't throw bombs back and we don't burn the bridges that can lead to mutual understanding in the long run.