Building Healthy Relationships with a Positive Attitude

People have deep subconscious needs, and the deepest need of all, the core emotional need of the human being, is for self-esteem. It is to maintain healthy relationships of mutual respect. The deepest need is to feel important.

An important way of satisfying a deep subconscious need for self-esteem and personal value is acceptance.

Healthy Relationships and Self-Esteem

Sociologists say that lack of acceptance, or rejection from individuals or groups, is the main cause for many problems with disaffected groups in our society. Much of the antisocial behaviors of these groups is aimed at somehow gaining the acceptance of people who they feel do not accept them currently and to gain healthy relationships.

Free Assessment: The Confidence Factor –by Brian Tracy

In healthy relationships, this is what everyone is seeking. Everyone wants to be liked and accepted just the way they are.

If all you did was to continually express unconditional acceptance to each person you meet, both at home and at your workplace, you would soon be one of the most popular in your world.  And how do you express unconditional acceptance? Simple. It’s to wear a smile.

Smiling at an audience during speeches or presentations is also a useful speaking tip I give to all my students.

Wear a Smile

This next tip is just as important as setting smart goals to maintain progress toward creating a happy life.

Did you know it takes twelve muscles to smile and 113 muscles to frown?

When you smile at another person, a warm, genuine smile, you tell that other person that he or she is attractive, pleasant, likeable, safe and secure in your estimation. A single smile is so powerful that it can often transform a person with low self-esteem, jolting them from negativity to a person with a positive attitude.

Smiles are so powerful that many long-term marriages and healthy relationships have begun with a single smile shared across a room. You’ve heard people say that, “When our eyes met, we both knew that we were meant for each other.”

Each morning, when you come to work, “do the rounds.” Go to each person on your team and smile at them.  Ask them how they are. Take a few moments to listen patiently and smile while they tell you what they are doing and how they are feeling. As you go from person to person, like a lamp lighter going from lamp to lamp, they will light up and smile themselves, feeling happy about being at work. When you go around and smile at people, it is very much like stepping on the accelerator of their potential and igniting positive thinking and positive attitude wherever you go. They start to perform at a higher level because their self-esteem has risen.

The Big Payoff

There is a big payoff for smiling at people.

When you smile at another person, the physical action releases endorphins in your brain. Endorphins are called nature’s “happy drug.” They make you feel happy and raise your self-esteem. When you smile, you feel and act in a more personable way to everyone around you and exude a feeling of positive attitude. The most popular and influential people in most situations are people who genuinely smile at others when they meet them and greet them.

Smiling is one of the techniques used to promote cooperation in the workplace. And the ability to encourage cooperation amongst teammates is an important leadership quality of business leaders in the 21st century.

Every time you smile, you not only make other people feel better about themselves, but you raise your self-esteem, increase your level of positive attitude and feel better about yourself as well. You will start to build healthy relationships all around you. All it takes is the deliberate decision by you to smile at the people around you, and to express to them that you are genuinely happy to see them. The opposite of smiling is being negative or passive. It is walking around the office with a glum or a negative look on your face.  Since everyone takes everything personally, if you are negative for any reason, each of your staff members wonders if it is something that they have done personally that has made you happy. They become preoccupied with your mood. They slow down their work and their creativity comes to a halt. If you are negative for any period of time, they start to talk about it and worry about their jobs. Even if you are negative because you have an abscessed tooth that is causing you pain and discomfort, because other people do not know this, they will assume that they have done something wrong that has displeased you.

If you need a motivational boost then check out my inspirational quotes post, it’s sure to put a smile on your face during your trek to success.

Maintain a Positive Attitude

From this day onward, decide that you are going to smile at each person in your department each morning when you go in. Walk around and greet them and ask them how they are doing.  Treat them as if they were working for free and their coming to work was purely voluntary. Treat them as if you owe them money and you are behind on the payments. Treat them as if their work were essential to your success in doing your work, which it is.

Did you enjoy this article on how to raise your self-esteem and the self-esteem of others by smiling? If you have any other tips on how to build healthy relationships and maintain a positive attitude about life, please feel free to share and comment below!

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