StyleISSUE

August 3 to 9 2014 THE STANDARD STYLE / INSPIRATION 5
Relational thinking for wholesome Living
Cynthia Hakutangwi
According to psychologist Sidney
Jourard, fully 85 percent of your happiness
in life will come from your personal
relationships. Your interactions
and the time that you spend with the people
you care about will be the major source of
the pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction that
you derive daily. The other 15 percent of your
happiness will come from your accomplishments.
Unfortunately, many people lose sight
of what is truly important, and they allow the
tail to wag the dog. They sacrifice their relationships,
their major source of happiness, to
accomplish more in their careers. But one’s
career, at best, can be only a minor source and
a temporary one, at that of the happiness and
satisfaction that everyone wants.
We are all bio-psychosocial spiritual beings
as mankind. True health in mankind is
more than the absence of disease since wellness
involves health in all dimensions of life.
Considering that the dimensions of life are all
interrelated it becomes inevitable that decisions
in one dimension can positively or negatively
influence the other areas.
Relational needs and wholesome living
From a societal approach, the top ten relational
needs include Acceptance, Affection,
Appreciation, Approval, Attention, Comfort,
Encouragement, Respect, Security and Support.
Wholesome living is a product of pursuing
wholeness in every area of our lives. This
includes giving thought to how our actions
and words may affect the vitality of those
we interact and relate with. Wholeness is an
expression of completeness, entirety, totality,
unity, fullness and comprehensiveness.
What lens are you putting on?
I remember vividly the frenzy that hit our
neighbourhood in the early 80’s when the British
pop music outfit Five Star released their
hit single “All Fall Down” in 1985. It became so
trendy for the teen fans that could afford it to
walk around the neighbourhood with an air of
“coolness” donning a pair of denims and dark
sunglasses (“shades” as they were popularly
known). It was with a glee of delight when I
briefly wore my first pair of “shades” which
I had “borrowed” from my brother one Saturday
afternoon. What an extraordinary perspective
I had of everything that sunny afternoon!
Everything and everyone appeared so
dark and different for those few moments yet
as soon as I removed them from my tiny face,
When things go wrong!
my familiar light-filled world was restored.
In life we may not always be able to control
the variables but we are responsible for the
perspectives we choose to adopt as we interact
with the world and everything around us. On
various levels the world experiences so many
struggles that arise from a self-lens. The selflens
causes individualistic thinking which
is responsible for a limited scope of problem
solving, lack of consideration of the broader
society, incomprehensive solutions and the
dissolution of families, institutions and societies.
Relational thinking is an approach for
transforming societies, organisations and
economic productivity. “It is a paradigm shift,
where we view everything through a relational
lens, speak with relational language, to give
new relational definitions, and use relational
instruments to reach relational goals which
benefit everyone” - Relationships Global (UK).
In the words of the author John Powell, “to
live fully, we must learn to use things and love
people, and not love things and use people.” It
is our perspective therefore which makes the
difference between what we see and what can
be achieved. Putting on the relational lens
means that we learn to see life from the perspective
of relationships, as opposed to seeing
it from the viewpoint of materialism or individualism.
Relational Thinking is Sustainable Thinking
Learning to think relationally is the first step
towards building a more relational world.
Whilst relationships are important in the
lives of individuals they are also key in organisations
on a Strategic, Cultural, Operational
and Personal level. The scope of the
relational lens is not only personal but organisational
and extends to the wider society. For
those in business Relational Proximity is a
real issue to customers. When customers are
not experiencing what ought to be the results
of relational proximity – namely, a feeling of
connectedness, being understood, belonging
and fairness that supports respect, they start
to disengage. The same applies in personal
relationships. With relational proximity we
can build trust, accountability, supportive relationships
and a sense of belonging.
The cumulative effect of adopting Relational
Thinking results in the attainment of
stronger families, more effective organisations,
increased social cohesion in communities,
improved economic productivity and
greater personal and national wellbeing.
Seek to establish healthy relationships
The tragedy of our time has been the tendency
to look at relationships with a “whatdo-I-get-out-of-this?”
perspective. Meaningful
and healthy relationships are developed and
established when all the parties are willing to
give and receive. The benefits of cultivating
good relationships are endless. We can make a
choice today and determine to think relationally
and give of ourselves what we expect to
benefit out of any meaningful relationship by
changing our perspective.
Cynthia is a Communications and Personal
Development Consultant, a Life Coach,
Author, and Strategist. She is the Managing
Consultant of Wholeness Incorporated. “A
passionate and fervent motivational speaker
who speaks at seminars, workshops and conferences
provoking people and institutions to
challenge their comfort zones by imparting
vital knowledge and information which can
help them to live balanced lives and create
trans-generational solutions.” E-mail: cynthia@wholenessincorporated.com
Rufaro Mushonga
“Show me a person who never made
a mistake, and I will show you a person
who never did anything.” This
is a quote from William Rosenberg,
the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, a
successful American global doughnut
and coffee chain.
Are you a perfectionist? It is
important to strive for excellence
in everything that you do, but being
a perfectionist can send you
to an early grave, because perfectionists
struggle to deal with and
bounce back from mistakes they
have made. They live in denial. I
was once a perfectionist, but in my
line of work, I have learnt the hard
way that I will make mistakes, and
some of those mistakes can result
in losing a client, or even losing
your credibility in business. The
bottom line is no one is perfect. We
all make mistakes.
I had a traumatic event experience
a few weeks ago. I planned an
event to near perfection, but I had
service providers to deal with. This
event was out of Harare, and I had
to work within a budget, which
meant using event service provid-
ers that I had not worked with before.
I consulted with people that I
trust who are in the same line of
business as I am, and they referred
me to “reputable” service providers.
Now, you can control your own
actions and behaviour, but you cannot
control the actions and behaviour
of another person, no matter
how hard you may try to. The mistake
that I made was to assume that
basic event etiquette was not something
that I had to educate these
service providers on. I thought
they knew! But they needed intense
micro-managing, and this is something
that I realised when it was
already too late.
“Murphy’s Law” took over. For
those of you who are not familiar
with this law, it says that “anything
that can go wrong will go wrong. “
It was a circus! I was disturbed by
the lack of professionalism that I
had to deal with. In fact, I was traumatised!
As my business partner,
Archie Mhone, always says “You
can plan - and plan to perfection,
but when it comes to this business,
you are only as good as the performance
of your service providers. “
And as I said earlier, it was a circus.
So you’ve made a mistake that resulted
in losing a client that was
key to your bottom line. Or you’ve
encountered a huge obstacle that
has brought your efforts to a halt.
That experience, for a small business
owner can be discouraging
to a point where you want to give
up, or you lose confidence in your
abilities, and sometimes become
fearful that you will make another
mistake. In order to be successful,
more often than not, you have to
experience setbacks. Rather than
crawl into a hole somewhere and
hibernate, confront these setbacks
head on.
Accept your failure or mistake.
Accept that you are far from perfect
– no one is perfect. Accept that you
are going to make more mistakes
as you grow. This doesn’t mean
you should become mediocre – by
all means strive for perfection! But
once you accept that you will make
mistakes, when you do make a mistake,
you will be able to dust yourself
off, take corrective measures,
and move forward. You will be a
better entrepreneur than you were
when you started.
Learn from your mistakes. Use
your failure as an opportunity to
learn, to grow and to improve your
business. Use it as motivation to
succeed. In my line of business,
which is events management, I
work with checklists on a daily
basis. So when I make a mistake,
or overlook something, I add these
mistakes to my checklists, so that
next time, I know I won’t repeat the
same mistake. To take my experiences
even further, over the years I
have found myself with a series of
detailed checklists that I give to my
team whenever we have a job to do.
Sometimes I give these to clients. So
because of my passion for wedding
planning, I recently decided to put
these checklists together and write
a wedding workbook for couples to
use, to help them plan their wedding
without leaving out the small
but essential planning steps that
can make or break their special day.
If I had not made mistakes, I would
not have been inspired to write a
book.
Do not make excuses – take
ownership of your failures. I am
sure many of you can relate to this.
Someone offers you a product or service
at a certain price, and you negotiate
the price downwards, and the
product malfunctions, or the service
is poor. The person who sold it
to you blames it on the fact that you
did not pay enough. Is this a legitimate
reason for failing to deliver?
Or is it just an excuse? Take ownership
of your mistakes, and show
that you have learnt from them.
Admitting to a client that you were
in the wrong is better than making
an excuse, or shifting the blame. A
client will respect you more if you
show integrity.
Get over it fast and bounce back.
Get back on the horse! Time is money,
and there is no time for you to
throw yourself a pity party every
time you fail. The longer you spend
wallowing in your failure, the harder
it will be to get back on the horse.
Don’t give up!
Rufaro Mushonga
rufmush@gmail.com