Today I want to talk to you about how you relate to other people. My personal belief is that we can’t really understand who we are as people as individual. I don't think that you can really form an identity about who you are as an individual until you relate to other people. You are who you are as a result of the relationships you have. In fact, I believe that human relationships are the most important thing you have. You see, because we are a social species, we cannot exist without relationships. A human without any relationships to other people will decay and die. In fact, a human individual cannot make sense of himself and his world without having a way to relate to others. So human relationships are essential for human survival but in today's world, we are so cut off from that idea. Our relationships are superficial. We have, generally speaking, we’ve learned to treat each and everyone else as a commodity. We’ve learned to use other people as a means to get ourself further ahead in the world for our own benefit — we use other people. For better or for worse. So the trend now seems to be that you should do whatever you can to get what you can from someone else instead of looking to make a contribution or to serve other people… the best way you know how. You see, that’s how humans are really wired, as individuals within a larger community. An individual wired to serve others in his community for the benefit and protection of the community. Being in service to others is the optimal way to contribute your unique gift to the world. Instead of using other people as a means to get what you want, try building RELATIONSHIPS; authentic relationships with other people. But nowadays we steer clear of other people, because we’ve learned to put up a wall; because we have been socially conditioned not to talk to strangers. But whatever wall we put up is really a reflection of a form of fear, and the wall is a sort of defense against that fear - and we project that fear on to other people. What we fear in ourselves, we perceive in others because it really is a reflection of who we have become as individuals and really as a society in general, and as we build this wall to protect ourselves from other people, we start to judge them. The wall is built out of our judgements of other people. Get out of the habit of judging people for the way they appear to be. People appear the way they appear to be because of various defense mechanisms they've adopted over the course of their lives. If you look past their initial appearance, you can get down into who they really are and find out what you can offer them. Instead of judging people based on what you perceive as a negative first impression. Get into the habit of finding something positive about them and focus on that instead of looking for some reason to discard them because they don’t seem to be of any use to you. Seek first to understand. Once you start trying to understand people, and they realize you are making an attempt, their whole world will open up to you. And that’s the key to creating strong relationships.
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