HAPPINESS IN RELATIONSHIPS

People can cultivate happier relationships by putting more effort and time into it as a pair. A pair can consist of a friendship or a romantic couple. Being able to find your core self and knowing who you are. Taking the time to cultivate a relationship, and knowing rather then validating

“The core self compromises our deepest and most stable characteristics- our character.” Our core self is what we are deep inside, it makes us who we are today and who we will be in the future. A person as an individual should know what components make up who they are. Tal Ben-Shahar gives us an example of a person who has certain characteristics but wants to do an intervention program for underprivileged. The fact that this person wants to do this intervention and how she acts shows her core self, doing something that comes from within taking the good and the bad outcomes with it. It is important to know where you stand as a person in order to let other people come in.

Already established who you are, now you can start picking and choosing the people you want in your life. In the book happier by Tal Ben-Shahar he writes about two different ways people choose there partners, this is called cultivating over finding. Cultivating entails the person to take their time to really find out about their partner. Finding someone is assuming you know who they are without taking the time to reassure yourself.  Cultivating doesn't only have to be with your romantic partners, the best friendships are cultivated with time. I found my best friend Kimberly on my way to school, she was just a random girl that would catch the same bus as I. As the days passed by we started to spend more time with each other, goes to figure that she was the opposite as me. Kimberly use to love to listen to rap and I use to love to listen to salsa, little by little I got use to listing to rap and I even taught her how to dance salsa. Being with Kimberly for so many years I learned that having someone who was the opposite of you came to an advantage, she saw situations in a different perspective and would help me over come it. When you start to build a relationship you see the good and embrace, take the bad make try to make the best out of it. When you just find someone you really don’t learn there inner self, you just see what they want you to see and run with it. Finding someone can have its downsides you can get emotionally attach and find out that they aren't who you thought they were. 

Ed Diener and Martin Seligman did a study on “happy people” and compared them to less happy people, the one difference was the way they would use their time. To them it was important to spend quality time with there loved ones. Spending time with someone can bring closer together and figuring out who they are. The more time you spend with someone the more you learn about them, allowing you to enjoy those moments and bring you to a happy moment. A lot of times the holidays like thanksgiving and new years are usually related to happiness, because its when families get closer together. I love spending time with my family and friends, I learned to value them for the moments they brought in my life. The one memory that stands out to me the  most was when John, Andy, Kimberly and I spend a weekend in Long Island. We didn’t want your typical party place we wanted to experience something new, we spend the whole weekend in the beach. In those two days we learned about one another and even things about ourselves. From that day forward our bond was inseparable, we formed a bond that to this day we still have even if one is missing. The memories you build spending time with each other is something that can never be erased.

So many people can walk in and out of our lives but there are those that stay through thick and thin and these people stand out in our hearts. Doing a small gesture to them just shows them how much we are thankful to have them in our lives. A thank you letter can be such a strong piece of paper that people tend to over look. Taking the time to do something for someone, or even just writing a thank you letter can make them feel like what they offer to the table is being recognized. A lot of people might think “Well I keep them around isn’t that a sign that there doing a good job?”, but wouldn’t you , yourself like someone to recognize the effort and time you put into a relationship. 

Happiness in relationships consist of two people but have you put enough effort to keep them. Knowing who you are, picking the right relationships, making them stronger and thanking them for it helps the process of being happy. Individuals who don’t realize how important and valuable people can be will never reach their full happiness.