Others
Don Miguel Ruiz fit all of human relationships into four agreements, and they work. But I came up with my own short version first:
My rules: don’t lie, don’t deal with boors, and don’t be one yourself.
That covers most of it. The four agreements just fill in the details.
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. Words build reality, so stand behind every one. And remember that bad is stronger than good: a careless line is remembered for a lifetime. If you have to say something hard, add something good to it.
We speak, we don’t chatter. And our straight talk is the straightest there is.
The second is not to take anything personally. Whatever others do says something about them. No one can offend you: the offense is something you pick up and carry yourself.
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. — Marcus Aurelius
The third is not to make assumptions. Don’t fill the gaps with guesses; ask, and speak clearly. Conflict is often two people fighting over something neither of them said.
Don’t anticipate life; meet it.
And the fourth is to always do your best. It covers the other three.
Don’t be the irritation
Getting along with people is largely a matter of not irritating them: not adding friction, not making someone’s day heavier because you walked into it. A therapist once named five habits worth dropping. The first is making every conversation about yourself: when every story circles back to you, people stop feeling heard, even if you only meant to relate. The second is getting defensive: if you meet every piece of feedback with an excuse or an argument, people stop being honest with you, and sometimes criticism is someone trying to save the relationship. The third is pressing on after an apology: if a sincere apology never ends the quarrel, people learn that owning a mistake gets them nothing, and they stop owning them. The fourth is constant complaining: venting is fine, but if every conversation with you runs on negativity, people start to associate you with exhaustion. And the fifth is topping someone’s pain with your own: when a person opens up and you jump straight to how you had it worse, they feel erased. All they wanted was to be heard.
You don’t have to win over the room. It’s enough not to be what the room needs to recover from.
Trust first
My default is open. You already have my trust; distrust is what you’d have to earn.
Most people run it the other way: they guard everything, make others prove their worth, and only then, maybe, lower the shield. That’s exhausting, and it keeps the good people away too.
Drop the armor and trust first. The few who abuse it weed themselves out fast, and everyone else gets to meet the real you.
Hire people larger than you
Some people put others down to look bigger next to them. Nature doesn’t work that way: whatever you push away comes back at you.
I hired people smarter than me. If the team doesn’t make it, everything lands on me, so what would be the point of hiring weaker people? Hire people larger than you, and they’ll pull you up to their level.
Givers and takers
The richer people get, the clearer it becomes to them that money was never the point.
Billionaires don’t need more money. Somebody with $100 million doesn’t need more money. A Fortune 500 CEO doesn’t need more money. They want relationships. It’s not about what you get, but what you have to give.
Any relationship can be read with one simple scheme:
A giver and a giver is exotic. A giver and a taker is neurotic. A taker and a taker is psychotic. Most people have taker relationships.
So choose who you stand with. The people around you set your level.
Surround yourself with givers, get the toxicity out of your life, and your whole frequency rises. The opposite is also true. If you hang around nine broke people, you’ll be the tenth.
Your company shapes more than your mood. Over time, the voices around you become the voices in your head — which is exactly where we’re going next.