Building Relationships, Commitment and Love - Starting With J

We continue our series on how to build interpersonal relationships, whether with family, coworkers, friends, or that special someone. Commitment and love are important to all of us; they are worth fighting for; they are worth working for. You also should know that in spite of many promises there is no secret for success, no checklist of things to do, and just as importantly no checklist of things not to do. But we do have suggestions, now continuing with the letter J. The focus is on join, jolly, and judicious.

J is for join. Join in. Don’t cut yourself off from everyone. Jump on in, the water’s fine. And if the water or the work environment isn’t fine, you can help improve the situation, but only if you are actually in there. You can’t get too much done by shouting or bickering from the sidelines. Once you get to be known as a builder, people will take your criticisms more seriously. And when you need something they will be more likely to join you.

J is for jolly. Ho Ho Ho. There is something about a good mood that can be infectious. Who wants to spend their time with Minnie the Moper or Willie the Whiner when Jolly Jimbo is just around the corner? And because people like being with him Jimbo is likely to remain jolly. Get the ball rolling. Put on a jolly face.

J is for judicious. Be careful. Don’t go off on a bender or even on a tangent. Look at things carefully and cautiously. The only thing that’s half-baked that many people, but not yours truly, like is Ben and Jerry ice cream with cookie dough. I’ve got a feeling based on experience that if you attack one of those little cartons injudiciously your stomach will remind you of the importance of acting judiciously. But being judicious is hardly limited to ice cream. Now that we live in the age of instant e-mail the need to be judicious has increased immeasurably. One untimely click on the send button can transform your temporary fuming into a permanent record of your injudiciousity (not that there is such a word). Whoever coined the phrase: Act in haste, repent at leisure must have known about many companies’ policy of keeping e-mails until the cows come home. It is lucky for us that these companies often employ retrieval techniques that are Anti-Deluvian. Don’t rely on the incompetence of others: save yourself a problem, be judicious even if your computer is down.