Making Relationships Easier

From the recently released “Together: Kindness in Everyday Relationships” (2022 Jack Ricchiuto, Nuance Works)

Easy matters

The pandemic caused many of us to rethink what’s important to us. What’s important is what we enjoy. Our everyday relationships have an outsize influence on the quality of our lives. They directly impact how much energy we have, how emotionally resilient we are, and all of our health indicators. Knowing this, we would want to make our relationships as enjoyable as possible.

We enjoy what we make easy rather than work. Easy is intrinsically meaningful and satisfying. Just as we have learned to make our everyday relationships work, we can also learn to make them easier. Easy is a choice.

The essence of relationships are conversations. The quality of our conversations shapes the quality of our relationships. It is no coincidence that we enjoy relationships in which our conversations are enjoyable and struggle in relationships in which our conversations are struggles. Making relationships easier means making our conversations easier.

Easy and work

Whether conversations are easier or work is all about the scope of our conversational options. Conversations options are what we can notice, talk, and ask about when we’re together. The more…