5 easy ways to start being a relationship legacy leader right now

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​Do you value psychological health and thriving relationships? If you do, then read on. Today I will discuss 5 easy (and impactful) ways to start being a relationship legacy leader right now (1). You might be someone who values strong relationships, but you would love some inspirational ideas where to start. Or maybe you are a manager or CEO who is looking for ways to connect with your employees. You might even be a parent looking for some tips for nurturing a healthy family. 
  
To review or if you are new (welcome!), a relationship legacy leader is:
Someone who is committed to healthy relationships and emotional health for themselves, and also for the people around them. These progressive leaders deeply value thriving and resilient relationships, but are also keenly aware of the relational and emotional impact they have on other people: their partner or spouse, friends, relatives, co-workers, people in their community, kids, etc. These leaders know that in order to collaborate effectively, achieve the greatest growth, and to experience meaning and satisfaction out of life it takes growing our relationship and emotional skills. They intentionally seek out where they can make a difference, and make a conscious choice to do something positive. Whether the impact is on a few people or many, they know it all matters.   

Seriously, whether your impact is mainly with your close family members or you are a CEO of a large company, it’s all important. What you do matters. The small steps and changes you make are significant, and can completely change your life and the lives of those around you. For example, can you think back to something that someone did or said that completely changed your life in a positive way? Was there a close friend, a coach, a mentor, or a teacher that had a positive impact on you? What did they say or do? That person made a personal choice to say or do what they did; it wasn’t an accident. You can make choices like that too.

5 easy ways to start being a relationship legacy leader right now:
1. Learn how to recognize and label different emotions within yourself. How many can you name?

• This article on the Harvard Business Review contains a nice simple list of emotions to start with and memorize (2). 
• Identifying emotions within yourself is one of the first steps to greater self-awareness and greater empathy for the experiences of others. This in turn leads to better leadership and a stronger connection with others.
• Labeling our emotions is important if we want to utilize our emotions as a source of helpful information (harness the power of your emotions—they are telling you something!). This is in contrast to our emotions at the wheel driving our thoughts and behaviors in ways we don't understand, like, or want.
• After you have practiced identifying your own emotions, use that knowledge base to grow your empathy and start working on identifying others' emotions.
• Work with your kids on identifying and naming their own emotions in a kind and curious manner. Just like you are practicing with yourself, help them notice their emotion and come up with some different ideas or solutions. 
• If you are a leader at work, in your community, or in politics, have an open discussion about the emotions occurring on a particular topic. Model exploring emotions. Teach others about labeling their emotions. Encourage others to label and discuss their emotions, and also encourage the use of emotions as one source of helpful information for problem solving.

2. Learn how to recognize and label when you are HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, and tired).

• Like the author of this blog post, I too learned about HALT when I was working in a substance treatment agency (3). I helped my clients learn about HALT and how to address these states, in order to help prevent a relapse.
• HALT doesn't just apply to relapse prevention; I still use this acronym in many situations. I use it when I counsel couples. I also ask myself daily if I'm feeling HALT whenever I am feeling a strong emotion to see if I need to eat, take a break, talk to someone, etc. When my daughter, who is 3, experiences a strong emotion or behavior, I think about HALT as well. It guides my parenting.
• HALT is so useful to know because it is often at the source of strong emotions. It's helpful data: figure out how much is HALT and how much is the situation at hand. The answer will depend on what's going on at the moment, and you can use that information wisely (instead of emotionally reacting). Every time you are experiencing a strong emotion, ask yourself if HALT is driving your feelings and reactions. If so, which specific ones, and how much of each? Are you starving and cranky because you missed lunch? Have you had several long days at work and feeling exhausted, and now you are lashing out at your family? What are the most effective ways that you work through HALT in your own life? Do you have effective ways of handling hunger and tiredness, but not loneliness? If loneliness is a challenge for you, how can you work on that? 
• HALT can be used with children. As adults we need to set appropriate consequences and boundaries, but equally we need to try to get underneath their behavior to discover the reason for it. If we only set consequences and do not try to understand the behavior, our efforts simply will not be as effective. HALT helps us to better support our children's needs and leads to greater empathy and understanding for our kids. It's too easy for us as adults to just get frustrated with our children's behavior—often there's a reason for our child's choices. Identifying if HALT is at play will help you implement more effective parenting solutions instead of just getting angry and blaming/shaming. Are they feeling hungry? Do they need a help labeling and coping with their feelings of anger and frustration? 
• Don't have important conversations when you are feeling HALT. Everything you say will be colored. Self-care first. 
• Finally, HALT can prevent us from lashing out at someone or even assigning incorrect blame to someone. Can you think of a time when you were feeling HALT and it strongly altered the whole way you viewed a situation (or a person)? And then once you addressed HALT you maybe had a more accurate and fair perspective? Now, there are definitely times when we need to talk to someone and hold them accountable for something—I am a strong advocate of constructive communication and giving genuine and meaningful feedback (I work with all couples on this). But, before giving feedback, we need to ask ourselves how much of our own HALT is playing a role in the strong feelings.
• When you were growing up, if you had parents who tended to meet your physical and psychological needs, you might be a little better at recognizing HALT and doing self-care (and not feel guilty about it). If you did not have parents who modeled self-care, and did not teach you the importance of meeting your psychological needs, you may need more practice. If you are in that boat, practice giving yourself permission to do self-care and consistently address your needs. 
• HALT is just a good thing to regularly assess within ourselves throughout the day.

3. Be curious. Curiosity goes hand in hand with empathy, understanding, and eventually better choices and decisions.

• Brené Brown said in her book Dare to Lead: "As we push on these issues and discover our own blind spots (we all have them), we need to stay very aware of the armor assembly process here: We cannot practice empathy if we need to be knowers; if we can't be learners, we cannot be empathic" (Brown, 2018, p. 145) (4).
• Who are the leaders we like and who inspire us to be better? The leaders who understand us, are curious about us, and who really care. You can be like that too with your kids, friends, co-workers, partner, or with your community.
• What does curiosity look like? It's asking questions and not just assuming you know everything. Be curious in a non-judgmental and non-hostile way. Curiosity doesn't mean you necessarily agree with everything the other person says. Especially when you have a different opinion be aware of the tone you are using.
• Be curious about both yourself and other people. 
• Warmth and curiosity brings people together, and being someone who knows everything pushes people apart (and can even destroy relationships). 
• Practice curiosity the next time you feel a little upset or confused about something. Ask questions with warmth, and practice setting your pride aside for a moment. 

4. Use the phrase “I’m glad you told me."

• This phrase comes from another helpful quote in Brené Brown's Dare to Lead book: "If I share something that's difficult for me, I'd rather you say, "I don't even know what to say right now, I'm just so glad you told me." Because in truth, a response can rarely make something better. Connection is what heals." (Brown, 2018, pp. 141-142) (5).
• I like the phrase "I'm glad you told me" because it can be applied in so many situations... When your child shares something hard for her or something she's excited about. When your employee notices a problem and shares a helpful and innovative solution for fixing it. When your partner shares something painful he or she is going though, or a concern he or she has.
• The phrase opens up dialogue and encourages open communication in a variety of situations. 
• Think you can put your pride aside and use the phrase when your child, spouse, or employee has a concern they are sharing with you? What about if it's something about you personally that they have a concern with? It would be good practice in encouraging open and curious dialogue by saying the phrase "I'm glad you told me," even when it's a painful or difficult topic.  
• When you use this phrase, others around you will use it too. How many times have your kids said something that you have said, or done what you have done? This would be a good phrase to start saying with the people in  your life. It will catch on and benefit the entire system. This also applies in workplaces, churches, in our communities, and in politics. 

5. Fess up when you mess up—every time (for the rest of your life).

• This just means whenever you notice you said or did something hurtful, you apologize for it. Every time. Even if the other person probably knows you are sorry, still saying something so that the issue can cool off and turn into something that's forgotten instead of a major wound that could possibly end the relationship. 
• Apologize appropriately. Don't take responsibility for someone else's actions. Don't over or under take responsibility. Practice owning up to exactly your part, and that's it. 
• This is one of my (many) Holly-isms. I am such an advocate for each of us holding ourselves accountable for our own actions. Obviously, we know this is probably important and good advice. However, I think I am so strongly in favor of this because of all my experience working with couples... When couples use this and stop finger pointing every other sentence, we get some real work done. I have seen a lot of couples in my office work through a wide variety of topics. And I can tell you that the differentiating factor between a successful discussion and an unsuccessful discussion was whether or not each person came forward and honestly admitted where they hurt each other and where they each could positively contribute to resolving the situation. That's it. Putting pride and ego aside is essential. It takes practice though (especially when we have been hurt), and it's easier said than done. 
• Fess up when you mess up—every time (for the rest of your life), helps to combat the urge to hurt others when we are hurt, because it forces us to always have to acknowledge our role. As a side note, in cases of abuse, there is a clear cut situation of one person hurting the other. The victim in no way should take any responsibility for any abuse. But in most other relationships, we each need to think about where we are accountable and hold ourselves accountable (out loud) for our relationships to thrive and be successful. 
• Doing this admits that we are all human. We all make mistakes (big and small). That's okay. It's not about being perfect (which is impossible), what I am more concerned about is that the error was acknowledged and genuinely apologized for. This helps the issue to dissipate, and may even help the relationship to be stronger. Not apologizing significantly weakens your relationships. It's not an exaggeration that apologizing each time you hurt someone can prevent many unnecessary relationship breakups.

​I hope the five ways to start being a relationship legacy leader inspired some ideas for you. I truly hope you can visualize where you can start making some simple changes. The ideas above are simple, but powerful when implemented. 

There are so many reasons why I think being a relationship legacy leader is important, and why each of us doing our part is important. Today I will just mention one—as a way to change the culture of mass shootings and school shootings we are seeing in our country and across the world.

To me, as a therapist, I see these shootings as another reason why it’s important for all of us to take care of our mental health, to destigmatize mental health care, to destigmatize discussing feelings, and to encourage teaching our young kids about emotions (especially boys—they have been hurt for too long by shaming them for having feelings besides anger).

I don’t know about you, but when I see the news of another school shooting or a mass shooting, I feel heartbroken and devastated. Sometimes I even cry. I cried when I heard the news of the shootings at the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

This week there was a school shooting at the University of North Carolina Charlotte (6). There are likely some important legal changes that need to be made, but what can we do right now (no matter where we fall on the political spectrum)? I believe that each of us, in whatever corner of the world we are in, can start to make a difference now—even on a topic as big as school and mass shootings. How? By being a relationship legacy leader in whatever corner of the world we are in.

Psychology is all around us. Our psychological and relationship health matters. Psychology is not a "soft science;" it's a vital science for the success of the human race. Viewing psychology as a "soft science" has been a massive blind spot for us, and has led to the denial of the importance of mental health and relationship health. The good news is, we can all do something, starting right now. 

In summary, you can be a relationship legacy leader by:
1. Learning how to recognize and label different emotions within yourself. 
2. Learning how to recognize and label when you are HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, or tired). 
3. Being curious. 
4. Using the phrase "I'm glad you told me." 
5. Fessing up when you mess up—every time (for the rest of your life). 

So, think about what we explored today. Have a discussion with people you trust about being a relationship legacy leader. Print out the article as a guide if that's helpful. Who do you want to start impacting positively? What is one small thing you can do right now? Do it. It matters. Remember that the people who positively impacted you made a personal choice to do so. 

Please share if you are thinking of implementing one of these 5 ideas or if today's blog inspired you to make some changes. Looking forward to reading your comments.

Thank you for joining me today! If this post was helpful, please hit the Facebook Like button below or share the blog on Twitter. 

Talk to you next week. 

All the best,
​Holly L. Harrison ​

​ 
References and Links
(1)https://moxiepsychologylegacy.com/blog/what-is-a-relationship-legacy-leader
(2)https://hbr.org/2016/11/3-ways-to-better-understand-your-emotions
(3)https://healthypsych.com/h-a-l-t-hungry-angry-lonely-and-tired-a-self-care-tool/
(4)Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts [Kindle SDK 6.0.1 version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. 
(5)Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts [Kindle SDK 6.0.1 version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. ​
​(6)​https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/unc-charlotte-shooting.html?module=inline