Retrieving Your Ring From the Rubble
Part 1
by Dr. Gary Bradt
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If you are in a relationship that's not working right now at work or home, you're hardly alone. It happens. The question is what are you going to do about it? Some of us get lazy. Rather than roll up our sleeves and get busy, we put on our running shoes instead. We race from one job to another, one relationship to another, only to end up in a similar mess each time. Others of us bury our heads in the sand, in the vain hope that our difficulties will miraculously disappear. Usually, it's the relationship (and sometimes the job) that disappears instead. In either case, we tend to rationalize our part in it all: Well, what could I do? That's just the way men/women/bosses/employees/co-workers/jobs-in-general are.
Here's what you could do: I'm going to give you five tools; five ideas and steps on how to retrieve your ring from the rubble of broken relationships at work and home. The ring represents the opportunity to build better relationships. The rubble represents the hurt, frustration and pain we all have to dig through from time to time. These tools will help you fix your relationships, if you apply them to yourself. Please note: You can't fix anyone else! If you want others to pick up these tools, then be a role model and pick them up first.
1. Preventive maintenance: Treat those you know best like strangers. Often we treat perfect strangers better than we treat the people we live and work with everyday. Kind of crazy when you think about it, so here's the first tool to try: treat those you know best like strangers. That means being polite, regularly saying please and thank you, and perhaps biting your tongue occasionally.
It means doing the little things that can make a big difference, like dressing nicely at home, not just at work; holding doors open; making eye contact; smiling; and picking up after your self, instead of complaining about those who leave the kitchen or break room a mess. Extending common courtesies to all is akin to preventive maintenance: it sustains relationships before they break, thereby reducing the need for extensive (and maybe expensive) repairs later.
2. Swallow your pride and learn how to say 'I'm sorry.' For some of us, this one is hard to do. For all of us, it's incredibly important. Grievances, imagined or not, remain unresolved when we can't, or don't, chose to express remorse for our part in helping to create them. All manner of things may get in our way of saying we're sorry: ego; a need to be right; ignorance; and arrogance.
In addition, in The Five Languages of Apology, authors Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas point out that sometimes, even though we may think we've apologized, we haven't been understood. They teach us that we all have an apology language: some need to hear "I'm sorry." For others, words mean little; it's action that counts. We have to learn what our language of apology is, and what language others speak, to be effective in this arena. Learning to say 'I'm sorry' is a skill that can be learned: learn it.

Dr. Gary Bradt is a change and leadership expert, speaker and author of The Ring in the Rubble: Dig Through Change and Find Your Next Golden Opportunity (The Ring in the Rubble). His diverse client base includes IBM, FedEx, General Motors, American Express, Marriott International, The Weather Channel, The Department of Defense, and NASA. For many years he was endorsed by Spencer Johnson as the primary speaker worldwide on Johnson's business bestseller Who Moved my Cheese? He resides in Summerfield, North Carolina with his wife and two children.
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