The Minimum Standard for a Healthy Relationship: Awareness, Attention, and Availability

A Standard for Protecting Our Time

In order to improve the quality of your relationships, it is helpful to adopt a standard of living on which you can base all your interactions with others.

This standard will help you understand who you are going to give your most valuable asset, which is your time, to and thus avoid wasting it.

By not giving our time to just anyone, we make sure to invest our energy in relationships that are reciprocal and truly worthwhile for our growth.

It is a conscious filter that allows us to discern which relationships deserve our energy and which, on the contrary, only drain it without contributing anything.

This standard is made up of three fundamental pillars that, when present, guarantee a much healthier, deeper communication with a lower level of stress.

Awareness: Being Present in the Interaction

The first pillar of this standard is awareness, which means being fully aware of the place and situation in which you are you find.

You must give 100 percent of yourself to the situation, being aware of who you are speaking to and what the context of the conversation is.

A large part of communication is non-verbal, so it is essential to be aware in order to see and understand the person beyond.

Awareness allows you to capture not only the words, but also the body language, tone of voice and emotions that the other person is transmitting.

Without this awareness of the context and the person, it is very easy for misunderstandings to arise that can generate conflicts and completely unnecessary stress for both parties.

Attention: Listening, Perceiving and Sensing

The second pillar is to give your absolute attention to the conversation you are in, being attentive to perceive, listen and feel.

Mindfulness in an interaction involves a deliberate effort to focus on what the other person is communicating, both with their words and without them.

Without a full attention, it is impossible to capture the nuances and emotions underlying the message, which inevitably leads to conflict and frustration.

You must be fully present for the other person, demonstrating with y