What is Interpersonal Well-Being?
“Interpersonal Wellness involves cultivating relationships and a social support network made up of friends, family, and colleagues. This aspect of your well-being focuses on whether your relationships (whether professional, social, familial or romantic) are positive, supportive, nurturing and healthy. Interpersonal wellness supports the development of fulfilling connections with others and emotional resilience in challenging times.”
— Johns Hopkins University Health Services
Maintaining good interpersonal wellness is a key aspect to overall well-being. And by implementing healthy interpersonal skills, you can reduce stress levels, help to resolve conflicts and improve communication among your colleagues, peers and family.
What are some examples of interpersonal skills?
- Using assertiveness: Learn how to express yourself and your rights without violating others’ rights.
- Employing conflict resolution: These help you resolve differences so that you may continue a relationship effectively.
- Knowing anger management: Recognizing and expressing anger appropriately in order to achieve goals, handle emergencies, solve problems—all of which protects our health.
Harnessing good interpersonal health is a game-changer. Typical results include attaining sky-high self-confidence, having a positive attitude, and being a dependable team player—all of which mean you are in the driver’s seat of your interpersonal well-being
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Grateful for Gratitude
From your EAP
Everyone has times where they feel appreciative or thankful for a person or a situation. These moments of thinking about the past in a positive way give us a good feeling and are the very definition of gratitude.
Feeling grateful just happens sometimes. Other times, we must make a special effort to increase how often we feel it. Here are some benefits o of gratitude and ways to experience it:
Benefits of Gratitude
Recent studies have found a host of benefits from practicing thankfulness, including:
- Improved heart and kidney function and lower blood-pressure and stress-hormone levels Higher levels of optimism and satisfaction with life
- Lower levels of stress and anxiety
- Fewer reports of physical ailments
- Higher motivation to exercise
- Higher levels of personal goal attainment
- Higher levels of alertness, attentiveness and energy
- Stronger emotional support for others
- Increased resilience in the face of hardship
Measurable Improvement
On his Emmons Lab website, Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University
of California, Davis, sums up some of the recent findings about gratitude and its
positive health effects:
In one study, researchers found that those who kept regular gratitude journals exercised more, reported fewer ailments, felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic than those who recorded problems or neutral life events.
Adults with neuromuscular disease who were asked to focus on gratitude over a three-week period reported more positive moods, a greater sense of connection to others, more optimism and better sleep than a control group.
In another study, participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals over a two-month period than those who didn’t.
Ways to Increase Gratitude
Experiencing more gratitude doesn’t need to be difficult or time-consuming. Try these
ideas and see whatworks best for you:
- Make a list.
- Write everything in your life that makes you grateful.
- Look at this list regularly.
Gratitude journal. Take five minutes each day to think of three things that happened in your life that you are glad you experienced. Then write them down somewhere. Take pictures. Photograph little things in your everyday life that make you smile.Tell someone. Whether it’s someone you look up to or just someone who makes you happy, take a bit of time to tell him or her that you’re glad to have them around.
Frame events in a positive light. We often joke about whether the glass is half empty or half full. Make an effort to see the half-full side of every situation.
What is there to be grateful for?
You can be grateful for anything in your life that makes you feel positive on some
level. Some bigger things could include:
- Friends and family
- Achieving a goal
- Your talents and skills
- Appreciating where you live and the opportunities you have Your health and happiness
You don’t need to limit your gratitude to big picture ideas. Positive things that seem small and happen every day are also worth focusing on. Some small things could include:
- A good joke you heard from a friend
- A sunny day
- A good song on the radio
- A funny thing your pet did
How do I start?
- Grab a notebook and begin a gratitude journal
- Tell someone when you appreciate something they’ve done
- Think of three things that you’re grateful for and jot them down
Resources
Emmons Lab: https://emmons.faculty.ucdavis.edu/
ReachOut.com: https://au.reachout.com/articles/the-how-and-why-of-practising-gratitude
International Positive Psychology Association: https://www.ippanetwork.org/
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