Great Memories Strengthen Relationships

Have you ever seen siblings sit together and chat all night long, our couples sit in bed re-living fond memories of their lives together? Great memories are a good source of nourishment for our relationships. Imagine if you could re-live great memories with your colleagues, employees, bosses and important clients. You will perhaps not just create great moments of joyful nostalgia, but also help to create a stronger bond in the relationship.

While events may just occur and create the great memories for your relationships, we could be a bit more deliberate, and actually create and sustain these memories ourselves. We should therefore be passionate about creating the time, and the enabling environment for great memories to take place.

For example, imagine a boss who sits behind her chair all day, behind the closed doors of her office, compared to another who spends time on the shop floor, engaging employees and customers and creating those opportunities for an interesting joke to be shared, an important lesson to be learned or a heartfelt feeling to be shared. By being open and available, we therefore create the time and atmosphere for great memories to be made. The heartfelt feeling, joke or important lesson created as you walk around the shop floor can be that great memory and bond that brings you closer to that person.

I have a personal example with a colleague who I teased on two separate occasions about getting pregnant because she stayed at home during a strike in the first instance, and went on leave at an awkward time in the year the second time. Interestingly, I was right on both occasions - she got pregnant just within the same spaces of time. Now, when we see each other we often share the joke around the memorable moments when I teased her and it draws us closer each time.

Think about your relationship with your spouse, parents, siblings, children, colleagues at works and clients, and make a deliberate effort to create a pleasant memory. It could be a lunch or dinner outing, it could be an away-day or team building event, or something special that you do for them, or even a story or lesson that you can share. Plan to create this memory, then create it, and use the opportunities of your future interactions to re-live the memory and strengthen your relationship.

As we do this, we should also take time to think about the fond memories we already have with people, and take the next opportunity we have to re-live that memory, and create an even stronger bond. Memories can serve as great ice-breakers for people you haven't seen or spoken to in a while, and can help to re-kindle the relationship in a very enduring way.

Remember, memories are powerful things. We shouldn't wait for memories to just happen to us, rather, we need to make memories happen, and ensure that we re-live them