How to Belong, Become, and Build in Relationships

May 7, 2014 by Jim and Jerolyn Bogear

 

In a recent webinar I heard Daniel Harkevey talk about the focus on belonging, becoming, and building for a leader to communicate to his/her team in the business world. One of the things he addresses is communicating these in a variety of ways, as you are clear on them as a leader. He included the aspect of relationships and how to encourage these three relationally.

We obviously like the concept, and love the emphasis on the importance of relationships. It is not his focus here but he does mention it as a priority. So, allow us to take from these principles and apply them to relationships, specifically family. You may be familiar with our teaching, but we focus on vision and values for relationships, focusing on marriages and families. We believe so much in this, live it out, write about it, and teach/coach it to church and corporate world alike.

We all want to belong to something and some people. To what do we belong? What kind of family are we now, and how do we each fit as a vital/valued part? We are not designed to do life alone. This has been said over and over again, but amazingly enough with all our technology and social networking, more and more of us are feeling alone. We need to make sure we are prioritizing our relationships to invest in them, spend time with one another and encouraging one another to belong to each other, support each other, listen to one another, and know we have a place to belong. In what ways do others help you know you belong? How can you help others to know there is place to belong? In your families, how much do people know they just don’t live in a place but are a part of the team/family, and are valued?

What is our vision? What do we want to become and how will we make sure we are on purpose focusing our values and efforts to become what we really desire? How much thought have we given to this and how do we communicate this to one another? We want to become a healthy strong family unit, loving each other and demonstrating the idea of belonging from above. It should be the desire of each of us to say and live, “I want to belong to this and help us become all we can as a family in our relationships.” This is really the reality of what we desire and aspire to become.

What do we want to build and how do we get there? In other words, this is putting into practice the values to help us accomplish what we are trying to become. We need to have in place those building-block attributes of what Jerolyn wrote about recently of commitment, trust, and selflessness, as a part of our values and implementation/strategy, like a corporation does. No, we are not running a business, but we do need to have a game plan on what the big picture looks like and how we build it to accomplish this. We often let things go at home and “hope” somehow it all works out. We need to focus on each other and have a plan to help us belong, become, and build together the healthy family God desires. What building do you need to start today? What strategy of vision and values do you need to put in place?

How can we have healthy, strong, functioning families? We encourage you to start today to make a difference. It is worth the time, energy, and effort. We need to win at home before we really ever hope to win in other places. To lose this battle is to lose in so many ways that really make a life-changing difference. We know you can do it, and we want you to win.

~Jim