The ability to show appreciation to the important people in our lives is heavily underrated. When we feel under-appreciated, it can start eating away at our relationships. We may start to feel taken for granted, or taken advantage of, and get a sense that our partners, family, or friends don’t actually regard what they bring to our lives.
If you take the time to make someone a cup of coffee every day, and they never say ‘thank you’, and act as if it your job to do this, after a while you may start to become annoyed at the person. In our lives, we serve many figurative cups of coffee, and other people do the same for us, in whatever form this may actually take. Just like we want to be appreciated, so do others.
Here are seven ways to show appreciation.
1) Say “thank you”. It seems like this is a given, but people usually throw the words “thank you” out as an attachment to “see you later.” Take the time to give a sincere thank you to people you care about. For example, “I really appreciate you making dinner tonight. You really made my day easier. Thank you.” Or, “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about this issue. Your listening really helped ease my mind.”
2) Recognize “little things”. We often pay the most attention to the bigger, more obvious things people do for us, but opportunity to show appreciation comes in many forms. Recognize the smaller things and make it clear to your partner (or friends or family) that their efforts are meaningful.
3) Reciprocation. This is very important in all of our interpersonal relationships. There are different kinds of reciprocation. One kind is direct — a friend is there for you when you need to talk to someone about a relationship issue, and then when your friend needs someone to talk to, you make sure to be there for your friend. Another kind of reciprocation is less direct but tends to be equal in weight of effort — your partner shopped for food, so you cleaned the kitchen. Reciprocation is a way of showing that for every ‘take’ you want to give back. It’s not necessary to keep score in a relationship, but as a general rule, giving whenever possible is probably balancing a previous take — you can never give too much.
Read more: Psych Central
