Building relationships on a positive foundation

I recently had a thought that we build relationships with other people around shared experiences. These can be either positive or negative. Unfortunately, too often we build relationships around negativity. How often have you made friends with other people based on the mutual dislike of another person? Or we find someone we can have a good whinge to about the problems in our life. While sometimes this can be healthy often it can be destructive. Much like Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd's alliance, these kinds of relationships often don't last and are built on weak foundations. 

Stephen Covey discussed this issue in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He describe us as having emotional bank accounts. We make both deposits and withdraws from these accounts. A really great way to make a deposit into emotional banks account with other people is to defend the person not in the room. So in your group of friends or colleagues if someone puts down another member of the group, be fair to that person, defend them, remember their positive qualities. I know this is hard, I'm going to try a lot harder to actually do this. I have seen it with other people, while you may gain brief popularity with the group by attacking the person not present or partaking in an attack. The people who are uniformly liked and respected are those who defend the person not present. The reason for this is simple, by defending the person not present you are saying to those people present. "You can trust me, I am fair and a person of integrity."

Much like junk food gossip and negativity can be briefly rewarding. Remember you're in life for the long game and by defending the person not present you're building your relationships on solid foundations.