Literary Focus: Relational Intelligence

Title: Relational Intelligence
Author: Dr. Dharius Daniels
More info: Dharius Daniels RQ
Purchase: Amazon: Relational Intelligence

For our first literary review, we’ve chosen a book that aims to help us gain the most from various relationships we encounter in our day to day lives. Relational Intelligence by Dr. Dharius Daniels leads us through self-reflection, categorization of our relationships with others, and shares how to use this information to improve our relationships – with ourselves and others.

Dr. Daniels shares a wealth of knowledge throughout the pages and even provides a few interactive exercises to aid us in recalibrating our relationships. One of the highlights of this book is the power and importance of defining relationships accurately. The relational categories explored here are: Friends, Associates, Assignments, and Advisors. The anxiety that classification process can tend to induce goes without saying! The good news is that we’ll dismantle some of that apprehension by exploring two of the major proverbs of this book together, and hopefully spark a desire to start this journey for yourself!

STRAIGHT TO THE ROOT: “We only owe people love. We don’t owe people access to our life.” (Daniels 24)

Whew! It is completely fine if reading that got you all the way together, you’re not alone! One of the things we grapple with as a society is continual accessibility. What’s interesting is that we don’t often recognize how accessibility to certain people or environments works against what would otherwise be a good mood, healthy perspective, creativity, or even focus. While access and love can exist in the same place, they certainly don’t have to!

STRAIGHT TO THE ROOT:” Putting people in their place isn’t just a blessing to you; it’s a blessing to them too.” (Daniels 109)

This unearths a permission to set expectations within yourself, reorganize the relationships in your life, and even reassess your most established relationships to help everyone involved gain the maximum benefit. The release of the normal fear that accompanies deciding who fits in where, and requiring myself to offload the miscategorized was, and still is, monumental. Almost immediately the ROI from every relationship I hold increased, simply from embracing this freedom and acting on it.

With all the self-reflection time that being quarantined has afforded us all in some capacity, Relational Intelligence shed light on one of the most important things to humanity — relationships.