It is without a doubt the most visible part of a boat. It is the thing that, if you saw it from the shore and it was just on the horizon, you would use to identify just what it is that you are seeing. It stands tall, and it is wide, and it is unmistakable. The sail of a ship stands for all to see.

Sailboats are unique for the sole purpose that they are able to move forward without the consumption of any fuel. They harness the wind that blows freely with their sails as it passes, fully aware that at any moment that wind could change direction or cease to blow all together. It is a novice sailor that believes that the sun will always shine on them and the wind will always be at your back, but a skilled sailor knows how to trim his or her sail to produce the most propulsion.

Now, a sail on a ship is an efficient way to propel a ship forward, but a sail with holes in it is nothing more than a pretty decoration. A sail must be full and intact; it must be positioned just right in order to really capture the wind and make serious headway.

Just as a sail must be positioned and raised as one cohesive sheet in order to move a sailboat forward, you must be raising your sail and fully engaging in order to capture your interactions and move your relationship forward. When you are fully engaged and actively pursuing the full harvesting of your interactions, you will find that each interaction compounds on the one before it and pushes you in the direction you want to go.

In this post we will discuss what to do in order to capture your interactions better, so that you can move forward towards your relationship destination and do it with power and ease.

Capturing the Wind

The first and most important part of any sail being useful to drive a ship forward is that the sail is able to catch wind and that it is set up in the right direction. What I mean by this is that the material of the sail, or the habits of how you interact, need to be intentionally set to catch the interactions you have with people. Just as a sail that has many holes and tears cannot capture the wind, so too your presence will not capture the interaction if it is not in tact. You will not be able to drive your relation-ship forward if your habits and practices are letting the interactions slip through.

I’m about to get preachy, but hang with me and maybe you’ll see what I’m trying to drive home.
1: Put down the Cell Phone

More often than not, one of the main distracting factors that prevent us from truly capturing our interactions is the fact that we are interacting in other places instead of where we actually are. When we sit with a cell phone in front of us while sitting across the table from someone else, we are not only communicating that we want to be somewhere else with someone else; we are also letting the interacting in front of us blow past without a second thought. Sitting with a cell phones and other distractions punch holes in our relational sails whenever they take our attention away from anyone we are interacting with. The time you spend on your phone is time you are not spending with the other person. Put down your cell phone and make eye contact with the person sitting across from you.

2: Invest in the Other

This idea does not mean that you need to be self defeating or negative, but a relationship where each person is only thinking of themselves and their own emotional well-being is a relationship that is destined to go nowhere fast. Meaningful interactions thrive on the principal that you are coming to a relationship not to get out of it something, but to put something into it. If everyone were to always take from the collective relational pot, then there would never be anything in it for anyone. If you drink deeply from the relationship, you must also pour back into the relationship. Relationships are about investments, not payouts.

3: Agree on the Direction

You must have a general agreed understanding of the w...