You are what you eat. You are your job. You are what you believe. You are who others say you are. You are what you will be come. You are who you have been. You are your parents. You are the average of your friends. You are whatever you want to be. This brings about the question, of what are you made?

Our interactions should always be directing us to our final destination, but where they come from is a different story. Each person is their own individual, but they have roots in a few key areas that can influence your relationships. The material that you are made of can either help your relationships sail or it can lead to the wreck of your relationship. It all starts with Good Wood.

Good Wood and Bad Wood

The material that your relationship is made of is wood sourced from five different forests. The forests are your Habits, Practices, Rituals, Values, and your Past. You are drawing from each of these sources when you form a relationship to determine the size, shape, form, and all other aspects of that relationship. Each wood source can provide Good Wood, or Bad Wood, depending on the conditions of the forests.

Habits

It is best to describe habits as the actions that you take without thinking about the decision. Habits involve things like the route you drive to work, the places you visit on the Internet, the way that you spend your time and any other decision that you are making subconsciously. These decisions are habitual because they come from having practiced the decision again and again and again.

Wood from your habits form the ribs of your relationship. Your habits give shape to what you will do when you are tossing in the waves of life. When there is Good Wood for the ribs of your habits, the structure of your relationship will be sound. Your Habits, while seemingly small to you, are actually some of the most influential components to your character. Habits are what we fall back on when we don’t know what to do. Bad habits can tear apart the skeleton of your ship.

Practices

Your Practices are different from your Habits in that they are habits in formation. Practices are the things that you are working on, for the better or the worse. While habits are the skeletal framework that your relationships are made of, practices are the pieces that hold those ribs in place as cross braces.

Solid practices that are made of Good Wood reinforce the good habits that you have. Bad Wood can lead to the dissolution of your good habits and can even lead to rotting the Good Wood of your Habits. You can get a better picture of what you are building in yourself when you assess your practices and whether they are for you or against you.

Rituals

Rituals are the things that you do because they are the things you do. Pizza night, church, holidays, your morning routines, game nights, going to the club, or taking a long bubble bath at the end of a hard day of work. Your rituals are well thought out actions that you do because they have a purpose in your life. Your Rituals are like the planks of wood that form the outer hull of the ship; they give shape to who you are.

Rituals that are made of Good Wood are rituals that keep out the chaos of life while holding in your precious cargo. When you are building your relationship around good rituals, you are protecting yourself and the others in the relationship from leaks. Bad wood can lead to taking on water and even the sinking of your relationship.

Values

Your values make the mast of your ship; your sail hangs from them and they stand above everything else in your relationship. Your values are the most necessary thing in order for your relationship to move forward. They support your ship and your interactions and help you capture your interactions.

When your value-mast is made of Good Wood, it stands firm no matter what the world can throw at it. It will support your interactions and allow you to move forward with the strongest interaction.