Many people live from day to day and don’t pay much attention to their social circle. However sometimes it makes sense to take a double look at people surrounding you and make improvements to make life a little bit more easy and happier.
Let’s take a look at some of the examples. A person has a circle of friends which he or she knew from the childhood. They hang around and meet every day after work. Everything is fine except for the friends are giving a hard time to their buddy. They are constantly joking around about his or her new job role, romantic relationships etc. showing their better knowledge and ‘expertise’ of him or her. The person is feeling sick and exhausted every time after these meetings.
Or another example. A person has a friend who is calling and complaining about everything. The friend never asks the person about how they do or how they feel but never misses a chance to tell about their own problems and seek for personal attention. The person is tired and feels used and ignored after all of such conversations.
These are classic examples of unhealthy relationships. Someone takes advantage in these relationship over the other and makes the relationship unbalanced. And an unbalanced relationship on a long term often causes emotional and health problems of the minor party. So what to do with this kind of relationships? And how to always maintain a healthy social circle?
From one side it’s very simple but from the other side requires certain piece of effort. First of all take a piece of paper and write down a list of people you are communicating with. This could be your neighbors, friends and family. Or it could be your colleagues or classmates. Add to this list people having relationships with you could potentially benefit.
Organize this list into a circle with you in a center. Against every person draw an arrow characterizing what you specifically get (or potentially could get) from this person. Do you get positive emotions? Positive energy? Then draw an arrow pointing to yourself. Is it completely opposite and this person makes you feel seek and exhausted? Draw an error pointing in an opposite direction. Make lines as thick as it affects you during these interactions.
Analyze the resulting image. Arrows in direction opposite to yourself obviously need attention and you could either ask a person to stop negatively affecting you (like joking and asserting themselves at your expense) or if it doesn’t work simply stop the communication.
Arrows in directions to yourself with people from which you could benefit are your way to get more useful relations and useful communications. Look at them and think how you could move this relationships to a deeper level.
Following this simple rules and instructions will help you not only to sanitize your current social circle but also built a specific strategic mindset to improve interactions in future.
