How many contacts do you have?
Who are they?
Does it really matter?
The peak time for forming friendships is in your teens and early twenties. I think of teen relationships as being a bunch of dominos all laid out on a table being grouped and regrouped, sometimes on a daily basis. As a middle school counselor, I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard the words, “My friend group...”. The social networks of teens are in a constant state of flux.
As an adult you can be purposeful in the social networks you maintain. This life pause of the pandemic has provided you an opportunity to design your life with meaningful connection in mind. To reflect on and adjust your interconnected web of relationship, with intention and purpose. Who you surround yourself with has a strong influence on your behavior, attitudes and results.
According to William Park - Your choices are influenced by who you are with. How others around you react, any conversations you may have had beforehand and your fundamental understanding of what is normal for that group of friends.
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler at Yale have written about how your extended social networks, including friends’ friends’ friends, influence your health, wealth, happiness, beliefs, and even weight. They also purport that 46% of variations in how many friends you have is genetic. (Interesting Video)
Kalsley Killam in Spotlight on Social Connection; 2020 trends and opportunities for 2021 shared,
“We’re roughly 15 years into the era of digital social networks, and it’s high time to reimagine what they could be if they were laser-focused on meaningful, lasting, and robust social connections, rather than clicks, likes, and ad views.”
Here’s the problem: your brain likes to take a shortcut that proves the people you surround yourself with are smart, capable, and creative enough to warrant your attention. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much for you to accept someone as an authority, or worthy of your time, especially when others are buying into their message. In this age of technology too often how many stars your friends as well as strangers give something carries weight. Just ask Amazon.
The good news: you can enhance your own well-being by surrounding yourself with those that uplift you, energize you, and exemplify who you want to be.
First make a list of the characteristics you find most valuable in an intimate friend. Are they a good listener? Are they attentive when you are with them? Do they let you share your story without interrupting you? Do they walk their talk? Do they love and accept you for who you are deep down inside? You get the idea. Keep the list short, try and limit it to seven. Remember you want to be laser focused.
Using your list ask yourself what 5 - 7 people would you put into your intimate friends category. These are the people who exemplify the items on your list.
Why do I say five? Because intimate friends require time and attention. In today’s busy world finding time to cultivate deep personal relationships can be difficult. I sometimes include people in this category that I have known since kindergarten because even when we do not spend time together I know I could call on them for just about anything anytime.
You decide if you want to add any family members. You may find you want some of your family members in this circle, and others in the friends and family area.
Now move out a bit more, into the friends and family category. If you want more detail in this sphere of influence - you might want to subdivide the friends and family category. Think first of good friends and/or close family - try to limit this to 15 people. Write down their names and write down a few words to describe the strength of your relationship. You may even want to rate the strength of your relationship on a scale of 0-5. With zero being not very strong to 5 being herculean.
Here’s an old graphic I found that might be helpful when thinking about friends and family.
Acquaintances are people you know. You recognize them when you see them, and most likely know their name and some basic information about them. Usually your relationship is a bit more formal or reserved. An acquaintance may even be someone you spend every day with, but your interactions are superficial or shallow. Generally you may view acquaintances as replaceable whereas friends are not as easily replaced. You might ask yourself, if I deleted all of my social accounts today would this person reach out to me.
As you go through life, you have many opportunities to meet a variety of different people. One of the greatest values in cultivating a wide variety of acquaintances is they will allow you to gain access to potentially influential individuals whom you may not typically have access to. Acquaintances broaden your understanding of the world and provide introductions to brand-new social clusters.
Robin Dunbar believes that, “ Although the average social network contains around 150 friends, there is considerable individual variation in the number of relationships; some people have fewer than 100, a few may have 250 or more. There are three main reasons for this: gender, social skills and personality.” I’m not sure I agree with him, especially in today’s internet world, but I believe we have a limited capacity to build relationships.
For this category think broad strokes. Make a list of areas of interest you cherish. For example career, hobbies, causes, charities that are important to you. Then see if you can’t name a dozen or more acquaintances in each of these areas. If you can't, it might be time to reach out. If you can, ask yourself when is the last time you connected with them beyond clicking like.
In the bottom right hand of the diagram you’ll notice a hexagon labeled “Quarantine”. At this point- quarantine - might be the last thing you want to think about. I have it here to remind you that as you go through life, there may come a time when certain people in your life are not serving you and you need to move away from them, at least for a while. I find this especially true if you are a person in recovery, going through a divorce, or working to make a major change in your lifestyle. Whom might you need to move into quarantine.
Quarantine may not mean you need to disassociate from this person forever, but for now keeping them in your life isn’t serving you. The idea of quarantine also encompasses the idea that people move from one category to another throughout your life. Remember those dominos grouping and regrouping I mentioned when describing the middle schoolers. Even adult relationships change, who was once considered an intimate friend, may now be a friend, or even an acquaintance. Remember all relationships require time, effort and commitment. It is more a matter of asking yourself who do you want to expend energy on.
I’ll leave you with two thoughts. The first from Fowler and Christak’s study happy friends make you happier — no surprise there. But if your friend of a friend of a friend is happy with their life, then you have a 6 percent greater likelihood of being happy yourself.
The second, unlike the famous words of Jim Rohn, motivational speaker - You are not the average of the five people with whom you surround yourself. Your sphere of influencers is much larger. So look around you and be sure you are creating networks with the best of the best.
Additional Resources
To get involved in improving well-being through connections and communities visit https://www.socialhealthlabs.com/
The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Fowler & Christak - On Amazon
Credits:
Created with images by thodonal - "Woman touching a virtual network" • Gajus - "Desaturated conceptual image of victory, power and success" • SMAK_Photo - "The concept of order and chaos. Chaotic disorganized dominoes and ordered dominoes on colored cardboard background" • vegefox.com - "communication" • jamesteohart - "DNA complex spiral structure" • Unknown - "Lasers Eye Iris - Free photo on Pixabay" • peshkova - "Girl writing in spiral notepad" • Andrey Popov - "Rear View Of People Standing In Row" • ibreakstock - "Global village word cloud" • Tierney - "Life balance concept with person using a laptop on a white table" • Tierney - "Social connections theme with people working together with laptop and notebook"