Last week we asked you to have a think about your friends, and perhaps even differentiate between the concentric circles of people you have in your life. For many of us these circles tend to have our family closest, followed by friends, then work colleagues, then work clients/associates, then all people we know the name of, then people we don’t know the name of. These people orbit around us like planets around the sun. Yes, we are saying that you are the centre of your own universe.
As such, we get to choose who we do this celestial dance with. We get to choose who is in our gang, what the ‘rules’ of being in our group is, and how many people are in the gang. The important thing to realise here is that we have a choice. Many times in life we find ourselves in social situations with people we don’t like much, or that we would prefer not to be around at all. The first step is to do the old “mirror mirror” test. As in: what do we dislike most about them, and where do we do that ourselves? (Many times the things we dislike in others are unloved traits of our own).
This represents an opportunity: either to collapse that trait and hence grow, or to simply decide it’s all too much and move them to a lesser area of impact in our lives- one of the outer orbits. Either way, we get to choose.
As children, many of our friendships were based on geography, school, sports, hobbies or socio-economics. Some of us we were lucky to find a life-long friend from that series of almost coincidental orbits. Others may not have managed that, so may have felt left-out, ostracised or even a little anti-social. Adulthood, the internet and social freedoms has changed that for us, so now we are able to construct a gang that we love being part of.
We can create a tribe that is well reasoned and thought-out. Where the people we gift our time and energy to are ones that nourish and nurture us, as we do for them. Where support is available and where we can BE our full selves.
By contrast, the paradox may exist. We may choose to spend our time and energy with people who do none of those things, and yet we still keep them close, for a myriad of our own reasons. The thing we want you to be aware of, is that this is also a choice. You get to make your own rules, exhale as you let go of the tension of the need to have a “cool gang” or a gang who constantly challenges you or “makes you better”.
This week we would love you to have a look at the people who you have in your orbit. Are there some you’d love to bring closer, and are there others that you’d like to spend a little less of your light on?
We’ve got one life, Cliquers. Let’s make it one we love.
Let’s reach for the stars.