Our social network is much more important than most people realise. It is sometimes said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
It is absolutely vital for your mental and emotional health to surround yourself with the people that lift you up, not the ones that bring you down.
Still, it’s often the case that we’re using 80-90% of our energy on the 10-20% of the relationships that drain us the most of our energy.
You cannot expect to be healthy if your social network is not serving you in a healthy way.
This exercise helps you to look at the relationships around you, and develop a healthy circle of friends around you:
– Go through your phonebook and choose at least five persons that lift you up and give you energy. It doesn’t matter how little or well you know the person, it can easily be someone you don’t know that well. What we’re looking for here is that feeling of “Ah, it was so nice to meet her/him! I’d like to do this again soon!” In other words, feelings like joy, lightheartedness, inspiration and other pleasurable feelings.
– Put a little emoji symbol in front of that persons’ name (not at the back, it’ll get lost). Use the same emoji for all of those friends, so they’re all tagged the same.
– Now this is a reminder to take the phonecall when an emoji friend calls, EVEN THOUGH you are feeling down and would rather screen the phone call. To say yes EVEN THOUGH you’d rather stay home in your pajamas, and to check on these people if you need someone to make plans with.
The goal here is to use your energy where it bounces back to you and warms your heart, instead of being drained from you.
Try this – you won’t be disappointed!
Need help developing your social connections? Try this exercise!
