Maintaining relationships

Developing new relationships (personal or professional) is not that hard and especially if you are an extrovert. But what needs to pass the test of time is how well we are able to maintain those relationships and what is their actual depth and richness. There can be multiple factors that makes a relationship fade away with time. This post talks about a particular mindset that can act as a barrier but to look at it on a positive side, since this barrier is created by our own selves we also hold the power to remove it.

This awareness occurred to me when my advisor shared this template with me. It was in a professional context. But I could see how I could extend even to the personal side of things. I hold on to the idea illustrated in this mentor map till date. 

So, what we are looking at is a compartmentalization of one's professional relationships. Give me names of three people whom you would reach out to for feedback on your work. Three people who fall into your safe space zone. Note how we are spreading our professional needs across a community and not limiting it to just one or two people.

On a professional side, I can see how this network map can be used to build real connections via LinkedIn too. We meet people at conferences or work-related meetings and other than our colleagues from our current teams, we often lose contact with others. So, you would see 500+ connections in a person's LinkedIn network whereas only a handful of them are the ones you are really in touch with. So, how can we ensure that we really take benefit from the connections we make through networking events. This template above can be useful there. When we add someone to our network, see which bucket do they belong in. The classification may evolve over time but to start with at the current moment,what is that dimension from where you can learn the most from them.  

Personal aspect I carried forward this idea into my personal life as well. I do try to keep this philosophy in mind for the most part -  over the time dig deeper into different relationships I have and identify what would be realistic and reasonable to expect. You would notice that we do follow this idea at a high level when we spread out our needs across different roles (your spouse, parents, friends, colleagues) but within a single role especially friendships it is easy to miss out. 

My list goes as who are my top three people in each of these categories: 

1.  dependable and I enjoy spending time with.
2.  deep personal conversations.
3.  family.
4.  help me in my personal growth.
5.  acquaintances but would love our communication to grow.
6.  my "marble jar" friend(s). This is an interesting term and has a short story associated with it. This category includes people who have earned my trust gradually over a period of time and with whom I can share things that are relatively sensitive to me. If the term marble-jar makes you curious, refer to this talk by Brene Brown [1]. 

Of course there would be people who would fit into more than one bucket but having this awareness that I do not need to look at every friendship/relationship from the same lens helps in two ways: (1) avoid building walls of disappointment which would happen when you start expecting much more from a particular relationship than what is possible, (2) have stronger relationships because I would not burden my existing relationships with unnecessary expectations and I would value and appreciate them for what they actually are offering me.  

What's ironical is how I still fall into this trap of building unreasonable expectations at times and how life gives me a gentle knock on my head and a smile comes back on my face. 

-- Dippy

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6442YcvEUH8