HOW TO SPRING-CLEAN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS
This is probably the toughest one for most of us. How do we clean out our collection of connections? Many of us cling on to friendships and relationships that are well past their use-by date, believing that quantity is more important than quality when it comes to the people in our lives.
Often the friends that are an important part of our lives are those friends we don’t need to see all the time. Other relationships that used to work well become toxic over time because we never vented each other’s frustrations. Here are a few ways to tidy up our relationships:
CLEAR THE AIR
To avoid relationships from becoming toxic, we need to be able to talk about positive and negative behaviours and the actions we expect from others. This can include honesty, money or intimacy. Eliminate misunderstandings, lack of patience, gossip and lies. True friendships need time, energy and attention and require forgiveness and understanding. Share your family member, friend or partner how certain behaviours make you feel. They will understand and take action.
PRACTICE GRATITUDE
There are people in our lives who touch us through certain actions or influence us in a positive way at certain times. For instance, when I was unhappy in my job and thinking of starting my own business, a woman I had only just met encouraged me in such a positive way that I completely shifted my focus towards achieving my goal. You want people like this in your life, people who inspire you. People who care about you even if they don’t know you well. Nurture these contacts, or at least give them gratitude. Even better, pick someone in your life you want to influence in a positive way and return the inspiration.
NOT ALL FRIENDSHIPS ARE FOREVER
There are people in our lives who have, over time, taken more energy than we have received from them. If you feel like it is an effort to nurture those relationships, it may be time to let them go. You may just be going through a rough patch in which case it is worth raising these issues with your partner or friend and talking about them; however, if they have been bringing you down for a while and there’s no resolution in sight, it may be time to focus on those people who make you happy instead.
SOCIALLY DISCONNECT
If you can’t let go of a real friend, start by deleting some of your Facebook friends that you aren’t close to, don’t see or hear from. We collect friends like photos and use Facebook like an album to stick them in. Do you really want to know what Frank, whom you met on a trip 5 years ago, is posting every day? If you are planning a visit you can reconnect when the time comes.
