I’m guessing everyone had a good weekend. Let’s just jump right into it.

Musings Episode 75: Relationships…

When you think about socialising, the term can be defined in many ways, and is really a multi-purpose thing. It fits into our daily life on many levels – platonically, romantically, etc.

People socialise for several reasons – maintaining friendships, getting acquainted with new people for the sake of acquiring new friends; reinforcing/building onto romantic relationships, creating new romantic relationships; expanding social networks for business purposes; maintaining family relationships; socialising to learn new things – maybe a skill you want to develop or just for the sake of honing your current skill in the art of conversation.

When you look at the list above, it’s more than obvious that socialising is primarily used for the sake of creating or maintaining relationships throughout life in general.

Socialising also takes time…and time is a valuable asset that’s always wise to spend smartly.

So if you’re spending something as precious as time on socialising, naturally you want the experience of socialising to be one of quality – because you want the relationships you form from socialising to be of quality.

And when you think about it, relationships are something people have and have had throughout their natural lives. For some, relationships have consisted of quantity over quality, and vice versa.

Time, socialising, and relationships are all intrinsically linked to each other. Meaning time is the metaphorical money you invest at life’s “investment firm” of socialising, in the hopes to see a good return on your investment in the form of relationships.

But unlike currency, your focus on your ROI isn’t about quantity, so much as it is quality.

You may want a large social network, as the natural way of thinking is that knowing a lot of people can help you get a lot of things accomplished.

However the main caveat of that is while you may know of a lot of people, the relationships formed may not give you the strongest return on your investment.

And in this game called life, you’ve gotta learn to invest. So you get your feet wet, take a few losses in the beginning, and become wiser for the next time around.

I’ve noticed the older I get the more I prefer my social circle to be smaller.

Socialising with a lot of people is a great thing – don’t get me wrong. In socialising for friendships, romantic relationships, and even business, the more people you gain exposure to, the more you realise what type of people you want in your life.

And the more you hone in on what type of people you want in your life, the higher chance you have of your time being invested in higher quality relationships.

It’s like having an essential wardrobe – everything in it complements you well, is versatile, is made with care and dedication, and you enjoy wearing everything in it.

For friendships, you want to know that your friends have your back, that they really know you – understand you, respect your time, and have your best interest at heart – in general they uplift you.

For romantic relationships, it’s the same thing, and an even bigger investment…more risks, more time. It’s one person getting to know you on an even deeper level, learning what your vulnerabilities are, learning what pushes your buttons, what makes you tick, and you coming to know the same about them.

For family, again the same thing – but probably the most taken for granted relationships of all. It’s interesting because sometimes, in people having the underlying assumption that they are family, they also assume there’s nothing left to learn about  their family – which can actually make family relationships have a wider “knowledge gap” than when it comes to building friendships with people you’re just acquainted with.

For business, the game is similar but totally different at the same time. It’s an entirely different animal, a totally different investment. Not every follower is your fan, and sometimes (like many entrepreneurs know) you’ve got to keep things close to your vest.

Business relationships shouldn’t just be focused around your customer either, but all your stakeholders – everyone inside and outside an organisation. Get the wrong people who only look out for their self-interests or what’s comfortable for them, and you’ve got toxic investments ready to slowly strangle the lifeline of your company or your milestones.

Overall I like to think of quality relationships as small miracles. The human race has seen and participated in a lot (and I do mean a lot) of war…and they still do.

History has shown us that conflict has the potential to match cooperation – and vice versa…but really, relationships – the art of caring about, understanding, knowing, and working with each other – are essential to human survival; and entirely dependent on people making the effort to get to know each other on a deeper, more quality level.

Unfortunately in the past (and still today), this way of thinking has been known to be deliberately fragmented, further dividing the human race by separating each other based on a skin colour or location.

So when you think about relationships, they’re really like small miracles. Socialising is an attraction of energy, but sometimes you can have energy vampires.

Quality relationships are literally an attraction of higher energies towards each other, which can form a bond that has the potential to be unbreakable – if said energies stay at a positive, higher level.

And when you think about that and transfer it to something more “physical”, as people, we all wear different “masks”.

I wouldn’t say we act differently, but perform differently in different relationships.

A person can act the same, in regards to choosing to let their personality or good energy consistently shine through – but like sports, when you have to get sport specific, you work with different equipment, terrain, players, etc…you train differently.

You may still train hard, but you change your training, so you can tailor your performance for that particular sport, as you know different things can excel you in different ways.

And when you start thinking about relationships like sports teams and energy, you start to realise that you want players beside you who are in it to win it, but on a higher level.

You want players that know, and expect you to know, that by having your best interest at heart as well as theirs – that that thinking – pushes the whole team forward – it moves a whole team forward…and in moving a whole team forward, you can move mountains.

Think about it.

As always…

Stay awesome.

– Rego

Improve Your Lifestyle. Improve Yourself. This is Life. This is Rego’s Life.™

Musings Episode 75: Relationships… is a post from and appeared first on Rego’s Life.