Tag: Friends

Grow and Deepen Your Inner Circle of Friends

Grow and Deepen Your Inner Circle of Friends
By Chandra Lynn

Having worked in music marketing my entire career, my friendships have been with people who largely live outside of my area. Because other aspects of my life were so busy, I didn’t have much time to nourish my local relationships, and honestly, I didn’t know whether I could meet people nearby that I resonated with. After I had a baby 10 years ago, and decided to work from home, I started to feel the need for local friends. I could see the appeal of having somewhere to go, like on the TV show Cheers (but not at a bar), to connect with people. But I needed a like-minded tribe.

Once I started feeling the need for close personal relationships with local friends, I opened up to the possibility of meeting people through yoga and the gym, and also reconnecting with friends that I met in past jobs, school, and in my younger years. The amazing thing was how many quality souls were also open to connecting and forming new friendships.

After years of going to the gym and not meeting anyone, I met a small group of women in my yoga class that changed my life dramatically. We not only did yoga, we found ways to connect and get to know each other. We connected about health and fitness, intimate relationships, and helped each other find our passions in our careers and in the artistic world. We supported each other through divorces, career changes, child-rearing issues and much more. We also learned how to have fun together with trips to hot springs, yoga workshops, frivolous photo shoots, and girl’s nights out. Some of us gather to create women’s circles where we explore topics such as spirituality, personal growth, rituals and other things that support our lives in reaching our goals and potential.

Now, instead of going to bars to party, we look forward to our circles and our fun times together, and we don’t need alcohol to have fun. Don’t get me wrong, we’re known to throw back bottles of champagne, but we don’t need it to feel high on anything but the connection that we have in the deep love and support that we bring to each other’s lives.

I call this close circle of friends my Shakti Sisters. They know who they are and how much they mean to me because we don’t live in the land of the unspoken. We tell each other what we mean to our lives and actively plan time to spend together because we desire the connection and how much we can learn from each other’s differences and core competencies.

If you would like to cultivate a close circle of friends like this, I recommend the following:

Open yourself up to the possibility that the woman standing next to you in yoga class, at the supermarket, or picking kids up from school could be your new bestie. Obviously not everyone is going to connect at that high of a frequency. However, it starts with you being open to the possibility and attracting new friends.

Ask them a question about themselves to show your interest. How they answer will tell you a lot about them. Through a dialogue with them, you can sense their energy and whether they are somebody that you would like to learn more about.

If this new acquaintance seems interesting, invite them to coffee or happy hour to discuss something you have in common, like yoga, your kids, your careers, or other hobbies.

Follow up quickly to set a time and have a relaxed approach to the experience. They may or may not be somebody that you’ll want to keep in touch with after the initial meeting. But if they are, you can connect through social media and invite them to events or other things that you think they may be interested in.

Friendships take time to build and some people are more open than others. And if they can’t make a meeting, it may be that they are super busy even though they do want to get to know you. So try again. But if they seem like they’re too busy for you after a couple offers then they are not in the same place with welcoming new friends and allocating time for them as a priority.

One of the most amazing experiences with this has been the women that I’ve met through other women. Many times when you really connect with someone, they have friends that are also like-minded and may even connect with you on a deeper level than the person that you met through. So check out their friend groups by participating in things that they invite you to as well.

I always suggest new friends discuss some things that are normally a bit unspoken, like how often they are available to stay connected. Sometimes they want to text all the time and sometimes they only can meet with you a couple times a week and use texting just to confirm logistics. Everyone has personal preferences for how they’d like to communicate and how much time they have to spend. It’s important to honor that and also be clear in your communication about your own preferences. This safeguards the relationship from communication problems down the road because each person knows what to expect and the best ways to communicate with each other.

Romantic relationships and jobs come and go, but true friends will stand by you as witnesses and supporters for your entire life. If you do the work of communicating properly, nurturing a relationship, staying connected, and keeping the give and take balance in check, your friendships can offer the most fun, supportive and enlightening experiences of your life.

January 13, 2023
The 51% Rule

The 51% Rule – Boundaries are Your Friend

By Chandra Lynn

A friend reminded me today of my 51% rule. Have you ever felt like you are doing more to help your partner then they are to help themselves? Sometimes it just seems easier to take control and get things done on your own than ask your partner to do their part. And they may be completely happy with having you take care of business. But after all while, you may find that you lead in all ways in the relationship, and start feeling overwhelmed and tired of being the one to handle everything.

To prevent this from happening, I recommend each partner agree to carry A MINIMUM OF 51% of the work load on their end. When someone is doing AT LEAST 51% of the work for their own life, things will stay more balanced. Helping somebody with 49% of their work is still a lot when it comes to managing someone else’s stuff. I could even argue that is too high of a percentage. However, if someone needs you to help them with an area of their life, and you are feeling happy to do it, consider making sure they understand that you will only take on a maximum of 49% of the tasks that need to be accomplished.

I learned this the hard way. I saw a former partner struggling with his career, so I jumped into immediate action. Being a fledgling marketing consultant, I was actually excited to put my skills to work for him. Without him asking me, I built him all the marketing materials that he needed to present himself in a more professional way. At the end of it, he was grateful but didn’t really leverage it to the extent that I had hoped. I could see that the struggles in his career had more to do with his ambition then it had to do with his ability to present him self in a professional way. As a result, even with the new materials, he did not apply himself, and I felt like all the work I did to support him was for nothing. I distinctly remember going to a diner and telling him that I needed to see him doing at least 51% of the work to reach his goals for his life. And, I would be happy to do whatever I could to support him, but I needed to see him applying himself more than I was putting in to help him.

Jumping in to help a partner is a noble thing, but I can also enable bad behavior in your partner. There is nothing wrong with being supportive, but you have to be careful with behaviors that lead them to where you think is best for them before they have even asked for help.

The friend who reminded me of this was looking back at her life and realizing that she has always done the majority of the work in the relationship, and her partner was happy to have her do it. However, he started taking advantage of the fact that she provided so much with little appreciation or awareness of the effort involved.

If you feel overwhelmed with all that you have to do for yourself, your partner, your kids and other people in your life, ask yourself whether you feel your partner is stepping up to their full potential and supporting you in the way that you need them to. If they’re not and you’re enabling them to kick back, please consider that your standards are not high enough for yourself in terms of expecting a partner to do their share. Ask specifically for what you need from them, and make sure you get their agreement before creating new expectations that they will deliver.

Everyone needs to feel useful, needed, purposeful and that they bring value to a relationship. This post is to remind you that you can do this by supporting your partner and those around you, as long as you set healthy boundaries and set reasonable expectations with your partner to do a minimum of 51% of the work in their own life.

July 28, 2022
Updating Your Intimacy Ladder

Where Are Your Friends on Your Intimacy Ladder?
By Chandra Lynn

Have you ever had a bestie that you talked to you almost every day and now you’re not as close to as you used to be? That disconnection can cause you pain and make you question the relationship and what you mean to them now (and vice versa). There are lots of reasons why our relationships with our friends change over time. Sometimes we come together when we’re single and have lots of time to invest in each other, and then one gets into a relationship that soaks up their available time. Sometimes it’s hard to invest while juggling a job, kids, romantic relationship and more, leaving less time for friends.

This is all understandable, but the problem lies in not communicating the change of expectations in the relationship. We can take friends for granted, thinking that they’ll just be there when we have time. But actually, it can be hurtful to friends when we’re there one minute and disappear the next. Some friends are casual about it and it feels like no time has passed after not seeing each other for a long period of time. Other friends get really hurt by our lack of availability and can feel abandoned. You may have felt this way too and can relate.

This happens a lot when two single people spend a lot of time together and one gets into a relationship and is no longer available. The single friend is still as available as (s)he always was though and needs to be reassured that your need for change doesn’t diminish what they mean to you.

It’s totally natural for a relationship to go through changes, but it really helps when you lead a discussion about the change and seek to create a renewed agreement about the basis of the friendship and what each of you can offer, including time commitments. How possible is it to check in every day, week, month or year?

There are a couple of things that you can do to prevent degradation in the relationship. The first thing is to communicate verbally or in writing what that person truly means to you and what they’ve given to your life. That provides them reassurance that they are valuable to you and you don’t want them to disappear from your life and you don’t plan to event abandon them in any way, shape, or form.

The second thing that you can do is consider changing their status on your relationship ladder. For years, you could have thought of them as your number one friend and placed them on the very top of your relationship ladder. Then, all of a sudden, they are no longer available to you the way they were due to life circumstances, and you feel hurt. What can you do? You can consider changing their status on your ladder. Moving a friend down a couple of rungs on the ladder does not mean that you don’t care about them anymore. It means that you change the expectations for that friendship and adjust them to meet the current status based on what’s going on in life. When you feel hurt, it’s easy to think of just throwing a friend off the ladder entirely, but it’s really not necessary in most cases. Unless a friend has intentionally hurt you or intended you harm, all you really need to do is lower them a couple of rungs on the ladder while both of you are doing your own thing, and check-in with them from time to time to see if they want to update the blueprint for the relationship.

Sometimes, you have to jockey more than one friend’s position on your ladder. There are occasions in life where you reach a point that older friendships are outdated and just not serving you to lift your highest potential. There is nothing wrong with this, and it should actually be embraced as a healthy part of evaluating the value of your relationships, and how much you’ve grown and evolved.

One of my very best friends from high school has moved around on my ladder to the point where she’s probably touched every rung. There were times that we were inseparable and there were years that we never talked at all. I’m happy to say that we see each other on a regular basis now. What kept us connected all these years is consistent communication of a mutual desire to stay connected even when time goes by and we can’t see each other.

I have another bestie that I’ve known since the sixth grade and she lives in another state. We’ve spent more time apart then together. We managed to stay connected and now consider ourselves to become full-fledge sisters. We flew across the country to see each other during crisis times and for major celebrations like graduation. We sent cards when snail mail became practically obsolete. We are even connected on a psychic level now.

If a relationship with a friend isn’t working, consider changing their status on your relationship ladder instead of throwing them off entirely. You connected with them for some reason initially, and you may find them valuable in your friend circle once your expectations are adjusted. With that said, there are times when a relationship is not healthy and should be let go. Consider the most graceful exit you can under those circumstances and always take the high road.

My friends have meant everything to me and I fostered those relationships over many many years. Although I don’t actively seek friends, I am open to new connections that resonate on a higher vibration and they are being attracted. I love my friends and will do everything to protect and preserve these precious connections, starting with communicating what I want out of the relationship and seeking agreements about what to expect from one another which informs where we are on each other’s ladder. I also invite them to let me know if my expectations need to change, and I make sure they know what’s in my heart.

Who is on your ladder and is the current status working for you, or does it need a little adjusting?

July 20, 2022
74 Inspiring Friendship Quotes
74 Inspiring Friendship Quotes from The Positivity Blog

Few things have such a huge impact on happiness and the enjoyment, depth and plain fun of life as the friendships we have. It could be the friendships with our partners, family members, co-workers and the people we have known for a few years now or since we were kids. Or even with people we have never even met at the other side of the world or the pets we love. So I’d like to share some of the best advice on this topic from the people who have walked this earth over the past hundreds and thousands of years. This is 74 thought-provoking, beautiful, sometimes poignant and sometimes funny quotes on friendship.
1. “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” – Walter Winchell
2. “If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.” – Winnie the Pooh
3. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway
4. “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” – C.S. Lewis
5. “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” – David Tyson
6. “Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.” – Washington Irving
7. “There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.” – Jim Henson
8. “A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” – Leo Buscaglia
9. “Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.” – Thomas J. Watson
10. “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” — Dale Carnegie
11. “A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.” – Unknown
12. “How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em.” – Shel Silverstein
13. “Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.” – Oscar Wilde
14. “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” – Confucius
15. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” – Arnold H. Glasgow
16. “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch
17. “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” – Albert Schweitzer
18. “The real test of friendship is can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?” – Eugene Kennedy
19. “A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.” – Arnold H. Glasgow
20. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
21. “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” – Muhammad Ali
22. “If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” – Winnie the Pooh
23. “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.” – Ally Condie
24. “One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.” – George Santayana
25. “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” — Audrey Hepburn
26. “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.”’ – Socrates
27. “One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.” – Clifton Fadiman
28. “Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness. “ – Leo F. Buscaglia
29. “Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.” – Charles Lamb
30. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
31. “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” – Zig Ziglar
32. “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
33. “You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.” – Laurence J. Peter
34. “Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.” – Mark Twain
35. “Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.” – William Arthur Ward
36. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker
37. “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” – Woodrow T. Wilson
38. “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” – Ed Cunningham
39. “Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.” – Oscar Wilde
40. “Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” — Anthony Robbins
41. “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” – Elisabeth Foley
42. “There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found While journeying east and west – The only folks we really wound Are those we love the best. We flatter those we scarcely know, We please the fleeting guest, And deal full many a thoughtless blow To those who love us best.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
43. “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” — Oprah Winfrey
44. “Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.” – William Hazlitt
45. “A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.” – Arthur Brisbane
46. “A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing.” — John Tillotson
47. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” – Donald Miller
48. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” – Anais Nin
49. “If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” – Maxwell Maltz
50. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” – Bernard Meltzer
51. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” — Henry David Thoreau
52. “Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.” – Emil Ludwig
53. “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” — Joseph F. Newton Men
54. “Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.” – Charles Kingsley
55. “A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” – Donna Roberts
56. “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate. “ – Linda Grayson
57. “It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” – Marlene Dietrich
58. “Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.” – Gloria Naylor
59. “There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.” – Diana Cortes
60. “Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” — Miles Franklin
61. “It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.” – Epicurus
62. “Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.” – William James
63. “The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
64. “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” – Abraham Lincoln
65. “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
66. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” – Tennessee Williams
67. “If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends — you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.” – Alice Duer Miller
68. “The best time to make friends is before you need them.” – Ethel Barrymore
69. “In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” – Khalil Gibran
70. “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buechner
71. “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.” – Unknown
72. “The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.” — Dale Carnegie
73. “Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” – Albert Camus
74. “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.” – Brandi Snyder
From The Positivity Blog
January 28, 2018