I have to remind myself often that God made us to be social beings. He made us need relationships. He created us to be in relationship with HIM. When he created woman, he said "It is good for man not to be alone". Man needed relationship. The Bible also says "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.-- Ecclesiastes 4:12"
Over the past couple of years, I've come to realize that good friendships don't come easily. I've struggled at times as I've worked to define those relationships in my life and prioritized them. Back in June I went to a seminar that dealt with a very in depth certification of a form of life coaching called NeuroLinguistic Programming. One of the topics we dealt with was called Hierarchy of Relationships. During this exercise, we were told to categorize our relationships into categories: strangers, acquaintances, friends, peers and cabinet.
We had to define what each of these 5 layers looked like and create rules around each one as to what is our role and what is the other persons role. For instance a stranger is someone we don't know. The only real requirement is that they are breathing and in a place location that we are. An acquaintance is likely someone we have something in common with; it could be a mom at our kids soccer game or someone we see at church. Friends are someone a little closer. We've met them and had discussions with them possibly. Peers are people we see often and are closer friends with. They likely are there when we need them and we are there for them. A requirement in this might be that they will never lie to us or harm our family and we would do the same with them. Our inner cabinet will be our inner circle. They are the ones who will drop anything to help us if we need it. They are the ones that we call on in the middle of the night when we have a death in the family or something tragic has happened. They are also the ones that we work with for our personal growth. We can run ideas by them and know they will help us with those inner struggles and not judge us.
Understanding our relationships in this way really helps to solidify the relationships in our lives. For those of us who tend to have our hermit moments, understanding our friendships in this way really shows us where to spend out time. So, on this Hermit Day, I challenge you to really evaluate the relationships around you. Create your hierarchy and what rules and requirements are necessary for each level, then place every one you know into one of the layers-every family member, church friend, neighbor, etc. You may find that your spouse isn't even in your cabinet, and that's ok.
I truly believe you will find this exercise as freeing as I did! I found that many of my relationships were one sided and that it was ok for me to stop trying so hard to save friendships that weren't really there. Some of those I have thought to be 'close friends' actually ended up in my acquaintances or friends instead of my peers and cabinet. And that's ok too!
If you do this exercise, I'd love to hear from you and find out how it affected you and what you learned from it.
Read it. Follow it. Comment on it. Share it. (See that button up there on the right? PUSH IT and follow me!)
No comments:
Post a Comment