Fostering Friendships

This week I have said goodbye to a new friend as she stops being a work colleague and we begin a life long friendship!

Throughout our lives we meet all sorts of people with whom we come in contact. We may see these people for only one day, or perhaps two, may be even a month one year or could be a lifetime, but each and every individual forms part of our lives and we have different relationships with all of them. I categorise these in three buckets:

·      Everyday fillers – those who you know as part of your everyday life

·      Essential Relationships – these you need to function every day

·      Long Life Friendships – rear and add meaning to your life

Everyday fillers

These individuals are those you don’t care much but they are part of your life – in other words you deal with them as part of your transactional everyday life. They may be customers, neighbours, work colleagues or people you come in contact with during your day; you are polite to them and they are polite to you back. They make little contribution to your live or have no effect or impact on us, they are there as part of our routine, but will not miss them when they are gone. You may see these individuals for one day or a lifetime, but you never forester that relationship and never moves form a greeting or chitchat to anything meaningful.

Essential Relationships

Then we have those who we interact more and build a relationship with and become essential for us to function. Those may again be customers, work colleagues, schoolmates, or simply someone we see on a regular bases in social circumstances (a bar, a club or at the occasional dinner party). We may share things in common; our children go to the same school, we visit the same church or live in the same area. We probably care a little bit more about these individuals than the everyday fillers and, unlike the fillers; they have an impact in our lives. This is usually as a result of us choosing to build a long-term relationship (we worked together for a long time or have lived in the same street for years) we have clicked with them and have form an alliance that makes us feel comfortable with them.

With this people, while we are with them we enjoy their company, due to the more in-depth relationship their behaviour affects us (we slightly care about what they think or do) but at the end of the day when they are gone we would probably not miss them and may never see them again, unless circumstances brings us together in the future in which case you are pleased to see them. But you wouldn’t go out of your way to keep in touch. Social media has widen the scope to stay in touch with people so perhaps we will continue to communicate with them but this essential relationships become everyday fillers, we don’t really care and we just scroll pass their posts on Facebook unless we want to bitch about their new job, friends, houses or holidays.

Long Life Friendships

These are those we care about, and have a massive impact in our lives. These people are generally those we have chosen to be part of our lives. This group are instrumental to our day-to-day life, long term plans and in general they are part of who we are. We enjoy their company and respect them for who they are; we care about their opinion and we value their input. These individuals may not be in our lives every day, but they are present and always there. Everything about them matters and distance or time has no effect on how we feel about them, they have a special place in our lives.  We, and they, have chosen to build a long life relationship and will forester that relationship for the rest of our lives.

And fostering relationships starts as everyday filler, moving to an essential relationship before you become a long life friend!

Many of the people I consider important in my life started as everyday fillers, becoming essential relationships and gradually I cared enough to continue having them in my life. They moved from someone I knew to someone I liked to someone I care about. And I may only see once these individuals in a blue moon, but having them as part of my life makes a difference and I work hard to continue fostering those friendships for a lifetime.

I am grateful for all the people I know and have met in my life, whether they are everyday fillers, essential relationships or long life friends, I think being able to have people around you is important to keep us going and remain sane. Foster each of those relationships individually and how you want them to affect your life, they will make you who you are and bring that richness in your everyday life.

Week Thirty-five – Happiness!

“What a wonderful day! 

Someone is bound to come and mess it up!”

Happiness is something that often is contagious and makes you feel good, and it comes in different shapes and sizes. If you could bottle up happiness and sell it, you’d become a millionaire, and many would love you for it. Many people spend their entire lives searching for happiness and many never find it. You know when happiness has stroke you because it gives you that warm feeling inside which comforts you and makes you want to shout from the rooftop. In short, happiness is something that should be part of out lives, as it gives you positive energy, great attitude and helps you get by every day, giving you a wonderful day, even if someone comes and messes it up!

But why is happiness something so hard to get, to achieve or to make part of our lives? I am not saying it does not exits, but often it only comes in short busts and some time too few and far in between, yet it is so easy to do, to be happy. This week I was witness to how simple and easy it is to be happy, and what a difference is makes in your life. Now some say that there are several factors that affect people’s moods, and that it is hard to be happy when everything around you seems dark, when everything you know is negative and the whole environment around you is grey. With that in mind, my experience this week may be close to this argument as I was in sunny southern Spain where from 7.30 am to 9.30 pm you had cloudless blue skies and temperatures reaching 39 degrees! And everyone you met was happy!

But I do think that it is more that just the weather that makes people happy, I think it is cultural. I think that it is people’s attitudes that make a difference. The picture I chose for this blog and the quote in it were taken from a restaurant I had dinner this week in Marbella, Spain. This is an area called Andalucía and as I began to get inspired by Andalucía and it’s people, I knew I had to dedicate this week’s blog to a great group of people like no other, “los Andaluces!”

But let me give you an example of what I saw. There are many people out there that are positive and inspiring, many nations whose people are great examples to many of us for their outlook of life, but here, in Andalucía, was different. We are talking about a group of people from a province of Spain, they are Spaniards and in many ways their traditions and ways of living are similar to other provinces of Spain. However, here people really knew the meaning of life. Everywhere we went we met someone who after 5 minutes had made you feel comfortable and had opened up his or her lives to you. In here there are no barriers, no borders and no inhibitions. From the taxi driver, to the owner of a restaurant, to a total stranger in the streets, they would welcome you, talk to you, crack a joke, and tell you things about them unlike in many places where people wouldn’t even share anything if they’ve known them for years! But what was amazing is that this came natural to them, it was not a gimmick of a group of people who try to impress tourist, it is in their nature, to be happy. And when you are happy you are friendly and therefore you are open, you have no predigest against anyone and anyone can be your friend. When you are happy you tell a joke, and when you tell a joke you laugh, that laughter makes you feel good and if you feel good you feel comfortable. If you feel comfortable with someone you feel you can open up and if you do then all barriers that surround humans go down, all borders become obsolete and there is no longer a reason why not to share things with that person. This I think is the simple formula that people from this part of Spain apply to their lives.

It is, of course, hard to achieve for one simple reason; we are not always happy. Think about it. When you are not happy you are not friendly, if you are not friendly you are not in the mood for jokes, if you are not in the mood you won’t smile let alone laugh and therefore you don’t make people feel comfortable, if they don’t feel comfortable they can’t open up and communication breaks down, barriers come up and it is hard to share anything with people. In short, it all comes down to being happy!

Ok, so this week I was touched by the abundance of happiness Andaluces showed me, and I was of course on holiday, the weather was hot and there was not a single cloud in the sky, but the biggest lesson for me was that positivism, happiness, attitude or whatever you want to call it is contagious, it is an art and it is so essential in our lives. And yes, it can be a wonderful day and someone can come and mess it up, but only us have the power to drive this and make sure we remain happy all of our lives. The benefits are endless, and the rewards are great. Just remember the chain reaction formula I describe earlier on, one thing leads to another, and it all comes down to you. So I dare you to be happy, not just for a moment or two, a day or a month; but be happy all of your life, laugh out loud, tell a joke, smile, share with people things about you and what makes you tick, open up to those you meet, say good morning to a stranger in the street, and don’t let anyone come and mess up your wonderful day!

Week Thirty-one – Family and Friends!

My father use to say, “In life you can choose your friends but not your family” and he was right, but both are equally important in our lives.

There is nothing worst than a terrible silence or long pauses when you are desperately trying to make polite conversation with someone you have very little in common. Or those moments of awkward time together with someone you know but really share hardly any emotional attachments. We all have been there, and we all have experience this even with people we have known for a long time. Some people say there is no chemistry if you don’t “hit it off” with someone, some times that special “bond” may not exist, but whatever it is, it is clear that there are some people we would rather not see very often unless we have to!

On the other hand, one of the greatest feelings in this world is when you can sit with someone and just talk for hours and feel good about it. Those times when you can just sit there a talk, feel that you are being listened to and it just feels natural being there. There are no awkward moments, and slices are always a pause to reflect on what has been said and continue with the conversation. And at no point you feel that time is ticking in the background, in fact, often you run out of time, because you have so much more to say. Those are special moments we all have shared with people we know and have in our lives.

This week I have remembered the importance of Friends and Family, and not that I had forgotten about it, but sometimes we take things for granted and become blasé about people in our lives. You may have heard the expression that says “You don’t know what you have until you lose it” which is often associated with someone breaking up from a relationship realising that what they had was good. Or sometime when someone close to us has passed away, and we then realised how important he/she was in our lives. Far too often we wait until the end to realise that what we had was good, and this is because we don’t always remember to focus on those around us.

But let me share with you, as always, two experiences this week that showed me how vital friends and family are in our lives. Let’s start with friendship which is so key to humans and part of our every day lives.

When I first joined Face book back in 2007 I was exited to know that the world had created a space where I was able to re-connect with people I had met in various stages of my life. I began to connect with so many people I knew and enjoyed their company. I know people are very cautious about Face book and the use of it, and I agree that social media has become very dangerous, but to me is just as dangerous as what you say in your local pub, there is always someone listening or sharing this information, so you only tell people what you want them to know! Nevertheless for me this was a great vehicle to re-kindle with so many friends. However, virtual social networking is hard work, and you have to constantly be there to keep up with all that is happening and remain in touch with people. So I guess this is no different to what it was like before we had Face book, the only difference is that now you can communicate with so many people across the world instead of just a few in your local pub! This fact alone make social networking on the Internet a great place to be and the added advantage is that nowadays you don’t need to be in the same pub to be able to keep those relationships going.

We have always known that it’s hard work to keep up with friends and this may be due to the fact that not everyone you know may be one of those individuals you have “chemistry” with, or a more deep meaningful relationship that goes beyond a drink and a packet of crisps on a Friday evening. And you don’t need to see those special friends every day to know he/she is a great friend. What made me realise this is when I met my long-standing friend, Charlotte More, after more then 3 years of just communicating through virtual social networking. We sat in Starbucks drinking a coffee and picking up from where we left last time we saw each other, as if time had not passed by. It is a great feeling and one hard to describe, but even after all this time we had so much to talk and in fact ran out of time. We said goodbye not knowing when will it be the next time we see each other but our friendship is so strong and so important that it doesn’t matter how far we are, or how often we see each other, there will always be room for a coffee and a great chat in Starbucks!

As Charlie and I said goodbye and I reflected on this, I realised that moments like this remind me that friendship is more than just having the person near you, is about sharing emotions and experiences that makes that bond, that chemistry, that special something that every time you meet you can spend hours just catching up and enjoying each other’s company.

So what about Family? The picture I have shared with you all in this blog has, of course my friend Charlie, but also my family. My father said you can’t choose your family, and he was right to some extend, but whom you marry and have your own family with is your choice! In my case I chose to marry an incredible woman who turns out to be also a great friend! And my children are a product of that loving bond between us, so I guess I chose my family and very happy to have them in my life! And I realised how important they are in my life when this week I found myself alone in my house as they left for their summer vacation in Spain. And what has really brought home the importance of family is that being alone in the house reminds me how empty my life is without them! Yes we all enjoy peace and quite from time to time, but when you find yourself wondering around not hearing the shouting and fighting and noises they make, you realise how important those noises are in your life! This experience helps me remember that I am who I am because of them, and this should never be taken for granted.

I guess we are who we are because of those around us, both friends and family, and that no matter how far or close they are, they form a vital part in our lives. So don’t wait to know what you have until you lose it, it may be too late to get it back.