In pursuing your own happiness and success you are who you surround yourself with and you will lose some people along the way. Creating expectations that everyone is going to support you is only going to lead to disappointment. Or if you assume that just because someone ‘likes’ you or is family or a friend, that they are going to support you. Read on How to Declutter your Contact List in Order To Become Successful.
Here are some stages How to Declutter your Contact List in Order To Become Successful.
Sort Them Out! List all the people that you interact with both professionally and personally regularly and actually hold a role in your life.
Put them into Categories:
- Professional – you should keep your contacts and those you liaise with sorted out so you understand the context and boundaries of those relationships (article coming soon on this)
- Personal – you will need to be brutally honest about your relationships.Don’t worry you don’t need to show anyone this list so be honest with yourself.
Look at your lists, who is supportive of your goals?
When it comes to the people we love, their encouragement and negativity can make or break you so you need to know who you can share your vision and goals with. It can be a sensitive topic and it is not always black and white. In extreme cases you need to ‘cut’ certain people out; but in most cases because you love them you don’t want to cut them out however you find it difficult to manage the relationships if they don’t support what you are doing with your life.
You cannot control the world around you but you can control yourself
- Be Prepared
Have some standard responses to use with people that you do not want to discuss your life, goals and ambitions with. Having these will allow you not to feel anxious or awkward when asked about something you do not wish to share.
Just because someone asks you a question, does not mean you have to give them the answer and/or go into great detail. Keep it short and simple.
- Be Selective
You don’t need to share everything about your life with everyone you know. This is why it is important to understand who you discuss what with. Some people are great friends but they can’t help you with your professional goals, some people are great for your professional life but not for your personal life etc
- Time Allocation
Organise and limit your time with people according to the value and impact that they will have on your life or for a given need. If you want to move forward in your life you need to spend the required amount of time with the people that are going to help you get there. Remember your time is also not about spending it with someone else it is also about the time you spend with yourself and the actual action taking.
- Priorities and Downtime
Depending on what you want to achieve you will need to accept the fact that you will not be able to attend every social affair. However this is not to say that you have to miss out on everything. You do need some down time. Choose your activities wisely and ensure that your fun time meets your needs. The people who you share this time with needs to be people you can relax and have fun with.
- It’s not all about you
It is about giving too and sometimes your time is for other people, you must give to receive. However be careful, by all means be there for those you love and care for but avoid unnecessary drama. This will only have a negative effect on your mindset and energy.
So who should you surround yourself with?
Those whose energy and mindset are similar or further advanced than yours. If you surround yourself with negative people that energy will inevitably affect you, likewise if you surround yourself with positive people that will also have an effect on you. Positive people include mentors (online and offline, directly or indirectly); a peer group who understand where you are at and who you have synergy with and supportive friends and family.
Online Influence – You can follow many however can only engage with a few
Be mindful. Although you can get connected to many, you can only learn and be truly positively impacted by a handful of people at any given time. Choose the people that inspire you but also who you can learn something useful from that is relevant to where you are at now.
How to Declutter your Contact List in Order To Become Successful
Have fun decluttering, you will feel a lot better for it and will see the benefits almost immediately. Reach out if you need help, you are not alone.