Ross Raymond Nunamaker

This post very much addresses My Words to Live By, specifically, Build and Maintain Relationships.

When I journal each day I ask myself:

• if I was doing a good job sustaining my physical life – right nutrients, good sleep; 
• if I got some physical activity in – walking, racquetball; 
• if I engaged in scholarship – read, write, present; and 
• if I engaged in relationships – friends, family.

For someone whose core values are hope and love of learning, these four areas help me gauge how well I’m living my life in accordance to what is important to me.

The first two allow me to do everything else and are reasonably easy to measure.

The second two are also straight-forward as my activity is typically walking/hiking and racquetball and my scholarship boils down to did I read or write? This could be fiction or non-fiction and I could be writing something new, outlining or researching, or editing.

Relationships. These are tough for me. Probably not exclusively to me. 

As I reflected on how I wanted to live my life, I did not give relationships the place they deserved despite one of my goals being to eventually have my daughters back in my life. It was a situation out of my control. I couldn’t force it. I could leave a door open. I could reach out on occasion. In truth I was frustrated that more progress hadn’t been made, so I kept the goal, but ignored relationships as being significant to day to day living.

I came around. In the end I have to trust, or hope, that they will come to realize that situations are rarely black and white, perspectives in hindsight are different than in the moment and from person to person, and that talking is better than not. For context, this began as a consequence of my filing for divorce, which in itself is probably another example of my own issue with relationships.

Like everything, our relationships change over time. The people in our life change as our situations change. Some remain throughout on a consistent basis, while others modulate.

I was fascinated by the structure Paul Adams outlined in his work “The Real Life Social Network”. I wrote about it in general terms here, when I was promoting life coaching.

Much earlier, when I was heavily engaged in how social networks operated related to my placeblogging, I also addressed Adams and his slidedeck, which is still available on Slideshare, 

Despite it being ‘old’ by internet standards, it remains very true related to people IRL and their social networks and those capacities.

He specifically addresses temporary, weak, and strong ties or relationships. Weak is capped at about 150 (this also happens to be Dunbar’s number).

Simply put, we are able to manage up to 150 weak relationships and the number drops to ten for strong ones.

Ten honest to goodness strong relationships can reasonably be maintained.

We ought to be able to handle that right? 

Maybe some can, but even identifying those ten, who are not temporary, but significant, strong relationships can be challenging. It forces you to consider what you want from relationships and who you want them to be with. It is not as easy as one would think.

I recently decided to set my phone on permanent ‘do not disturb’ mode. My phone keeps removing it, but I keep turning it back on. It does allow me to add contacts to by-pass the DND and that was how I determined who my ten or twenty people that I am willing to be interrupted for came to be. If I am always willing to take their call, or consider taking it, they must rank, right?

Now these blend some temporary with my strong relationships, but once you get it to this level that card sort is much easier than working through hundreds of contacts and connections.

Then, ask yourself, of that ten or even twenty including some temporarily strong or weak, but closer to strong than not, how often do you engage with them one to one?

That is the question I ask myself each day. Did I engage in relationships today, and which ones?

Living alone, I have to make more of an effort. I don’t consider going to work engaging in relationships, because I wouldn’t engage if I wasn’t at work. I do consider engaging in relationships when attending writing groups or going to meetings of various sorts where I am active.

As much as I enjoy the sanctuary of my home, I respect that relationships are also important, can not be taken for granted, and need to be actively cultivated to remain strong.

Do you think about your relationships? Who are your ten strong relationships with? How do you actively manage and grow them? Do you even consider them?