Your Relationships Aren't a To-Do List
How people get interested in good contact
Take a moment and think of all the friends, family, and colleagues you feel you “should” contact to catch up.
For me, it’s a long list that generates a bit of anxiety. Anxiety that stalls instead of inspires. It’s fascinating how having constant technological access to each other can have the opposite effect.
Therapy clients often get stalled when they think of their relationships as a to-do list. At the end of the day, after work, parenting, traffic, etc., the last thing we want is more tasks to tick off the list. And doesn’t texting someone, “How are you?” add one more item to theirs?
May I suggest that the best kind of contact is not efficient in the slightest? That we become more connected to people when we’re open to more than a five-minute life update?
I often suggest that people focus more on how they want to function than anxiously making a list of names. If a person wants to be kind, interested, open, and exuberant about their interests, then family and friends become the playing field for living out those principles. Then the contact becomes about moving into a more solid version of yourself than it is about keeping people happy or feeling like you’re a good daughter or brother or friend.
What if your relationships weren’t a to-do list, but a scavenger hunt for growing up a little?
Here are some starting questions:
Who is someone who would love to hear about the book I just finished?
Who can answer a question I have about the history of my family?
Who has a similar challenge or goal to me that they’re working on?
Who would be absolutely delighted to hear from me?
Who has been having a tough time?
Who is going to stir some reactivity in me that gives me a good workout?
Whom am I not telling about something important in my life?
Whom have I been mind-reading a lot? Where would it be useful to hear someone’s actual thinking?
Who is the hardest person to be curious about, and how much contact would it take to start to be curious?
Where would it be useful to know someone’s plans for the future?
Whom am I anxious to contact but will start enjoying myself the second we start talking?
What would you add to your list?
A good question can propel one more than an anxious “should.” It makes us curious enough to risk the tension or the loss of time we could always spend on other tasks.
There will always be responsibilities that feel more urgent that good contact, but none that are more useful for becoming one’s self.
That’s it for Friday! I’ll be back next week for paid subscribers with more thoughts on Christine Rosen’s book The Extinction of Experience.
Similar posts:
No amount of therapy will replace calling your mother. Or your cousin.
Seeing People as They Are (paid subscribers)
Cracking Open a Closed Relationship System
News from Kathleen
It was lovely spending time with the folks at Healthy Congregations this month. I’ve also been doing some training on systems thinking for museums, think tanks, and other orgs.
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