Do you need to say no? Or at least consider it as an option more often. Do you ever examine the things you do participate in, and long to focus less on the activities you feel you need to do, and more on the activities you want to do? I believe what the world has shown us recently more than anything else is that underneath all the noise and so-called ‘being busy’ we might only need a few key basics. Looking around some of these basics can be seen in the form of comfortable clothing and natural hair colour but other basics like the quality of relationships are a little more difficult to identify, although are ever more important. The right connections are likely the most important basic of all. How often do you think about ‘the who’ you need in your life? We have an unusual and unexpected opportunity right now, we can for the very first time see clearly who we needed, who we missed and why. As we move back into normality with great speed and excitement, we might be missing a moment of clarity. All the rushing might be stealing a unique opportunity from us to be selective. A choice has emerged with some key facts and indicators and we might be foolish to ignore them. Choices about who we wish to share our experiences with are important, some even say we might be the sum of our four closest friends. Are these people the ones that know you for all that you are? Or do you alter yourself to fit in with them?
Friends and their roles.
You may have learnt recently who your true friends are, or at the very least the different roles people play in your world. You will now be able to answer the following: Are you surrounded by people that encourage you in whatever way you need to be encouraged? People, who elevate you to be all that you can be, believing unconditionally in your abilities, even when you are not so sure? Or are you surrounded by superficiality and people who spend their time waiting for their turn to talk in conversations, those whose main purpose is to out story tell you? It might be that this is the perfect time to show gratitude or maybe if you find yourself wanting more than the superficial you might need to look for some new companions.
The cold hard truth is that 2020 and 2021 were hard years for everyone and not all people had the capacity for your needs as well as their own. They won’t tell you this, of course, they might not have even realised. You will have made up stories in your mind anyway, about being rejected or that you had annoyed them in some way. You do this to explain away their distance, manifesting peace of mind in what may have been difficult to see and understand at the time. Regardless of why some people were unavailable, you could, now it’s all a little easier, choose to view it as cleansing. It’s time for you to have the realisation that you survived without everyone you thought you needed. You may, without being consciously aware have learnt how to exist more independently. This is growth. Maybe you found something new to do with the time you would have traditionally been with these now less available friends. It's hard to loose people in this way, to just see them a differently, to hold them in a lesser regard but, there is strength in this, a positive way for you to look at your progress through this time, even if you are unable to identify it in the process.
"Many people think that the size of your social network is an indication of your likability or social status, but the true measure is in its depth."
Whereas you used to meet with friends and talk about nothing in particular, now maybe you do yoga, take a bath, go for a long walk, listen to a podcast or read a book. All our habits have altered a little bit, and mostly in an internal direction, some of this time with yourself would have been good for you. It doesn’t mean that your friends are bad or that they were not thinking of you, but it does mean that you can see people for who they are. You don’t have to carry the expectation of saying yes, doing things you don’t want to. It seems that who many of us were in lockdown is who we genuinely are. Priorities have changed, the people who used to be your main focus, might not be anymore. And that is ok.
The best and only clear positive of these social losses is that we were shown who we can and cannot live without. Maybe we don’t need everyone we had in our lives before, its ok that now some people feel like noise. You can rebuild your social calendar selectively for maybe the very first time, prioritising the relationships you have kept and worked on, and making more time for yourself in place of the time you spent with people who might now seem like unwanted fillers. In the strangest forced human experiment ever, we learnt to live in isolation, and if you are open to this view you might be able to see the value of your core relationships, this time and clarity could be good for you, even if you have started to see some dear friends in a new light. This is an opportunity for you to keep what you need and look for more of what you want.
How deep is your social network?
Many people think that the size of your social network is an indication of your likability or social status, but the true measure is in its depth. It’s ok to have a shallow and narrow social circle, maybe before now you have never thought about what type of people you want in your life. As you move back into more normal social situations, you quite likely need or want different things. It’s completely normal, there are many points in our lives that we move beyond familiar groups, this is just another one, we just weren’t expecting it.
It might help to think about it like this - You need your family differently in your teens, 20’s and 30’s, the same will apply for friends, you move through groups finding people who are in line with you. You won’t need particular friends in the same way pre and post isolation. It’s just like any other change, we move through it and there are some losses on the way. We tend to struggle to let go of people, but letting go of people is natural. What you need from people for the you that is now, might be very different than before. You’ll recognise it when you participate in previously joyful experiences, that no longer bring you joy. You might need to mourn this loss, but recognising it is the easy bit, putting yourself first, by no longer participating will be the more tricky reality. Some friends won’t understand why you now enjoy reading over drinking (or whatever your example is) but they don’t have to. They will either still invite you to things or they won’t, you have to live with your choices, its your time after all.
I know what you’re thinking, what about all the things I will be missing out on. If this is where your mind went, then you might not be ready to put yourself first. It’s ok. Don’t. This is a mere suggestion, an instant in time where if you look you can see your inner horizon. It may not reappear ever, or it might revisit you in a few months, this is an unpredictability. Isn’t it worth a quick peak while you can?
I hope that you’ll be surprised and by voicing your lack of interest in old past time, you will find that you have changed alongside your people. I hope that your clarity is that you are surrounded by like-minded people who love you in all your forms, even this new one that you are figuring out as you go. When people change, relationships will too and it’s to be expected that your old go-to activities, might not hold the same allure anymore. Own it, it is completely normal.
The Average Lockdown behavioural patterns
(I’m generalising for non-parent working professionals)
There were two basic extremes we all saw in lockdown, one was to focus on achieving something (or being occupied) and the other was drinking and watching Netflix, neither is right or wrong, we all did what we needed to do with the energy we had. Some of us did both, a lot! If you were of the first camp and you have focused on a goal and it has kept you going: fitness, diet, learning a new skill, smashing it at work, launching a new business or knitting a winter jumper. Whatever it was, were your people truly your people during this time? Did they have your back, support you genuinely, did they ask questions about your goals and listen, interestedly as you talked them through your plans? Or, did you feel that you were that annoying friend, making them feel bad, so they distanced themselves, just a little, but enough for you to notice? I’m sorry to tell you, you might need to relegate some of those people, (don’t dismiss them completely, they’ll have a place in your life, just not the place you hoped.) On the other side, if you were amongst the Netflixers, as I like to call them, did your friends understand, try to encourage you to do more or did they say the things you needed to hear? Depending on what type of person you are, you may have needed support in these choices, or maybe you needed them to encourage you to do a little bit more. Did they give you what you truly needed? Ask yourself, I mean out loud, honestly ask yourself, did your friends give you what you needed? Sometimes we need tough love and honesty, other times we need unconditional support and understanding.
No two experiences are the same and what you did in your lockdown was your choice and it is now your responsibility to live with it, but after all this time have you thought about what you want now? Change is everywhere, there is a reason hundreds of people are quitting their jobs, something in what we look for in life has altered. Whatever has altered for you, recognise it, do something with it. If the world flipped back-in-time (and time travel was a thing) we could reverse back to 2019, but we would loose everything that happened in these last 2 years, the good, the bad and the tragic. It would be like Covid never happened (which would be amazing on so many levels.) In this cruel hypothetical is there anything you would loose? Is there a gain that you can identify? Something you learned about yourself, something you mastered, a renovation completed, a procrastination overcome, a new family member born, a new relationship. There is something for all of us in this time of uncertainty, we should be able to see as a positive addition to our world. It cannot all be for nothing, and if you haven’t found it or thought about it this way, I invite you to try. This thing that you are or will be grateful for (even if it’s small) might be trying to tell you something. Please listen to it.
If the above is not where you are and you have no gains in sight, I am sorry and I hope that with time this will alter, don't force it. Some times are just bad and if surviving is all you can muster right now, it's ok.
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” — Charles R. Swindoll
Saying No Thank You is ok.
Saying No Thank you, to the things you don’t want to do anymore is ok. It should be expected, time and company have never had such rich currency. And let’s be honest, if you were not available for a catch up over zoom, do you want to be available for catch up now in person? There was something that stopped you in lockdowns, it hasn’t gone away, it’s just easier to ignore now that an expectation has returned. Don’t ignore it. Do only the things you want to do, or that you see value in. It’s not selfish, it’s honest.
So, next time you get that feeling in your gut that you don’t want to do something, but you feel pressured to attend, don’t feel bad, politely decline and do whatever it is you have been thinking about, looking forward to or putting second. This time is your time, of all the things returned in our new normal, time was not one of them. It has and forever will be yours.
"This time, is your time."
