This past Saturday, I went out to this wonderful art and music event organized by Create:Fixate.  It started with the premiere of a documentary on love and relationship called Song of Songs.  It was a beautiful film which gave me a glimpse of how 2 people in love can create a lasting monogamous relationship.  I couldn’t help but feel the the desire to fall in love after viewing it.  Though the documentary moved me and gave me hope, it really did not provide any answers on how to maintain this type of timeless love.

After the movie, I spent some time contemplating the art while sipping on a few drinks… before I was pulled to dance and mingle with old and new friends.

Later on, I decided to face my destiny by getting my first tarot card reading EVER.  I don’t particular believe in everything the reader told me but she actually said something true: “You have a lot of friends” (Good guess, huh?).

People often don’t realize how important it is to create and maintain a diverse social circle.  Unlike a professional network group where your contacts are mostly internal to your industry in order to help you get work done more efficiently, your social circle should include as many and as varied of people as you can.  These friends and acquaintances can help you get exposed to more of your current or future interests.  More importantly, they can connect you to people that are outside of your typical reach which can create opportunites for personal development, mentorship and coaching.  Chris at How to Have More Social Success actually has a nice step-by-step article on how to get a social life.

The way I like to describe a healthy social circle is by imagining yourself as the sun with multiple orbitting planets.  As the central star of your universe, you want to project a lot of sunlight to reach as many people as you can.  You are creating value in your life for all your friends and acquaintances to share.  The kind of value you bring is up to you to determine (you are fun, you are the guy/girl who is in the “in” for all the parties or you are the person everyone can count on… etc) but it has to be strong enough to draw people towards you.  To make sure you cast that light as far as possible, you have to put yourself out there.  GO OUT AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN MANAGE (even on your own if needs be)!  Accept all invitations to go out.  Making a quick appearance is more appreciated than not showing up at all.

Depending on whether you are looking for a friend or acquaintance, you would place your new  friend or acquaintance as a planet in a closer or farther orbit from you.  If you like to think of social interactions in VAC terms, the gravity force that you exert on your orbitting planets is your attainability.  So if you wanted someone to become a better friend, you’d have to spend more time and energy reinforcing attainability (which is defined by compatibility, respect and legitimacy).  That means calling, texting, spending time with that person in a manner commensurate to the kind of relationship you want with him/her.

The art of creating a good ever-expanding social circle is to keep adding planets to your orbit without ever losing them.  You may change the orbitting distance that your friend is in your solar system (call or spend less time with him/her), but it is your job to make sure they don’t ever fall out of orbit with you.  The advantange of taking the initial effort of creating such social circle is that your friends will eventually develop their own network of orbitting moons.  As their network expands, you will get the chance to be introduced to new people instead of having to go out yourself to meet new people.  You will be invited out more often instead of you having to do all the event hosting.  You are now receiving compliance from your friends because they are investing their time and effort to help you expand your own social circle.

For people who hate to be single or who like to establish multiple casual relationships with members of the opposite sex , this is how you do it.  Each new person you meet, you place them and maintain them in orbit.  The one(s) you want to develop a romantic relationship with is/are the one(s) you make orbit closest to you.  If the romantic relationship ends, all you have to do is pick another person who was orbiting a little bit further from you in your solar universe, and then start to exert more gravitational force on him/her to draw them closer to you.  Easy enough, right?

So the question now becomes: how big of a social circle can you really maintain?

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