Upmarket Magazine

The Power of Connection: Maintaining Valuable Relationships (Part 3)

Posted: 11 Dec 2012 05:00 AM PST

Maintaining relationships requires conscious effort. It can be a challenge to balance multiple relationships, and in the age of social media it is incredibly easy to end up with a much larger social circle than ever before.

So how do you maintain these relationships? And how many relationships can you reasonably manage?

If you try to create a meaningful relationship with everyone you meet, you'll quickly get overwhelmed and end up with a large number of less-than-satisfying relationships. So, it's time to get strategic about the relationships you choose to build.

Want to Maintain Your Valuable Relationships? Think Quality Not Quantity

Take a look at the number of connections you have both online and off. If you're active on social media, the number is probably significant. Building and maintaining relationships takes time, and I'm willing to bet it would be physically impossible for you to have a meaningful relationship with everyone on your list.

According to Dr. Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology and Director of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, we humans are capable of maintaining persistent, social relationships with approximately 150 people.

The key phrase here is persistent, social relationship. Dunbar's number does not mean that you have to deep six your all of your Twitter followers or go on an unfriending frenzy; social networking relationships are meant to be loose, open and immediate. But it does mean that the more connections you have the more strategic you should be in terms of which relationships get your attention. Otherwise you risk having a ton of contacts with very few meaningful connections and that just isn't terribly fulfilling.

5 Tips for Maintaining Your Most Valuable Relationships

This series started with a discussion about where to find good connections and how to build your relationships. Here, I'll give you a few tips for how to maintain those relationships.

Step 1: Know Your Tribe. Create a manageable list of the people with whom you most want to foster a relationship. Include as much information about each person as you can, including their website, email, address, birthday and various social media profiles. Keep this list somewhere where you can review it regularly.

Step 2: Make an Effort to Connect. Really make an effort to connect with your tribe. Connect with them on whatever social media platforms you frequent and use the list features to make it easier to find and comment on their posts. Sign up for their email newsletters and follow their blogs. Comment on their blog posts and share them when appropriate. Support them the way you would like them to support you.

Step 3: Use Your List. Use your master list to keep in touch with your tribe and foster meaningful relationships. Review it occasionally to see who you may not have connected with in a while and reach out to them.

Step 4: Be a Match-Maker. Make introductions and connect the people you know to each other. If you're familiar with their work, refer them to potential clients.

Step 5: Go Social Old School. Bring your connections offline. Set up phone calls so you can support each other and keep in touch. Send birthday cards and thank you notes. Be available and be real.

Be strategic about which relationships you foster. It sounds a bit harsh, but if you spend a lot of time corresponding with a squeaky wheel or someone who just drains your energy, you have less time to foster those relationships that you truly enjoy.

By building and maintaining select, fulfilling relationships, you will benefit in more ways than you could ever imagine. This week, get conscious about your relationships and reach out to someone you really want to connect with. And let us know how it goes.

Photo Credit: James Cridland

Is There A Gap Between Your Current Reality And Fully Living Your Life’s Mission?

Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:47 PM PST

Are you ready for a paradigm shift when it comes to fulfilling the reason you’re on the planet? If so, I’d like to introduce you to Anne Van de Water.

Anne is the creator of ‘Vibration Transformation,’ a lifestyle program for big vision, heart-centered leaders who are committed to making a positive contribution to the planet. She is a master teacher, with extensive experience as a yoga instructor, gourmet raw food chef, and nutritionist. Anne is also a life coach trained at the Coaches Training Institute, a breath work teacher, healer, singer, songwriter, musician, sound therapist, recording artist, artist, an inspirational speaker, and a self-published author. A multi-dimensional woman!

I had an amazing conversation with Anne about the work that she does with leaders who know they are here to make a powerful difference in the world. Her goal is to help you raise your energetic vibration to match the energy of your mission so that you can embody it fully and become it.

What exactly does that mean? Check out this except of our interview, which is sure to make you think of your mission and how to step into it fully a little differently.

Q. What is Vibration Transformation, and what does it mean to raise your vibration to match your mission? Why is that so important?

It's important because, to put it very bluntly, we are all energetic beings. We pick up on energy. We pick up on vibrations of our own, and of the people, places, and things around us. We are total “B.S.” detectors.

If I am saying that I am something, like let's say, I am a yoga teacher, but the way that I'm living my life is not an energetic match for being a yoga teacher, then the people that I work with are going to be able to pick that up on some level. It's going to feel like 'Hmm… I don't know about this.'

So vibration transformation is really about being the living embodiment of whatever it is that you know you truly are, and on all levels, planes, and dimensions of your life with your thoughts, your words, and your deeds, your relationships, your values–everything matching your purpose so that you're living a life of total authenticity and integrity.

Q. How did you start on this journey? Where did it begin that this became your life's work?

I remember once saying something to my sister, and (through her response), the message that she was giving me loud and clear is the way that I was speaking and the way that I was acting was not at all a resonant match with who I said I was and why I was here on the planet…

That got me to wake up and realize if I call myself something or I'm putting myself out there in the world, I need to actually not only be talking about it but actually be the living embodiment of it so that I feel like in every single relationship, whether it's with the farmer at Farmer's Market or one of my students, or one of my clients, or my mom, or my beloved, or my sister, that it's a match – that I'm carrying that throughout, and then I'm thinking in that way, and I'm acting in that way, and I'm speaking in that way. So then I'm the real deal.

I just got to a point where I realized, “Wow! There are quite a few different places in my life where I'm not acting like who I really am.” It was pain basically that brought me to that moment, and a lot of things that I wanted to have happen not happening, and I realized it's because life wants the “real deal.”

Q. Once you saw that gap, and you became aware of the pain of that, what did you do? Where did you start this whole Vibration Transformation embodiment of that as your mission?

I started to think about what are the core daily lifestyle practices and rituals that I know have consistently worked every time, that I consistently practiced in my life and make me feel fantastic, and make me feel like “Wow! This is my life and I love it.” That's where I began.

I radically shifted the way that I eat food and give myself nutrition. I radically shifted the way that I exercise. I started breathing more consciously. I started meditating more often. And I started doing a lot of emotional cleansing and clearing because I realized that I was holding on to a lot of emotional pain from my past. And I also did physical cleansing and made sure that I was getting a lot of rest and relaxation. And that was the foundation of the whole entire shift that happened to me.

And what happened is I recalibrated my inner reality. And because the outer always reflects the inner, my outer life began to shift. People, places, and things that were not a resonant match for that internal state of love, and light, and bliss that I had created began to fade away and my attraction pattern began to up-level so that I was attracting people, places, and things that were a resonant match for the internal environment that I was consistently devoted to creating for myself.

And that is how Vibration Transformation was created. I took all of these things that I've been exploring over so many years. And instead of just talking about them and teaching them, I started practicing them every single day, and that was what made a huge difference. I watched my life and I continue. I have chills all over my body right now talking about it. I'm in awe of what happens with daily self-love and self-care practices.

Powerful lessons for you, if you’re willing to apply them to your own life and business and have a look at where there may be a gap between the mission you know you’re here to live, and what you’re actually living now.

You can watch my entire interview with Anne Van de Water here, in which we talk about many more subjects that support you in fully embodying and living your mission, including:

How to handle the fear of change and loss of people and situations as you shift
Two ways to build your faith and make your leaps
The daily activity Anne recommends for clearing your past and staying sustainably in the present
How to go beyond
The one decision that changes everything and allows you to rock your mission
And much more!

You can find out more about Anne at AnneVandeWater.com and VibrationTransformation.com. She also has an upcoming free teleclass on how to raise your vibration to match your mission. Register at either web site to receive the details for that (I’ll be there!).

What can you take away from Anne’s story that helps you step more fully into embodying the unique mission you’re here to fulfill?

Photo: Cadence Clare Feeley

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marți, 11 decembrie 2012

Upmarket Magazine

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