Friendships – Lead by Example

Connecting the True You with Others – Friendships

Following on from last week, ensuring you are connecting with the right people, applies to friendships too. Friends that you have that shouldn’t be in your life need to go. If you think carefully, there are people you already know of who should be in your life and if you choose to, you can attract them.

A word of caution: when you are in the process of changing, and especially when adopting a new Standard for yourself, you may sometimes find that other people will try to treat you as they always did. Allow the people around you time to absorb the changes in you. Just because those closest to you appear to be resisting the change, doesn’t mean that you need to move on from them straight away. They may just need more time to get used to your new Standards.

It is important that you hold on to the new you and the way you are now. That will maintain your change in life on a permanent basis.

Allow your Standards to become truly part of you, rather than just thoughts. When you’ve set them, act as if it’s already you. You don’t have to tell anyone about them, just let them see the benefits the new Standards will bring to you and therefore to them.

Don’t wait for others: Lead by Example.

I used to do my best to encourage my wife and children to recycle. All down our road on bin day you could see the recycling boxes, except outside our house. Instead, there were two massive bins full of rubbish destined for landfill. No matter how much I talked to the family about recycling, nobody took any notice of me, and we filled the two bins religiously every week.

One day I decided I’d had enough. I decided to wash down the dusty recycling boxes full of spiders and place them neatly in the playroom. I started to recycle items that had previously been thrown in the two landfill bins. Every time I threw something away, I’d make a bit of a performance around it. Every bottle, every cardboard box, every recyclable item, I found I would place it in the correct bin.

Then I noticed that after a short time, an interesting thing happened. First my daughter put a can in the can box, then my wife put a bottle in the glass box and before very long the whole of the rest of the family had joined in.

You don’t have to wait to have a new business, set new financial goals, have a new relationship. You don’t have to wait to have new behaviour. You don’t have to wait for everyone else to do the recycling.