Maintaining the health of your social and professional circles

I’m going to try something new out today. I’m not going to tell you that this is a tried and true method I’ve used to maintain a healthy network or that this has led to me being a happier or more successful person because I’ve never tried this before. All I know is I was thinking about this the other day and I think I’m just going to go ahead and give it a shot. So I have talked quite a bit about how important maintaining your network is. I think sometimes when you say networking it makes it sound really commercial and I don’t necessarily mean it in that sense. Certainly some of your career success and your professional success is predicated on the folks that you know but it’s not just that those people connect you to opportunities. It’s that those people help you experience new things and learn about things you otherwise wouldn’t know. It’s the same thing in your network that is purely social.

Those are people that are going to influence what you think about and how you think about the things you think about. When you get right down to it, those are huge factors in not just how successful you’ll be but how happy you’ll be. So I’ve decided that I’m going to try something today that I’ve never tried before. I’m going to reach out to one person that I haven’t talked to in a really long time. The thing that got me thinking about this was one of my childhood best friends, who’s been a friend for practically forever, and I hadn’t spoken to him since our 20 year high school reunion. What prompted us to reconnect was finding out that his father was going to pass and you know that’s one of those things that just shouldn’t happen that way. So I’m going to be a little more proactive and I’m going to talk to someone that I haven’t really spoken to in a long time. I want to ensure that I maintain that connection to people that I’ve known for a long time, I’ve always enjoyed speaking with, and not take it for granted; because it shouldn’t take something terrible to bring us together.

The second thing I’m going to do is reach out to somebody that I believe can change my life. Someone that I maybe don’t know but would like to know because I think that what they do or what they stand for is exciting or interesting or could be a changer for me. Maybe I’ll be successful or maybe I won’t but at least I’ll have tried to make that connection.

The third thing I’m going to do is reach out to somebody who I maybe only connected with via email or had casual routine or business sort of exchanges with. I’m going to reach out to that person on the phone and see if the person behind the mail is somebody that I would like to talk to on a more regular basis. So I’m going to do all those things and I’m guessing those will take me less than an hour. I’m just curious where it will lead. I’ll report back on if those things translated into anything either that were worthwhile either personally or professionally. I’m curious what other people think or if other people have attempted things like this. Do you regularly make an effort or schedule time to refresh or renew relationships that may be getting stale over time or that had been neglected? What are the things that you do to maintain the health of your social and professional circles?