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Self-Fulfilling Relationships

Separate the wheat from the chaff

Author

Linda Hung
August 28, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Wednesday We’s

Self-Fulfilling Relationships

You meet tons of bad people in the world, but there are also a plethora of good people in this world. The quality of a relationship is manifested with what you see in people. This week’s Wednesday We will about how to manifest the best relationships in your life and how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Today’s Topics:

  • Be Great to Attract Great

  • Creating Your Friend Criteria

  • Question for you to ask your friend

Be Great to Attract Great

"You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want great, then be great."

Anonymous

Relationships are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you see the bad in people, bad people will be the first on your doorstep. On the contrary, if you see the good in people you will naturally attract good people. This is what I call self-fulfilling relationships.

When you only see the bad in people you will start to find ways to prove yourself “right.” In the process of finding proof, you’re purposely trying to draw out the bad in people. And once you draw it out, you’ve been “right all along.” This turns into a negative cycle you can’t escape because you are constantly trying to find the bad in people.

Contrarily, you can also attract good people by seeing the good in people and modeling what “good” looks like. When you allow people to show their good side, they will bring it out to their fullest potential.

Don’t let negative mindsets hinder the relationships you create for yourself.

Creating Your Friend Criteria

The secret sauce to having positive relationships

Humans are social creatures, but being social also opens up opportunities to get hurt. You don’t need to create good relationships with everyone, but you need criteria to identify good relationships. Here are 3 steps to help you create your friend criteria

Create Your Friend Criteria:

  1. Identify

    • What kind of energy do you want to be around?

    • What qualities bring you peace in life and relationships?

    • Use the answers to the questions as a guideline for the next step

  2. Reflect

    • How do you output your energy?

    • What kinds of people do you invest in?

    • How do you spend your time with friends?

    • Do you model the qualities you want in a friend?

    • Are your friends reciprocating what you’ve been giving them?

    • Are the qualities and energy you identified in Step 1 aligning with these questions?

  3. Exude

    • Carry yourself with the qualities you want to see in a friend. Positive and negative energies are infectious, don’t underestimate the energy you give out to others.

    • Those who aren’t reciprocating and meeting your criteria aren’t worth wasting your time on — stay true to your friend criteria

Friend criteria can change over time. This is a framework to be reflected constantly as you mature and learn more about life. If your friend criteria doesn’t serve you anymore, save and come back to this framework to rethink and update your friend criteria.

Question for you to ask a friend

Am I consistent in my actions and words, or do I send mixed signals about our friendship?

It’s easy to think we are sending the right signals to our friends, so asking for their honest opinions of your actions and words helps set a good foundation for you to reflect on. This also shows how you care about the friendship and want to strengthen the bond.

Reflect and reply back to this e-mail what your findings are

In Case You Missed it…

On our last Wednesday We, we talked about using hard conversations to update your understanding of your partners or friendships. Our perceptions of our partners can be outdated, so it’s important to bring up old conversations to get a “software update” of how both parties have grown and matured. Here are the 7 steps to tackling a hard conversation to update each other’s understanding:

  1. Identify the Need for an Update

  2. Reflect and Prepare

  3. Set the Emotional Tone

  4. Engage with Curiosity and Empathy

  5. Paraphrase and Clarify

  6. Collaboratively Update the Agreement

  7. Reflect on the Outcome

Read more Monday Me Posts for alignment techniques for “Me” and Wednesday We Posts for connection tips for “We”!

That’s all for this Wednesday We. Reply to this e-mail any findings you have and let me know what topics you would like me to explore!

In the meantime, Stay Smiling 😊

Linda

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