Web Watch has two questions for you today:
- How many close, personal friends do you have in your Real Life?
- How many close, personal friends do you have online?
The qualifier portion of these questions are really that “close” and “personal” portion. Everybody has dozens of acquaintances, people you know peripherally.
Friends of friends.
Spouses of friends.
Folks you see at the bar / soccer field / diner on a regular basis, enough to wave or say “hi” to, but not necessarily people you’d invite over for a bottle of wine.
Would they qualify as “close, personal” friends?
And yet on Facebook, your “Friends” list is probably a mile long.
Web Watch has talked in the past about how you really only “know” about 150 people, tops. Everyone else is just passers-by to you in your everyday life.
Jim Rohn said that “YOU ARE THE AVERAGE OF THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU SPEND THE MOST TIME WITH“.
So let’s go back to those two questions we asked earlier:
Who are your closest, most personal friends in real life? Online?
Are they the same group of people? If not, then maybe you should reconsider why your close personal online friends would never be present in your real life… or why you are shunning those close relationships you’ve made in “meat space” from forming the same relationships with you online.
The key to any relationship – both online and off – is to cultivate them; you get to take a little… but you probably should give a little bit more than you take. If you don’t do that, then the relationship will wither.
As Leo wrote in the linked article, take a look at those five people that you’ve surrounded yourself with. Are they the ones that can get you to the next level of success (whether that be personal or business, financial or mental, etc)? If not, then maybe you’re surrounding yourself with people who are just going to drag you down.
And you wouldn’t want that.
You want to fly. And there are people out there who can help you do that. You’re just going to have to cull your friends list to find out who those people are.