I am aware that it’s a bit late for the 2015 mid-year review friends, family and contribution, but it has been done, just not published, so I’ll be rushing it and the others out over the next few days to catch you up. The year is almost over so it’s almost time to start reviewing 2015 and planning 2016! (Gulp)

I’ve already covered creatures, so this will be a review of the remaining components of friends, family and contribution.

Friends

We had agreed that a friendship was a mutually beneficial relationship that grows over time. So this aspect of friendship related to making new friends, maintaining and improving existing friendships as well as giving ourselves the option of releasing friendships that no longer met the friendship criteria.

I set myself the goals of:

• cultivating some short term office relationships
• demoting some friends to the outer circle
• undertaking some kind of organised activity to meet people.

I can’t say it’s gone really well. The short term office relationships didn’t last, but I am not really upset about that as my life has moved in a different direction since then. I haven’t started a class or something locally, but I’ve joined some on-line groups and met some really nice people (at least I assume they are people). I have made some demotions, and I feel good about that though I really need to make some “replacement” friends. Overall, the goal remains the same.

Rating: 

Family

This goal for me was about managing and constraining my family, developing cordial relationships as if with strangers I see regularly at the bus stop.

Oddly enough, giving myself that guidance has brought my family relationships into more of the mutually beneficial kind. I don’t feel so much of a need to constrain them, and while they aren’t (and probably never will be) inner circle, they aren’t in the outer circle anymore either. Maybe it’s like eating brussel sprouts, changing things up a bit makes an enormous difference to the taste. In fact, I’m so happy with this that I don’t think it needs to be a focus for me any longer.

Rating: 

Contribution

This is about being friends with people you haven’t met yet, and how being friends with them relies on baseline decisions about random acts of kindness, charitable donations of time and/or money, and a concern for the environment. My goal was to baseline activities like random acts of kindness, donations of my time and skills, and reusing, repairing, recycling and repurposing as well as buying local, natural, handmade etc.

When I look back at my progress reviews, I’ve done some pro bono work, offered my knowledge on forums, told you what to do about counterfeit goods, and offered a variety of random acts of kindness. It doesn’t seem like much, but I think it’s more of an attitude (like positivity) that you approach life with. When you think you are lucky you are. When you think you have been bullied, you have. And when you think you make a contribution, you look for opportunities and you do. I don’t think it necessarily needs to remain a focus, but I’m going to leave it here to remind me that I make a contribution.

Rating: 

 

How are you going with your friendship resolutions?

 

Next time I’ll be re-visiting pleasure.

 

Recap

Reviewing the virtues of:

• beauty – (body, presence, home, and garden)
• friendship – (creatures, friends/family/contribution)
• pleasure – agreeing to seek out new experiences as well as make time to do unproductive things.
• wisdom – understanding ourselves and making choices based on the things we value
• wealth – having sufficient income to meet our needs and spending it wisely

Planning for the virtues of:

• beauty – living authentically and taking care of our physical well-being and surroundings (body, presence, home, and garden)
• friendship – treating the planet and other beings as well as we want to be treated (creatures, friends, family, contribution)
• pleasure – agreeing to seek out new experiences as well as make time to do unproductive things.
• wisdom – understanding ourselves and making choices based on the things we value
• wealth – having sufficient income to meet our needs and spending it wisely