Thanks to all the new readers for signing up for The Reliants Project newsletter! Here are some nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours.
Latest News
This week I posted my latest article about how important life events impact our networks. In it, I share 3 key strategies to help mitigate the negative impacts of these changes. More about it in the Relationships section :].
Wellbeing
One of the most impactful and unintuitive concepts is the Friendship Paradox. It proves mathematically that on average, your friends have more friends than you do. It turns out that the majority of people also experience what is called the Happiness Paradox. This is the perception that your friends, on average, are happier than you. In The Friendship Paradox vs. the Happiness Paradox, the author does a good job of explaining the implications:
“Bollen et al. warn us that: Observations of decreased happiness among social media users may result directly from a widespread inflated perception of the happiness of one’s friends. Given the large role that social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) plays in the social lives of billions of individuals, the authors suggest that these environments may induce long-term changes in the public’s social behavior and may, over time, alter the very nature of social relations themselves.”
Relationships
As I like to repeat, “change is the only constant”. There are a handful of life experiences where our networks really impact our relationships. Everyone will go through at least one of them. These changes make staying in touch hard and force us to use our precious time differently. I’ve created a set of simple illustrations to show how each one impacts our relationships by changing our network.
Read the full article here.
Community
One of the most valuable aspects of a community is the ability to mobilise collective action. Many of us have been watching this unfold in Portland recently as walls of moms, dads and vets were ‘built’ to protect protesters. This fascinating Swathmore College database is a global resource for non-violent action. It has over 1,000 case studies from 200 countries cataloguing campaigns and a whole section dedicated to community and neighbourhood-level campaigns.
Like what you read? If so, please share this with someone you think would benefit:
About The Reliants Project
Reliant is my word for a person that someone depends on, an essential component of our social networks. With each edition, I’ll share useful nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours. Whether you want to cultivate your relationships, make better introductions, or activate networks to make an impact in the world, let me help you reach your goals.
You can find more about The Reliants Project here.