Who's on your "My People" list - wellbeing 17 & 18 of flowing through 50

Context:?

Earlier this week I posted a short video (links in comments) about who's on your "My People" list. In short: Who are you surrounding yourself with to make an impact you’d be proud of this year? Who are the most meaningful relationships? Who do you want to connect with? Who might you drop? Who’s list might you offer to join because you can support them?

I’m expanding upon this after a super engaging and intentional week of connecting with some incredible people at the Real Leaders UNITE Impact Awards conference. By convening a community of impacters split between impact organizations, impact investors, impact coaches and impact speakers you can imagine the energy. So many incredible people, doing well and doing good. Now that’s “My People.”

This subject is taking up two wellbeing posts as: i) I attended an event intentionally to build some meaningful connections; and ii) I'm undertaking a "My People" audit right now! The latter will result in some more intentional events, throughout the year.

What’s this all about?

Many of us just stumble through life. We let it control us. Then, outside perhaps of our close friends and family, the people we interact with along the way are just there, put in front of us. What’s missing? Meaning!

Having a “My People Audit” may sound like a bit of a harsh process to go through but if you want to put your own oxygen mask on first, challenge yourself, embrace diverse perspectives, have fun and make a difference you’d be proud of - this is the way to go. It’s about enjoying and benefitting from meaningful relationships, through intentionality. Importantly and equally, it’s about serving and supporting the people on your list to elevate their own potential. Giving without an agenda but because you can. It’s amazing how one way or another, it comes back to you.

Why is it important?

If you had to boil happiness in life down to only two things, you wouldn’t go far wrong focusing on meaningful experiences and meaningful relationships. There is a boatload of research to back up both (just google / AI it but two simple references would be the Harvard Grant Study and anything to do with Flow).?

Take 2 minutes to jot down a few of your your peak professional experiences, magic moments (10/10 memories), personal peaks (best-self experiences) - I bet the vast majority involved a meaningful experience and / or a meaningful relationship. So, regardless of what stage you are in life, this is key and the sooner you are intentional about it, the better because the better your life will be. Moreover, if you’re at my stage (not too far off 50) or further along, it seems to matter even more. The less time we have, the more meaning is important. Imagine fast forwarding to the last week of your life. You’re in good health but it’s just that time. What would you want to be doing and who would you want to be doing it with?

How do you go about it?

This is pretty simple but I want to provide two complimentary frameworks you can consider together. The first I shared in my video:

My hypothesis being that we all want four things in work and life:

1. To connect and to belong;

2. To pursue meaning and experience making a difference;

3. To contribute value;

4. To be recognized for the value we contribute (even if it’s just a thank-you).

So, if these are true to you too and considering these 4 elements above:

Who complements you? Who challenges you? Who encourages you? Who holds you accountable? Who guides you? Who infuses some joy? Now in reverse, who can you provide this same support for?

Then answer these questions for each Sphere of your life. The Sphere’s of Impact coined by my PurposeFused business Partner Nell Derick Debevoise is a really simple way to look at all areas of life:

Once you’ve gone through this I can guarantee you’re going to feel excited to reconnect with a few folks, seek out a few new connections, dive deeper into some existing relationships and potentially let a few distractors go. Your life, your choice!

I am still so energized and excited about some of the incredible people I met at Real Leaders this week. I won’t tag them all here but have reached out to them individually. Hopefully, I made it to a few of their lists too!