Exploring outside your routine social circle

"No man is an island" the good old saying goes.

Every man has their own social circle, divided into Inner, Intermediate and Casual.

Inner - 
your core family members ie parents, siblings, spouse and children, usually less than 20.

Intermediate - 
your close friends ie the "bros" and buddy, usually less than 50

Casual - 
friends that share the same background or interest to "hi bye" friend. Unlimited numbers.

Maintain a healthy social circle is as important as to maintain a healthy diet. An unhealthy social circle, overly skewing either to Inner/Intermediate/Casual circle will cause anxiety to parties involved.

To illustrate, a buddy of mine recently celebrates his 28th birthday with his bros (Intermediate), forgetting his family members (Inner) dinner appointment; as a result his family members refused to talk to him in the next day, causing anxiety for him and his family. This is a common within the extroverts, mainly guys.

Similarly, somebody whose social circle over-skewed to Inner circle, often require more accompaniment from the partner (core family members). In this case the party that requires more attention will constantly feel insecure when their partner is not around or out socializing, grumbles; while the other party will find his/her partner being unreasonable and over-possessive. The disparity will inevitably leads to argument; resulting in higher anxiety level on both parties. This is common in a relationship, not limited to only ladies, but also to a certain extend, the over-protective guys.

The two illustrations above resembles an analogy of vitamin overdose. All of us know Vitamin C is very important for our body immune system and antioxidant, but in an overdose scenario, it damages our kidney and cause gastrointestinal problems. Hence it is critical to maintain a healthy social circle. But how?

Our routine social circle, especially Intermediate and Casual, are fragile and tend to be shrinking gradually amidst a hectic work schedule environment. We will be too exhausted to socialize after a hard day work. Hence it is good to have annual escapades (team-building, travelling or social event)  to breakout from your routine social circle and dive into the "blue ocean", building new relationship with people, literally strangers.

In such scenario, you could be either be with friends or none at all, reaching out to make new friends. Similarly, the potential new friends in the blue ocean may be alone or already in a group. This is when we sharpen our already rusty socializing instinct, approach and being approached, and most likely will end up with friends with similar character and interest. Do not fear to approach people as you will end up receiving more. You could be switching from one group to another, just like you switching TV channels, to find a programme that truly enticed you.

During my recent company team-building event, there were thirty participants selected across various department /division with most of us are new to each other. At first the group starts to form among the own race, thereafter across the race after the ice-breaking.

One observation I had was certain group of people, especially Chinese (sorry to say), have higher tendency to shoot more complaints. The non-satisfactions range from bed too soft, water not hot enough, food too cold, despite being a fully sponsored event. You could hardly see these complaints coming from the Malays and other race (both guys and ladies), who i perceived are more tolerating with the environment. To be fair, during my backpacking experience, the Caucasian does not complaint as much as the Chinese tourist. The organizing committee has good foresight of these coming, hence arrange most of the Chinese in the double room while the rest in dormitory, yet there are still lots of complaints. Some points to ponder.

In the end, I "switched channel" from those with much complaint in their conversation, to stay away from their negativity especially when I am close to the undisturbed mother nature with pristine and clean air. Notwithstanding that, I have a gut feeling that some new acquaintances from the event could be upgraded from Casual to Intermediate of my social circle.

There is no hurry to cherry-pick the right one.