Today is the start of SUCCESS TOOLS here on thelifething.com. I feel recently that there has been a lot of inspirational posts but nothing that helps people make practical changes to improve their life. No longer. The SUCCESS TOOLS are simple, practical and most importantly quick tools that help you analyze your life, make changes and improve. This first one, the Social Spider Web, focuses on the core of what brings most people the greatest happiness – their relationships – and helps you to access where you are currently and then make simple and life changing tweaks to dramatically increase your personal happiness. If you only read one blog today, it really should be this one.
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Our social networks are made up of a large variety of people.
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Close family, close friends, extended family, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, acquaintances, work colleagues and more. Many, many people and many, many ways invest your time.
As quoted in the amazing film “Into the Wild” the main character tragically comes to conclude just before he dies, that “happiness is best shared”.
It is the relationships in our lives that should be most important to us and make living exciting and worth the ride. Without relationship and others to celebrate the wins, confide in the loses, share the experiences and laugh at the jokes, without these in your life, arguable, what is the point.
Knowing the importance of relationships for life and happiness, how many of us then actually spend enough time focussing on or even thinking about this fundamental aspect of happiness.
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The Social Spider Web
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The social spider web is a simple tool to help you structure your relationships and ensure that you are prioritising those that make you most happy. This is a tool that takes no longer than 15 minutes to do but will have a serious positive impact on your life. Make this the one thing you do today to significantly improve your future happiness.
Below is an image of my Social Spider Web, names are fictional to protect the innocent.
Now it’s your turn.
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Your Ideal Social Spider Web
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Draw out your spider web with you in the centre. This is going to be your “Idea Social Spider Web”
On the first concentric band put in the 8 people that are closest to you and that you find the most joy to be with, those that make you most happy. Take your time with this, remember this is not those that you see most often but those that make you the most happy.These could be close family members/friends/girlfriends etc or they might not be.
Think hard about each of the names you put down, if you don’t see your brother that much don’t put him down out of formality, this is core to you, no one else has to see it.
Which eight people in your life make you the most happy?
Continue this trend of 8 people on the following bands until you’ve exhausted the people you know or you get bored. 10 bands should be more than enough for the average person and if you happen to have more than 80 people that are important to you then I would suggest you are not spending enough quality time with each one, try and drastically reduce this number.
Personal I think that any more than 36 six people is more than enough to handle. That doesn’t mean to say you don’t have any more people in your life, it is just to put across that these 36 people are the most important to you and being around them make you the most happy.
Now you have a great overview for the IDEAL setup of the people in your life.
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Your Real Social Spider Web
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Now comes the sobering part. I want you to do the same exercise but exactly how you live your life now. In the first 8 sections put down those that you spend the most time with, regardless of whether they bring you happiness or not. Do this for the same size web as your ideal web.
You now have an “IDEAl Social Spider Web” and a “Current Social Spider Web”
You can use these two simple tools to reflect on a lot of things and make practical and positive changes to how you are structuring your relationships and where your time is being invested.
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Look at your IDEAL Social Spider Web
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Are you making time for the people closest to you in the web. The closer they are the more effort you should be spending to nurture the relationship as these are the people that bring you the most joy and happiness. Maybe there is a best friend in there that you haven’t spoken to for a while, well it’s time to make that call. You should be investing the most and best quality time into these relationships.
Who is taking a lot of your time but not bringing you much joy and happiness. If there are people that you spend a lot with but they are on the outskirts of your IDEAL web or not in it at all then rethink the amount of time you spend with them and why. Could this time be better spent with people closer in the web as this will definitely bring you more happiness.
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Now look at your REAL Social Spider Web
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Who is having the most influence on your life. You will become like those that are closest to you in this web, if this is an unnerving thought then perhaps it is time to have a re-think of changing things around a bit. You want the key 8 people in your life to be those that bring you the most happiness and those that you would like to become like. If this is not the case then changes need to be made. The more red they are the more they are influencing your life and are responsible for your happiness. If the people there are not ideal for you then make some conscious changes.
If Mike (highlighted in blue) brings you down all the time then perhaps he shouldn’t be so close to the heart of your web, whereas Pat (highlighted in green) is great fun to be with and yet he is towards the outskirts.
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Compare them both.
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To drastically increase your happiness your REAL Web needs to reflect your IDEAL web. If it does not then its time to make changes.
If your IDEAL web is drastically different to your REAL web then maybe a massive rethink of your relationships is needed. If there are only a few differences maybe think about tweeking things a bit. If they pretty much match then you, my friend, are one very lucky individual.
Use this tool in another months time and see how much has change and how your happiness levels have increased as a result.
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Success Tools
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Another Practical and Life Changing Tool from thelifething.com. Feel free to use the idea and the images on your own site just please give me a link back. Thanks.
I hope this simple tool is helpful, it will really allow you to remind yourself and focus on who and what is important to you and bring you a lot more happiness.
As always with my tools if you have any comments or suggestions on what might improve them please let me know, together we can help people live the fullest life possible.
Jonny,
This is a really interesting concept and one that I haven’t seen before. I think it will be very useful to identify the relationships that you want to concentrate on and make you most happy.
Only one small criticism – it would have been more visually intuitive to have actual different names in the web, rather than all “Mike”.
I’m looking forward to reading more about the Success Tools. I like the idea of actually applying techniques to better ourselves.
Karen
Hi Karen,
Thanks Karen and I think I am going to change the names to make it a bit more intuitive. Thanks for you feedback and I hope you give it a go and see results.
Jonny, I LOVE this idea. I’m all about practical tips I can apply to my life more than theory or rehashed pump me ups.
I’m going to do this exercise right now.
More please!!!
(Really like the direction your blog is going.)
Cheers Papa,
Definitely more to come. I really hope that it helps and feel free to spread them around.
Fab idea, Jonny! Glad to see both me and Ash made it on there as Tiger.
Hi Kristin,
Glad to hear from you. Great you liked the idea, I hope it help.
Jonny, it looks so much better with the different names. Now you can see exactly who needs your attention (and who doesn’t)
That’s a great post Jonny! Can’t wait to read the rest of the success tools series.
Cheers Oscar, glad it helped. More to follow.
What an incredibly useful post. Great.
Cheers Nate
Perhaps longest post, I’ve ever seen. Loads of theory but can be implemented practically.
Hi Basant,
I think I might make the next one slightly shorter. Cheers for the feedback, I hope it helps.
Hey Jonny – I also think this is a great tool, one of those exercises in which the results may unexpectedly shock us. And being shocked is a good thing as it really stresses the importance of making change in our lives where it is necessary.
Hi Earl,
Thanks for the comment, I am glad you liked the tool. Did the results unexpectedly shock you then?
MONEY MONEY MONEY
really solid idea. refreshing. i’ve spent ample time studying social dynamics and never seen summen like this.
funny how we spend so much time with people who aren’t a part of our ideal social setup.
you didn’t mention meeting new people to slot into missing gaps. dig to see something from you about that given that travelling is like a jumping castle of fresh interactions.
didn’t think it was too long; basant singh is wack yo
awesomeness. excited for what’s next.
keep lording it up
alex
Alex, you a riot man, good to have you in my corner.
Yeah the social spider web thing kinda goes out of the window when travelling so I tend not to use it till I return home.
[...] at The Life Thing introduces his first Success Tools – A Happiness Fundamental: The Social Spiderweb. Great tool for identifying the relationships you should concentrate on for your [...]
Hey Jonny.
How cool is this. I have to say they are cool images, and the concept here is very relevant to our function. These 8 people shape a lot of what we do, and the other people behind them also have an impact. If we had a different set of folks around us, we would have an altered set of goals and plans, as their thoughts pervade our thoughts, and their expectations are what we base some of our big decisions on.
Making an ideal web like pointed out here can take someone from regular to successful quickly.
Hi Armen,
Good to have you on the site, I have seen your comments pop up all over the place.
Great looking site as well, I have signed up and look forward to reading your work.
Aren’t you crafty! Good work, Tiger. I like this. Wonder how I can get Brad Pitt on my real web. Hmmm…….
Ash,
Your too good for Brad Pitt
Great post Jonny. I like visual tools for making sense out of relationships (whether social, conceptual, etc) while my knowledge acquisition is better affected by verbal methods. Anyway…I liked the web and wanted to share something with you that I thought was helpful.
After naming the people on both webs, I assigned a number to each of bands on the “current web” starting at “1″ for the center band, then “2″ for the second, and so on. Then, on “ideal web” I wrote next to each name the “ring number” to which they corresponded on the “current web.” The lower the number on your inner rings, the better your “score,” so to speak. It makes it a lot easier to use for me and makes the process measurable. I really like your concept–what did you use to do the graphics?
Nathan,
Mate that addition is awesome and definitely makes it more measurable – why on earth did I not think of that before, great work. I am going to redo my personal webs using your improved system.
The graphics are all laid out in Inkscape, which is an open source version of illustrator. Definitely worth checking out if you don’t want to drop 3 grand on a graphics program. Doesn’t do everything that illustrator does but it does just about everything you would want – and it’s free.
Awesome, thanks man. Just downloaded it–now time to play around with it.
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