Surrounding yourself with positive people is extremely beneficial. It’s like the well-known Proverb that states, “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are”.
If someone were to examine your life through the friends that you keep, would they have something positive to say? Let us be real, friendships are taken for granted, yet, they can have such a huge impact on one’s life that people fail to realize it.
Knowing the different types of friendships/relationships as well as how they affect us matters. And so I will share some insights on that allowing us to start a conversation.
Let me start by mentioning that there are 3 different types of symbiotic relationships. Yes! We will be exploring friendships/relationships by using common interactions that take place within animal life. Symbiosis refers to a close relationship between two species in which at least one benefits, for the other the relation may be positive, negative, or simply neutral. Three 3 types of symbiosis are parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. Let’s get into those a bit deeper:
Parasitism – one partner benefits (the parasite) while the other gets hurt or suffers (the host).
Given your current friendship circle, ask yourself who is benefitting from whom? You just might be surprised by your answer. Are you benefiting and your friend is hurting or are you going about hurting whilst your friends are benefitting from you?
Commensalism- One partner benefits while the other remains neutral i.e not affected either positively or negatively.
In this instance, your friends are benefiting from you and you are unaffected by it. I find it extremely hard to be in this category of relationship. Time is something that once lost can never be regained. If someone cannot deposit back into my life what I pour out into others then this is just a stagnant relationship that is going nowhere.
Mutualism- Both partners benefit.
Now, this is my type of friendship! When you can be as equally charged as your peers you work together for the greater good.
A Perspective
Given this knowledge on the different types of relationships/friendships, it helps to re-evaluate the people around you and to determine if you so desire to still have them within your friendship circle. Personally, I have taken this information and applied it to my life and it has allowed me to decipher who is benefiting from me and who I am benefitting. It may sound harsh but in this “life” we all have to remember we are the captain of our own ship. I have heard the saying many times before that if you do not have a plan someone will make one for you. I do not wish to experience that because the plan that someone may have for my life may not be the best, additionally, they may construct a plan for me that will only benefit them.
There are people in this life who live like “crabs in a barrel”, no one knows how to uplift each other anymore. It is all about climbing to the top without being conscientious about who they are hurting. Those categories of people once identified, have no place in my life and yours!
So, how will it work for you?
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Thank you Collette for writing this amazing piece! I look forward to us all getting to read more from you.
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It’s a masterpiece indeed beautiful!!