Social Growth with balanced living

Challenge your Social Self to Grow

Keep strong relationships; stay connected with a sense of belonging

Do you sometimes feel lonely?

Do you sometimes feel overcommitted?

You need to balance your social needs with the rest of your humanness to prevent burnout.

You are a social creature.

By our human nature we need to be around other people. This is on a spectrum. Some people love to be around people a lot, others prefer to be alone often. But even those who prefer to be alone need other people.

They may not need to be in large groups or be in the spotlight, but they need people. Maybe they only need two or three good friends. Friendships give us the support and connection that we need to be fulfilled.

But we’re not just talking about friendships here; we’re talking about contact with people in general. Helping others helps us feel good about ourselves.

Caring for others is caring for ourselves. Volunteering, either on your own or through an organization, is a great way to make social contacts.

It also takes the focus off yourself. It’s easy to get enveloped in self; self pity or self righteousness. We tend to be egocentric.

Helping others gets the focus on someone else. We stop thinking about us and that’s good when balanced.

There are those who take care of others to the neglect of their own needs, that’s not healthy helping. We call that codependency.

Healthy helping is always balanced with caring for self. Healthy self care is always balanced with helping others. Here I present one idea you may want to include in your program on wellness.

Social Challenge

Here is a challenge for dealing wtih social needs in the special situation of grief and loss.

We all experience loss in our life. The bigger the loss the more intense our grieving. Often the grief is related to the loss of a special person in our life. (Though we grieve all sorts of losses, pets, job loss, health etc.) Let's focus on the social part of the grief. When we loose a loved one there are many things we experience. One way that can work through the varied stages is to write therapeutic letters. These are letters that we will not send but are just for us to sort out our feelings and thoughts. We can write them to the one who died, to others involved in the situation, to family, to God, to doctors. We can write the letters at any stage in the grieving process; earlier stages to say good bye, to express feelings, latter stages to describe how life has changed without the person or whatever we need to say.

Try writting a letter today. If it's too emotional hard just take it one step at a time; when you start to get overwhelmed take a break.

It may help you get the stuff inside sorted out.

I will be presenting new ideas regularly either my own or one I pick up here or there. Check back for new ideas often.

You can get more ideas from many self help books, my book on the Resources and Services Page .

If you want help setting up a wellness plan from a psychologist, I can be your consultant and helper in your self help journey. Visit the Resource and Services Page for this help.

Visit the Quiz page for online quizzes to understand yourself better.

Visit each page for great ideas

Physical Growth Page

Spiritual Growth Page

Emotional Growth Page

Social Growth Page

Intellectual Growth Page

Amazing Observation

to Fire Your Neurons

Light and Liberty

photo by Michelle Lucchesi

For Permission to Use information from this site

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Abraham Lincoln