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What I Came To Know After Joining Instagram

What I Came To Know After Joining Instagram

Sep 11, 2022 | 2 comments

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Recently, I joined Instagram (I know, I know, I’m pretty late). After following people I knew, conversations with a lot of people I used to see pretty often in school started up. It had been quite some time since I talked to them, so it felt quite uplifting. After all, my social circle has reduced to like 3 people in all.

The surprising thing that I came to know after talking with others is that I wasn’t alone in this. It wasn’t just me whose friend group had shrunk dramatically.

In a way, I’m picking up from my last post where I talked about what the two kinds of friendships are and how they differ.

This time, I want to focus on the idea of quality over quantity.

Even though most of us don’t have the large friend groups that we had in the past years, we don’t feel like we’re missing something. This implies one thing – the reason we don’t feel a void could be because maybe those friendships never served a purpose in our lives.

This is not discrediting the friendships we had, they were absolutely wonderful. I bet you have great memories of the times you spent with those friends.

However, the truth is that not all of them were meant to be long-term. We outgrow people, and that’s okay.

What I’ve realized is that it’s better to have a smaller group of friends who you can rely on, than a large group of friends whom you can’t depend on.

It’s not the number of friends you have that matters, it’s the quality of those friendships.

So, if you’re in a similar situation to me, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

And, it’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. Because now, you can focus on the friendships that are truly worth your time and effort.

I hope this post helped in some way. If you have any thoughts or experiences to share, I would love to hear from you! 🙂

Did You Know There Were Two Kinds Of Friendships?

Did You Know There Were Two Kinds Of Friendships?

Sep 4, 2022 | 1 comment

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I was going to publish this post a few weeks ago but it felt untimely back then. However, meeting one of my last friends to leave the city last week, it became apparent that this post is as timely as ever. It might strike a nerve if you’re still in school and have many friends, but those who have graduated this year know what I’m talking about. 

In school, often our friendships start with being in the same class, playing the same sport, or being part of the same extracurricular club. You start by bonding over whatever common thing you have between you and the other person and before you know it, you’re friends.

I bet you can think of friends you made this way. I know I can recall multiple instances.

From this point forward, there is one of two paths that a friendship can take:

a. The friendship is based on convenience.

You see each other every day so you become friends. You have the same classes, lunch periods, and activities. But what happens when you don’t have those things in common anymore? The friendship fades away because there was no effort put into it from the beginning.

These are the friends that you hang out with only because and when it’s convenient for them (or the both of you, not implying that there’s anything wrong with that) and when it’s not, you don’t hear from them. If the common ground between you two slowly ceases to exist, so does the friendship.

 b. The friendship is based on efforts

A lot of times, these friendships start off from some common area of interest, just like a friendship of convenience, but the key difference is that you make efforts to maintain the friendship.

You set time aside to meet up, whether it’s going out for coffee or catching a movie. You talk to each other about things other than school and homework. You put genuine effort into getting to know the person and making sure that your friendship doesn’t just fizzle out.

 

When we’re in school, a lot of our friendships are just friendship of convenience because we see each other every day. But as we grow up and move away from each other, those friendships based off convenience slowly disappear. The only friendships that last are the ones where we put in the effort to maintain them.

Till this point, we had to put in very little effort consciously. To be fair, we weren’t used to making efforts for our friendships, because didn’t have to. And when our friendships start to fade away, we see it as a sign to let the friendship go. 

While that might be true in some cases, we need to realise that friendships – or any relationship for that matter – need effort. They aren’t effortless, and they require you to put in your time and energy to make sure that it lasts.

So just because they’re not going as great as they used to or you don’t see each other as often, it doesn’t mean that you should stop trying. All friendships require effort to maintain, and the ones that we put effort into are the ones worth keeping.

As we move away from school and into the “real world”, it becomes increasingly important to foster relationships that are based on genuine effort, not convenience. It’s easy to let friendships fade away when they’re no longer based in our everyday lives, but by making a conscious effort to maintain them, we can create lasting connections with others. These efforts don’t have to be huge or time-consuming; even catching up over coffee or texting each other occasionally can help keep the friendship alive. 

Try doing this with some of the friendships that you feel are fading away, and see if it makes a difference. Chances are, you’ll be surprised by it.

Ever Been The Friend That People Come For Advice?

Ever Been The Friend That People Come For Advice?

Aug 28, 2022 | 1 comment

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If you’ve been that friend in the group that people come to talk about their problems and ask for advice, you have definitely experienced what I’m gonna talk about in this post. And if you’re the friend who goes with their problems, I think you can relate too.

Whenever someone comes up to you and describes their issue, it’s probable that you can see the obvious solution clearly in your head.

Or even if when you see someone struggling with something, the right step to take seems to be evident.

In a few words, it’s really easy to be the wise person that provides clarity and direction when it’s not our problem.

But when we are the ones in the situation, it all changes.

When it’s our problem, everything seems more complex and there are way too many possible solutions (or none at all).

Have you ever wondered why this happens?

When we are stuck in a problem, we can only see a small portion of the big picture, the one that is right in front of us.

Think of it like this.

You’re the soldier in a war against your opponent. In the same war, you also have fighter jets as a part of your team.

If you’re the soldier on the ground, all you see is the small area around you and your opponent in front of you. You don’t see the big picture of the entire battlefield or know what’s going on with other units. All you know is what’s happening right in front of you. But the pilot in the jet does have a bigger picture. He can see the entire battlefield and direct you accordingly.

It’s the same with our problems. We can only see a small part because we’re too close. But when someone else comes to us with their problem, we can see the big picture more clearly because we’re not as emotionally attached to it.

You can actually create psychological distance by changing your perspective. Look at the problem from another person’s perspective, and creative solutions will present themselves. By imagining your problem as if it were concerning someone else, you can artificially create a bit of much needed mental distance.

Creating psychological distance makes the problem less concrete. More abstract. Thinking about a subject as something distant makes it easier to make unusual connections. You free yourself from assumed limitations.

So the next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, think about what advice you would give your friend if they were in that situation and use that to find a way out for yourself.

Boxing Matches And Life Have A Lot In Common

Boxing Matches And Life Have A Lot In Common

Aug 21, 2022 | 4 comments

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I’m roughly two weeks late to talk about this, but in my defence, I barely had time this month between Rakhi, registration for colleges and CUET. But better late than never.

I’ll quit the chase and tell you what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the Common Wealth Games. That too a particular sport in CWG is boxing.

To be very honest, I did not watch a match, tournament or event of any sport. Not the biggest sports freak.

But I do know something about boxing in CWG that my dad told me.

When a boxer is competing in a competition, be it CWG or any other, more often than not, they have all their matches on the same day.

This means you go into the ring, fight and come back. If you lost the last round, this is the end of you sustaining blows from opponents.

But if you won the last match, it means going back in again and fighting harder than the previous round because this opponent is stronger than the previous one.

Just like you, he has also worked his way up to fight a better opponent.

And this goes on and on if you keep winning until you’re the last one standing.

This means that the last boxer in the ring has fought the toughest opponents and come out as the winner.

But what it also means is that the last boxer fought the most among all the boxers that day. He has survived the longest in the ring and has taken the most hits.

Now that you do know it, it seems like common sense, but I bet you hadn’t pondered on it before.

Do you realise that life is no different?

The higher you aim to go in life, the more blows from life should be expected. It seems that if we become successful the problems lessen, but that’s not true.

We just get bigger and tougher problems in front of us, but then again the reward is higher too.

If you wanna make it to the finals in life and get the gold, you’ll have to sustain the most punches and beat the toughest opponents.

Why We Say “It’s A Small World”

Why We Say “It’s A Small World”

Aug 14, 2022 | 0 comments

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A few days back I was talking to one of my schoolmates. We were discussing college preferences when he suddenly congratulated me for getting into one of the colleges. I was shocked as to how he knew about it since I hadn’t told him. Turns out, that someone with whom I shared a few classes was his friend.

Later, I talked to the friend (yes, the one I used to have classes with) and mentioned the other guy. The friend was taken aback by the fact that I already knew that the two were buddies. He asked me how I knew him since he’s from a different stream than mine. 

If this wasn’t already confusing enough, I knew the first guy through another one of my classmates, who by the way is a mutual friend to all three of us already in the equation 😂😂

By the end of the conversation, all I could say was – it’s a small world.

But the other guy came back with an equally fitting reply – with 8 billion homo sapiens and thousands of bacteria, you still think it’s a small world?

Me being me, came back with – yeah there are 8 billion people, but on average, a person is connected with only 150 in his or her life.

Now you might think what’s up with this specific figure of 150?

Let me tell you, it’s not something that I just made up.

This number comes from a theory by British anthropologist Robert Dunbar. It’s called the Dunbar Number.

The Dunbar number is a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other.

He had found a correlation between brain size and the social group size of a species.

With the help of the size of the human brain and the data from previous studies, this number was found to be 150.

It is the number of people with whom we can comfortably maintain social relations. We know who they are and how they are related to each other. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”.

This means that most of your Instagram followers or LinkedIn connections won’t make it to the list of people you actually have a stable relationship with.

This number, however, is not fixed and can change depending upon gender, social exposure and personality.

Interestingly, the various circles represent the kinds of social spheres we all have (did anyone catch that pun or am I just lame?) – 

The “Core group” = up to 5 people (family and best friends).

The “Close Group” = 12-15 people (close kinship and good friends).

The “Acquaintance Group” = 50 people (band of related close groups).

The “Personal Social Group” = 150 people (bands of common lineage — what Dunbar believed to be the biggest group of people one person can have close relationships with).

The “Clan” = 450-500 people (cohesive sub-tribal unit).

The “Tribal Group” = 1500 — 2000 people (tribe).

Now it makes sense that even though there are billions of people on this earth, we often tend to feel it’s a small world and keep bumping into old friends, friends of friends or acquaintances in the most unexpected places.