craving friendships

What type of friends do you want? What kind of people do you want to spend your time with?

These were two of the takeaway questions last night from the Crave Fuel event on friendships. If I made a list of the qualities I want in a friend and compared it to my ‘friends’, would it match?

When did you choose to start having more authentic relationships? The kind where you practice being yourself more than you try to be who someone else will like. Perhaps you had an authenticity mentor and you admired them for bringing their whole self to a conversation (even if you secretly felt nervous about the thought of doing it yourself). Maybe you just got to the point of being fed up. You were exhausted by pretending and going along with social rules you don’t even know who made up anyway. Sometimes it is a significant life event that rattles our bones. We wake up one day and refuse to go back to having surface level relationships. However you started your journey of authentic relationships, I hope you continue.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I am grateful for all my friends, family, partners and colleagues who strive to be authentic. Thank you for loving me for me, and for giving me feedback when I am slacking in the ‘me’ department. Thank you for being my authenticity mentors. Thank you for loving me, supporting me, holding me, catching me, confronting me and kicking my butt. One of my mentors even called it a spiritual betrayal, when one isn’t being authentic. He would say, “How dare you be anyone or anything other than yourself.”

With my friends (those lovely ladies up at the top are just a small handful of my tribe), I continue to practice…

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