Episode 11 The Power of Your Inner Circle: Choosing Growth-Minded Relationships

This episode delves into the transformative power of your inner circle and the importance of nurturing growth-minded relationships. Kara emphasizes that the people you surround yourself with can significantly impact your journey towards designing your dream life. She shares personal anecdotes about the challenges of letting go of energy-draining relationships and the necessity of establishing boundaries. Through a structured exercise, listeners are encouraged to assess their relationships, evaluate the energy they bring into their lives, and identify those who inspire and uplift them. By consciously choosing to connect with positive influences, you can create a supportive environment that fosters personal growth and happiness.

The dialogue explores the critical theme of relationships and their pivotal role in shaping our lives and aspirations. Kara articulates the importance of being deliberate about who we allow into our inner circle, citing personal experiences that highlight the contrast between supportive companions and those who drain our energy. She introduces the concept of 'energy vampires'—people who, instead of offering encouragement, bring negativity and resentment into our lives. This categorization of relationships serves as a powerful tool for listeners, encouraging them to critically assess who they spend their time with and how these individuals impact their pursuit of happiness and success.

Through her engaging storytelling, Kara invites listeners to reflect on their relationship dynamics, sharing her own journey of loss and renewal after the passing of her beloved dog. This poignant transition into the puppy era symbolizes new beginnings and the potential for growth, paralleling the idea that just as we can choose to welcome new pets into our lives, we can also choose to cultivate new, uplifting friendships. The episode further emphasizes the notion that personal development is often a collective journey, heavily influenced by the support—or lack thereof—that we receive from those around us.

Kara provides a structured exercise to encourage listeners to analyze their social circles, prompting them to identify key individuals in their lives and rate the energy they bring. This practical approach transforms abstract concepts into actionable steps, allowing listeners to make meaningful changes in their relationships. By the episode's conclusion, Cara reinforces the idea that nurturing a positive, growth-oriented environment is essential for anyone looking to achieve their dreams, leaving her audience with a sense of empowerment and the tools needed to enhance their personal development journey.

Takeaways:

• Surround yourself with growth-minded individuals who inspire and energize you positively.

• Recognize the energy vampires in your life that drain your motivation and happiness.

• Evaluate your relationships and identify which ones may need boundaries for your well-being.

• Understand that some relationships serve a purpose for a season and can be let go.

• Engage in a self-reflection exercise to assess your inner circle's influence on your goals.

• Focus on building connections with individuals who celebrate your successes and support your growth.

Links referenced in this episode:

• designyourdreamlifetoday.com

Transcript:

Hey there, I'm Kara and welcome to Design your Dream Life podcast where we dive in and explore how you can use practical personal development to up level your life.

Whether you are looking to have better or deeper relationships, fix your problems with money, learn to love yourself unconditionally, leave a dead end or high stress career, or just want more happiness in your life, my friend, you are in the right place. Are you ready? Hello my friends and welcome to the Design your Dream Life podcast. My name is Kara. I'm so happy you are here.

Okay, friends, today I want to talk about something I feel is probably something I would say it's definitely like in the top three most powerful things you can do when you're trying to design your dream life and live your dream life. And it's the power of your inner circle and choosing growth minded relationships. Oh, this is such an amazing topic.

Now before we dive into today's topic, if you've been following the podcast, you know, we said goodbye to our lovely dog of 19 years and it was very sad. Even though he lived a full life and we were so grateful for it, we definitely did grieve.

Now we have entered the puppy era and I will tell you this, it was not planned.

We were originally not going to get a puppy because we travel quite a bit, especially my husband and I, as we're reaching more of an empty nest house and our kids are in university and all of the things. I am a huge dog lover. Like I love dogs, I love animals in general, but definitely I am a dog lover.

Anyways, so my daughter came down and she was like, mom, look at these puppies. And it happened to be somebody local. Like I wasn't. We were looking at puppies about a year ago because I was like, oh, maybe we should get a puppy.

And then the, you know, transition.

So when one dog goes, we already have this, you know, other dog here and but we didn't because every time I looked it was like these puppies I wanted a Yorkie, were like past Toronto or further. And I'm like, I am not driving like four hours to get a puppy. And I didn't want to go to the States even though I live very close.

Like I, I live on a border city. So I live very close to Detroit, Michigan. I was like, I don't really want to like get a puppy over there and try and cross a border with that.

So I was just like, no, no, not right time, not right time.

And sure enough, not long after our dog had passed, my daughter found this post There were these beautiful puppies, local, just like a 10 minute drive and they were adorable. So I went with my family, we went to look and just fell in love. And now we have a puppy. Now puppy is sleeping right beside me.

So if you hear any crinkles or any whining or anything like that, please just bear with it because puppy is puppy. And so if you hear any of those sounds, I apologize. I'll do my best in editing to try and take that out.

But you know, at the end of the day too, I'm real and raw. This is real life. So, yeah, let's get on with it. So let's talk about the importance of this, the importance of having the right people in your life.

Because I will tell you, so many years ago, I will never forget this. My husband and I were at a personal development seminar and I remember the first time hearing this term and I was like, so good.

And I'm going to share it with you.

So we were in the audience and he was talking about your circle of influence and he said, you know, how many of you have energy vampires in your life? And I was like, what? And he's like, let me define what an energy vampire is for you.

He's like, an energy vampire is a person where you say, hey, how are you? And they tell you all their problems and everything that's wrong with the world and they literally suck the life right out of you.

And I was like, oh my goodness. And I feel like everybody has those people and like where you're like, hey, how are you?

Don't even want to ask because you know you're going to get the shitstorm of all the things that are wrong with them. Instead of regular people who are not, I'm not going to say regular people, people who are not an energy vampire will be like, oh, I'm doing great.

How are you? Right? And so I think it's really important that you surround yourself with A, like minded people, B positive people.

And I get this can be really hard, especially when it comes to people you can't pick, like your family. And we are going to talk about family in a little bit. And I will tell you, I've said this before on the podcast.

I have definitely in this journey, I've lost good friends that I never thought I would lose. I have even disconnected from some family that I didn't, you know, didn't realize.

Just for the sheer fact of when you have success in your life, when you're on a path, that there are people who will get jealous There are people who will just all of a sudden have an issue with you.

There will be people who are triggered by your sheer existence because they might think you're living this amazing life and they don't even know the whole story of how you've gotten here.

They might just judge you based on, because you travel a lot or maybe you have a bigger house, or maybe you've up leveled some other things and they're like, ugh, you know, and here's the thing. I have been, I have both, like, I have had family and friends that have been extremely supportive no matter what.

And I've had family and friends that have honestly been energy vampires and beyond. And so I think it's really important that you start to understand and actually create awareness of the people in your life. Right.

Because it does really impact you. And you have to remember too how to release and let go of those people. And you can let go of them in a way because again, family is family.

So people are like, oh, and we'll talk about that later. But you can release and let go of people and focus on you. And I, I always believe personally in being kind. I've, I'm generally a very kind human.

Even if you've done something extremely horrible. I, I'll tell you, I'm definitely a blunt person. So I'm going to tell you my feelings and I'm going to tell you how I feel.

But at the same time, I don't believe in holding grudges. I don't believe like I, life is too short, so I'll move on. Like, you know what?

And I will also say, if you do something shitty to me just because you're jealous or you don't like something, I mean, that's on you. That's a you issue, that's not a me issue. And I'm, I have the awareness to know that that's all you and has nothing to do with me.

It has everything to do with your past, your traumas, your behaviors. All of your stuff is your. It's not mine, right?

So when you reflect that onto me, one of my jobs is to realize like I go in and do a quick internal audit of like, is what they're saying actually true? Is it valid?

Is it, you know, and I walk through it because I also don't want to get to a place where I completely ignore all of the things that people say. But I really only take a lot of weight of the people in my inner circle, anyone outside of my inner circle.

Like I said, I'll go internally and do a quick check, you know, and ask myself a couple questions. But then beyond that, I'll move on.

If it's someone in my inner circle who I really respect and really trust, then I will spend some more time and ask myself and maybe even have deeper conversations with them. So the first thing that I want, because we have our friends, right? We have people maybe you work with, with. We. You might even have. If you're a mom.

You know, I. I had a lot of friends that I made through. My kids were into sports. So, you know, moms hang out with moms.

And so you have those relationships, too, which can get tricky if there's mom friends, and then all of a sudden, the kids don't become friends anymore, and then the mom friendship is over, or one mom is, like, more angry or whatever, and, like, it can just become messy and horrible and all of those things.

But here's what I also want to say about relationships, is that I do believe that there are certain relationships that just have a season in your life. You know, they were great for that season. And then for whatever reason, you've evolved.

They've evolved, or they haven't evolved, and you have evolved, and you've moved on, and it's like, okay, like, I can respect that season and also know that, like, I know this relationship no longer serves a purpose in my life, and therefore, I'm okay to let it go. Like, I'm okay to release it.

So one of the things that I really wanted to do with you guys today, and again, I'm trying to keep these podcasts short so that you can digest them, is I want to do a little exercise about your inner circle and even your outer circle. So we're gonna. We're gonna go through this awareness exercise of who is in your life. So step number one is I want you to think, and I want you to.

If you can grab a piece of paper or if you are listening to this while you're walking or in your car, come back to this section and do this. When you can have some paper, all right? But when you're walking, think about it.

Or if, you know, if you don't have access to paper right now, or take out your phone while you're walking and get your notes open and jot down some notes, all right? Number one is I want you to list your circle. I want you to Write down the 10 people you spend the most time with.

So I want you to include both personal and professional relationships, and I want you to note how much Time you spend with each person weekly. Right? Because then what we want to do is we want to go into step two, and that's an energy assessment.

So you're going to rate each person on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 equals drain your energy completely, 3 is kind of neutral, and 5 energizes and inspires you. So that's what I want you to do.

I want you to do those two things. And then what I want you to do is a growth analysis for each person. So.

And again, you guys, this might take you a little bit of time to do this exercise.

I know I'm going to walk through it really quickly with you, but I encourage you to actually reflect and pause when you're re listening to this and spend some time, because it is so true. What is it they say you become, you know, the top three people like that are in your circle. And I get it.

At the, at the start of this journey, if I look at my circle of friends, you guys, holy crap.

When I was like way back and just first starting personal development, the only person I knew who was interested in it was my husband, you know, and we were bankrupt, you know, and our circle wasn't necessarily successful as, I mean, I hang out with some multimillionaires on a regular basis. They're my friends. We have amazing conversations about growth and pushing ourselves and building our businesses and living our lives. And.

And now I could honestly say that my circle is just so very rich, but I didn't start here. You really do grow to get there.

So if you are in your beginningness of this journey and you're looking at your circle, please don't let this exercise discourage where you are right now. Know that you can grow and evolve, because I certainly know that I did.

So let's get back to step number three, where we're doing the growth analysis for each person. So I want you to answer, do they support your goals? Do they challenge you to grow? Do they celebrate your wins?

Do they offer constructive feedback and are they pursuing their own growth? And you might have people like, I know in my circle.

Like, I have people in my circle that are literally, we connect maybe just on business or we connect just on personal growth and like goal crushing and all of those things, right? So you can have different people in your lives that will support you in different areas of your life.

So the next step is step four, which is influence mapping. Right? So we want to categorize each relationship.

So we're going to do our core circle, and our core circle are the people we see daily and we have weekly interaction with, our support circle is maybe monthly interaction and then our extended circle is occasional interaction.

So I want you to kind of just map out and just be well aware of, you know, who are the people in your circle, how do they show up for you, what is their energy level towards you, their energy assessment, and then what category do they fall in? Then step number five is going to be action planning.

So I want you to identify any relationships that need boundaries because you, my friends, I swear, even though it might feel hard and tricky, you can do this, you can create boundaries in these relationships. And the next thing I want you to do is list three growth minded people you want to connect with. Now at the beginning, this may be hard.

I might be your growth minded friend and I am fine with that. And you might feel like, well, is this just a one way street? Listen, this is a starting ground.

When I started, this is what I had to do to get my growth right. My growth was I was reading books, I eventually started going to events, I listened to audiobooks. So you have to do what works well for you.

Now, like I said, a lot of my core friends I have met through my own growth, which is investing either in masterminds or I've invested in events, or I've, you know, connected through some other kind of communities and we've come together and we've created a bond. So right now for you, this might be it.

And you could find a couple other people that also are giving you positive reinforcement in where you want to go. Right? And that's how most people start. And it's completely okay.

And even now, where I am at, where I have a really amazing circle, I'm always amazed at when and I'm happy and excited to meet somebody new that I can connect with and grow. And I still also listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks, read books, and continue my growth beyond that.

So it's okay right now if the person like the, you're like, I don't have anyone who you know, are growth minded. That's okay, you'll get some, I promise.

The next part of step five in that action planning is I want you to plan specific steps to strengthen positive relationships. And I just want you to think about the negative ones that maybe you can start creating more boundaries and stepping back from. Right.

Because you want to outline those strategies for limiting, draining relationships. As hard as that might be, the reality is it's not about them. This is about you. This is about you living your dream life.

And I will tell you, it is not okay for negative people to drain good people down. And they seem to think that it is okay. And I'm not saying that you have to completely cut out certain people from your life.

There are certain people in my life that are still energy vampires, that certainly are negative. They certainly have jealousy. There's all of those things.

But I have gotten to a point where I can create the boundary and then I can also release and let go. Because you have control of the relationships that you have.

You can choose to engage, you can choose to pull back and only have a certain amount of contact with people. And if people want to call you out on it, on maybe you pulling away, you can have honest, hard conversations, Right? I really firmly believe in that.

Like, I.

Obviously, no one loves to have a hard conversation, but if someone is going to challenge me, like, I can sit there and honestly say, like, hey, here's how I'm feeling, and this is. This is what I'm getting from you, and I'm so sorry, like, if that offends you, if that. Like, that's not my intention, but this is how I feel.

And so with that, that is the exercise for today's episode. It's not like we're gonna have an exercise for every episode.

But I just remember doing this, and I remember this being so, so valuable was to actually pull back and look at the people I'm spending the most time with and then also kind of dreaming about who is my dream people. Like. And I do remember mapping that out and being like, oh, man. I want to hang out with people who are really successful and are forward thinkers.

I want to hang out with entrepreneurs. I want to hang out with some badass ladies that are, like, just kicking ass and taking names. And I now have an amazing circle like that.

I have a lot of powerful women and even men that I am very good friends with that meet all of those criterias and then some. I feel very, very grateful. But like I said to you before, please don't feel disheartened if you're not anywhere near that.

Because it took me years to get to where I am here. But it's the journey, right? But it all starts because you acknowledge it and you put energy and focus on, like, oh, wow.

Like, my circle really does contribute a lot to the quality of my life and who I am as a person and where I'm going to evolve to. So with that, my friends, I'm going to end the episode if you have not. If you are not on my email list.

And if you want to get there, you can go to designyourdreamlifetoday.com you can download one of the goodies I'll probably have. I think I I still, I have the button there for free gifts.

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I launched it that today was the very first day that I had sent it out and we've already gotten some emails of people thanking us and saying how much they love it. So I will tell you, my heart and soul goes into that email. I even give you a nice little audio clip at the beginning at the week.

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I hope you guys have enjoyed this podcast and I really hope that you take the time to do the exercise because I promise you, my friends, it's super powerful. So I will see you on next week's episode and I hope you have an amazing week.