When you change your attitude towards life and free yourself from a victim mentality, your thinking and interests change.
Your relationships with your surroundings also change: with family, friends, and acquaintances. Read this article to learn how this happens, what you need to be prepared for, and how to find new friends and like-minded people.
Old friends may disappear from your life, or communication may be reduced to a minimum
Since your new worldview will be completely different from the old one, there is a high probability that shared interests with friends will disappear.
If you were connected by common views on key issues in life, and now everything has changed for you, you will lose points of connection with your friend. And communication may fizzle out.
When you begin to articulate a new worldview, new principles, and live by them, there are several possible ways your relationships with your surroundings may develop.
- Some friends and acquaintances will be interested in how you solved your problems, seek your advice, and strive to change following your lead.
- Some of your surroundings, and in my experience — the majority, will not want to change. Some of them will disappear from your life on their own.
- There will also be those who will want to seek support from you, will cry on your shoulder, and yet do nothing to change their own lives.
It is important — not to drag them along with you, no matter how much you might want your friend to also become more confident and happier. But not everyone is ready to take action for that.
Here, to keep your inner core intact, establish personal boundaries: define the topics you want/are able to discuss and those that are not interesting to you.
If you realize that your friend or acquaintance only wants to complain, asks for help, but does not follow your advice, clearly state that you will not discuss certain topics:
«I offered you help, gave advice on what to do, I have nothing more to say on this topic. I love you, I believe in you, but I ask you to respect me too.»
See also Forcing Good or The Danger of the Rescuer Role
Read why helping others and trying to improve their lives ruins your own.
By offering help to someone who does not accept it, you take on their problems, start worrying for them, as if living their life for them.
Do not turn yourself into a «dumpster» where anyone can come and pour out their dissatisfaction with life, their negativity.
Offer support, send it from your heart if you deem it necessary, and if it does not destroy you, but do not let your interlocutor turn every conversation with you into a psychotherapy session.
Any relationship is sustained by being needed by both parties. If one person gets some benefit from it, the same benefit should be there for the other.
Here the question is about your decision — to stop investing energy into another person’s problems. If you are doing it, it means you need it for some reason too. And that is a good question for reflection.
See also From Codependency to Interconnectedness. The Reason for the Need for Like-Minded People
Your Personal Goal in Communicating with Old Friends Changes
There is a common belief that a friend is a friend because they should always come to help, even to their own detriment, sacrificing their plans and interests.
You can tell a friend everything, all your feelings and thoughts about your problem.
Once you become the creator of your own life, everything changes fundamentally.
You will no longer dump your negativity on a friend. You will think a hundred times before complaining.
At least that was the case for me. I would mentally express it all to myself, and if needed, write the situation down on paper until I found the true cause of my distress.
Only then would I decide whether to tell my friend about the situation. And if I did, it was only to share the event itself, but without any emotional coloring.
This doesn’t mean you can never complain. After all, sometimes you need to vent to a living person when it all boils over.
Find someone you can tell this to, someone who vibrationally matches you. Someone who will understand you correctly and won’t pick up the topic to savor it and support the idea of how unfair the world is.
As for the purpose of the relationship itself, what becomes important is whether you feel comfortable with the person. You don’t necessarily have to look for topics to talk about; often it’s pleasant just to be silent in each other’s presence.
You may meet rarely, but the connection between you will still be there, and sometimes that is enough.
Read about the principles on which vertical relationships are built. This will help you build new relationships with your surroundings.
How relationships with parents change
Acquaintances and friends are one thing; family and parents are another. They will remain your parents forever.
If you have gone through the path of forgiving and accepting your parents, which is extremely important for spiritual growth, your relationship may:
- not change at all,
- change in an unexpected way for you, or even worsen,
- to improve, become more harmonious.
If your relationship with your parents was not a role model, do not set their improvement as a goal for your spiritual growth. Do not become attached to the outcome.
What will definitely change is your attitude toward many things. You will stop reacting to situations that previously bothered or irritated you.
And most likely (but not guaranteed), your parents will stop pushing your red buttons.
Many topics that interest your parents will no longer interest you.
I suggest studying a series of articles about relationships with parents. One of them contains recommendations on how to build a relationship with them so that both you and they feel comfortable.
How relationships with partners (spouses) change
Often people are drawn to each other through their traumas. And when these traumas are healed, the relationship ends if the souls had no other goals.
The relationship may also continue if the partners initially have the goal of developing together as a couple for their entire lives or a large part of it.
Relationships also evolve into partnerships based on agreements, unconditional love, and acceptance.
It is impossible to predict in advance what will happen in your relationship with your partner during your spiritual growth.
After all, we do not know what life tasks your soul and your partner’s soul set before incarnation.
Sometimes, in a couple, the second partner does not want to develop, and then the relationship falls apart.
Often, in a couple, the woman develops, and the man begins to follow her, but in his own way, catching up.
If this is your case, do not interfere with your man going at his own pace. And if it seems to you that he is making mistakes, allow him to gain his own experience.
Every person learns about life in their own way, choosing their own path. Some need little time to learn a lesson and move to the next turn of evolution, while others will spend years on it.
See also: Spiritual growth in a couple. 10 rules that help you grow together
How to find a new circle of friends and like-minded people
Since you are reading the materials on this site, you are probably already on a spiritual path. And what I described above is familiar to you.
And you, like me once, and like many other people, have encountered the fact that your social circle has noticeably thinned out, and new friends are not appearing.
But they will not appear if you do nothing about it.
New acquaintances can be found online on social networks, in interest communities. For example, Keys of Mastery.
If you want real communication, look for such communities in your city. They surely exist.
Remember what fascinated you in childhood or start doing what you like now: drawing, photography. Attend master classes, go on hikes.
Here in Crimea, for example, many hikes to places of power are now being organized. You can join such a group, and you will surely find a kindred spirit there.
Do not remake your old circle to match yourself. It is not worth telling your acquaintances about the structure of the universe or subtle planes.
People simply will not understand you. And most do not need all this anyway. This is your choice, not theirs. Leave them alone, let them go their own way. Those who need it will catch up in their own time.
Look for people who are at a higher level than you, from whom you can learn something. Do something new every day, go to new places, be open, self-sufficient, and unattached to any particular result.
See also Catalysts of Development and Evolution. How You Change Other People’s Lives
I would be grateful if you share how your relationships with your surroundings have changed!