Risk & Business Magazine Cooke Insurance Group Fall 2016 | Page 15

RELATIONSHIPS

FUNDAMENTALS
I’ve hung out with someone in fifteen
years.” This is more the norm than you
might imagine. A lot of people go out and
build big companies and have all kinds
of fame, but they feel empty. Janis Joplin
said, “On stage, I make love to twenty-five
thousand different people. Then I go home
alone.”
Focusing on the key relationships in your
life isn’t just a smart way to identify where
to invest your focus and energy—it’s also
human. It deepens connections. It creates
meaning in our lives.
One thing I often tell people is that you’re
either in communication with someone
or you’re trying to escape. When we talk
to people, we go in and out of different
thoughts. We think about our kids. We
think about what we have to do that day.
We think about going to the bathroom.
When you’re communicating with
someone while simultaneously trying to
escape, it could be that you’re not aligned
with that person …OR… you may not be
aligned with yourself.
I grew up shy, introverted, and scared. I
used to get high, practically daily, in high
school, and I was a terrible drug addict
because I didn’t know how to interact with
other humans. In retrospect, it’s kind of
funny that I built one of the highest-level
relationship networks in the world for
successful entrepreneurs (called Genius
Network), because social skills did not
come to me naturally. It was survival. I
was either going to hate life, or I was going
to figure out how to interact with other
humans.
SO, WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ALL THIS?
Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-

BY: JOE POLISH
FOUNDER & CREATOR,
GENIUSNETWORK.COM

Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The
Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
says, “The best way to choose what to
keep and what to throw away is to take
each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does
this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not,
dispose of it.” You can apply this to people
too. Does this person spark joy? If they
don’t, do everything you can to minimize
interactions with that person and cultivate
more meaningful relationship