A glance at the dark side!

After having talked about friendships that inspire us, and that give us energy, it is time to take a look at the dark side. Let’s try to see what kind of energy-draining friendships there are…

5 inspiring friends

Everybody needs good friends to preserve resilience and energy. When I was born, on March 8. In 1957, a good friend and colleague of my father – Dr. Zeeman – wrote me a personal letter. When I was 30 my mother re-discovered this letter and gave it to me, it said the following: ‘welcome to this wonderful world. I whish that you, just like your father, become a great friend for many.’ Apparently he thought this to be one of the most important things in life, and I do agree with him. Besides, in regard to my father, he was right too. That my father had plenty of resilience and energy is not hard to see, knowing that he, as a widower, remarried when he was 61, got 3 more kids, and worked (with great enthusiasm) until his 75th.

The past 57 years, friendships have mainly been a great source of energy for me. Mainly. It is the realistic side of friendships. There are those friendships that give you energy, and those that cost you energy. Today we’ll take a brief look at 5 kinds of friendships that are all ‘energy-giving’. I like to call them the 5 inspiring friends…

Buddies!

Friendships are a beautiful and very realistic social source of energy. Not everybody has a warm family, or lives in a truly motivating relationship. Even though these 2 are very important social sources, they are not for all of us, and certainly not always, there to tap into.

Dutch Resilience!

Of the 5 social sources that we are about to discuss, the last one, concerning our national identity, is possibly the trickiest one. So, why not start with that one!

Sylvia and I have been bridge-builders for most of our life, and we take great joy in connecting, working, and creating teams with others from different nationalities. When I was 19, I moved to Germany to learn to work together with people that are living and working, coming from a really different cultural background. This was especially meaningful to me since my parents have had rather bad personal experiences with Germans (my father was sent to the concentration-camp Vught, and my mother had barely survived the Hongerwinter), and therefore they haven’t exactly raised me Pro-German. Nonetheless, I have lived and worked for 22 years in Germany, and I have learned a great deal during these years. Interestingly enough, looking back now, I think that, that is also really thanks to the fact that I am deeply routed in my Dutch Identity.

Resilience: where do I find the energy?

Resilience is an exciting combination of:

1.    Personal Competences (like the 7 you can find in our ‘Resilience Scan’)

2.    Social energy sources

3.    Structural energy sources

After our last blog-series on resilience, where we have discussed the 7 personal competences, we start a new series on ‘Social Energy Sources’ today.