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Kevin Triplett's avatar

Loving this newsletter, very rich and professional! I'm pretty heavily connection-oriented while focused on connections that support my feelings of purpose, my developmental growth, and allow me to show up as fully me as I can stand, lol. I want to add to my inner-most circle (loved ones) and the large 1500+ (people I can recognize). I figure the inner circle of loved ones will want to nourish me while that big outer circle increases my pool for filling all the circles in-between. Woo!

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Loisel's avatar

Yes! I feel like some cross over. I lived across from my neighbour for 2 years before we started talking and she became a pretty close friend finally after 2 years of just a hi on the street.

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Loisel's avatar

Yes it's really important for me to meet a variety of people because it keeps me humble and opens my mind up a lot more. As a user experience designer, I'm always wanting to expand my knowledge about humans. So the bigger the sample, the better.

I'd love to get to know people from cultures I'm not familiar with. And I love adding people to my close friends circle.

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Jason Sears's avatar

Yes, for me it's really important to connect with new people, and people different than me. I have felt in the past that I was living in a kind of bubble. Right now I wish I was more connected with people 15-20 years old - they are who I'd add to my middle rings of Dunbar circles.

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Loisel's avatar

I met a 14 year old this week. Very dry/no bs type of talk. They also like to thumbs up to things instead of saying anything haha

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Don Salmon's avatar

I love that - thumbs up instead of talking. Is that, do you think, the difference in age between you and them, or just what they do with each other as well?

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Loisel's avatar

I think it's what they do to each other as well! I have to admit, it makes them look cool.

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Don Salmon's avatar

Great article.

I remember looking at this idea of circles of friendship after living in NY City for a number of years. Being part of intersecting communities - musicians (classical and “other” - very different groups), artists, writers, actors, dancers, and later, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and other mental health workers, and at least two or three dozen groups of consciousness contemplatives (from Christian to Sufi to Vedantic and more) AND the various jobs I’d been on (hospitals, counseling centers, church music director, college music instructor, dozens of different dance studios - all over 30 years

And I realized i probably recognized at the very least 10,000 people and also probably knew several thousand to at least say hi too.

Mind blowing, to say the least1

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Jason Sears's avatar

Right?? It's amazing how many people we can feel a connection with! That sounds like a wide field of connections, Don. Are there any rings in that circle that Dunbar draws which you'd like to add to? The inner rings perhaps?

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Christine Callo's avatar

That’s amazing, Don! We connect, mingle, bump, brush with so many people in our lifetime!

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