{"id":448,"date":"2009-12-24T12:13:23","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T17:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/?p=448"},"modified":"2016-01-08T10:11:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T15:11:51","slug":"execution-tip-think-about-the-effects-of-social-support-on-your-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/448\/execution-tip-think-about-the-effects-of-social-support-on-your-growth","title":{"rendered":"STEAM Tip: Social Support"},"content":{"rendered":"

The people that we chose to surround ourselves with can have a profound impact on both the types of goals that we set and how often we achieve these goals.\u00a0 If there are any goals that you are struggling to complete on time or at high levels of quality, you may wish to increase the amount of effective social support (and\/or decrease the amount of ineffective social support) that you experience in relation to those goals.\u00a0 Here are a few steps that have helped people to recruit effective social support into their lives:<\/p>\n

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  1. Identify which sorts of support you want for different sorts of goals (and what sort of social interaction you do not want as well).<\/strong> The first step in boosting effective social support for a goal is often a clear understanding of the variety of different types of social support that is available to people and which type of support is most likely to help one to move closer to the achievement of a specific goal.\u00a0 There are many different types of social support, including\u00a0 (a) physical assistance, like help with moving a couch across a room; (b) financial assistance, such as a loan to help pay the rent this month; (c) specific advice, including instructions on how to effectively engage in relaxation exercises or complete one’s taxes; (d) emotional support in the form of reminders from others of how much one is loved and cared for; and (e) a feeling of being involved in a common mission with others, such as belonging to a group focused on intellectual, financial, and\/or personal growth.<\/li>\n
  2. Determine which sorts of social support are most effective to the achievement of different goals<\/strong> (and which types inhibit goal-achievement).<\/strong>\u00a0 After becoming clear about the different types of social support, you can then begin noticing which types of support are most effective for different goals in your life.\u00a0 For example, it may be that the feeling of being a part of a group that works out regularly together helps you to achieve the goal of physical fitness, while specific advice from group members on how to work out actually makes goal-achievement less likely (you may actually avoid going to the gym with advice-givers if you do not want exercise advice from them).\u00a0 At the same time, you may notice that specific advice is more helpful than the feeling of being a part of a group when it comes to how to cook a certain meal because you do not feel a desire to belong to a cooking group or to develop your own recipe for the meal.<\/li>\n
  3. Ask people for the specific kinds of support that you want for specific goals<\/strong> (and to avoid social interactions that drain energy that could be used for achievement).<\/strong>\u00a0 Once you are clear about what type of social support is likely to help you achieve different goals (and which type may harm your goal-achievement), you are ready to ask others for the precise kind of support that is likely to help achieve these goals (and to ask others to avoid ineffective types of social support).\u00a0 For example, you can (a) ask for specific advice on how to start a business from successful business people that you know, (b) ask for emotional support for your goal of increasing your self-esteem from people who know the value of such an endeavor, and\/or (c) ask other interested learners in a training\/class to participate in a study\/implementation group with you.\u00a0 At the same time, you can ask the certain people to avoid certain types of unhelpful social support for these goals.\u00a0 For example, you may not desire as much emotional support from your study group members as you do from the people that you have asked to support you in your self-esteem goal; it is perfectly reasonable to clarify this.\u00a0 For example, you might say something like this to members of your study group, “What really works for me in study groups is staying focused on the material; I don’t really personally benefit that much from discussions about how much the group values my presence (although I do recognize and honor that others may get a great deal out of this sort of support).”<\/li>\n
  4. Minimize time with people who do not honor your social support requests.\u00a0<\/strong> Whenever necessary, you can chose to minimize time with people who do not honor your specific social support requests as much as possible.\u00a0 If you are not helped by a group that regularly provides specific advice on how to exercise and you repeatedly make this clear to your exercise group, it is perfectly reasonable to seek out others who can honor this request if current group members cannot.<\/li>\n
  5. Think about modifying goals to include effective types of social support (and to minimize ineffective types of social support).<\/strong>\u00a0 Often, effective social support helps to make goal achievement more realistic.\u00a0 You may wish to modify goals to include specific types of social support. For example, the goal “Complete an important project” could be modified for increased effective social support like this: “Ask John for advice on how to complete my project, then complete the project using the portions of his advice that I deem helpful.”\u00a0 You can also goal-set in a way that decreases the probability of experiencing ineffective social support.\u00a0 For example, if John regularly gives you advice that is not helpful, you might set a goal like this: “Work on my project weekly in an area where I am not likely to be interrupted.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The more effective types of social support you utilize (and the more you minimize unhelpful social interactions), the more likely it is you will experience high-quality achievement and, in some cases, strengthened relationships with others.\u00a0 For more thoughts on recruiting effective social support, click here.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    FINAL NOTE:<\/strong> If you were linked to this article by a video or email, please return to that link and proceed with any other instructions that you deem helpful.\u00a0 If you are using the Mission Fulfillment System<\/a> to identify and track goal achievement, please keep this article in mind when you develop and\/or modify your goals on the system.\u00a0 For more articles related to improving STEAM, see our Self-Mastery<\/a>, Interpersonal Expertise<\/a>, and Mission Connection<\/a> tips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The people that we chose to surround ourselves with can have a profound impact on both the types of goals that we set and how often we achieve these goals.\u00a0 If there are any goals that you are struggling to complete on time or at high levels of quality, you may wish to increase the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-support-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.excellenceuniversity.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}