how to be more chill

Post date: 2019-05-23 04:23:54

I am always the social initiator in my friend groups and among 1-to-1 friendships. 80% of the time I don't mind this but the other 20% I wonder if people would bother organising to meet up if I didn't, and what that says for the quality of my relationships. Do I need to scale back on initiating / "be more chill"? When do I know that it's time to take a step back?

I should say, I am very lucky and have a wide network of friends and friend groups. But I put a lot of effort into nurturing my friendships. They're important to me. I'm single and live in a different country from my family, and I am a natural extrovert who feels better when around other people. So cultivating and maintaining relationships, for me, is a need.

Sometimes though I wonder if I should just be more chill, take a step back and let other people reach out to me to organise things. I feel like I have some perfectly nice friendships where I do all of the active soliciting, if that makes sense. I also do all the "work" like finding dates that work, booking tickets, booking restaurants etc. I am a natural-born organiser and I don't mind doing the work, but sometimes I feel like... would I be seeing these people if I weren't making all the effort?

So my question is, when do I know it's time to step back and let other people take charge? How, also, can I learn to be more accepting of the fact that if I don't do the work, some of these relationships will inevitably fail? Or maybe I just need to accept that, since my friendships are really important to me, I'm always going to have to be the one who does most of the work?

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