Self-Care Sunday: Be a Floater

In our parent community, Resilience-Based Parenting,™ we help kids develop a strategy called “floating.” 

This strategy is equally as valuable for adults as it is for kids, so in today’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to be a floater. 

Being a floater means that you float amongst various social groups. You have friends from work, friends from college, and friends from the rock-climbing gym. 

This resilience skill helps kids avoid friendship drama and adjust when friendship dynamics become difficult or unpleasant, or when certain friends simply are not available. 

By the time we are adults, the friendship drama is (hopefully) resolved. But being a floater is helpful for adults for other reasons. 

First, different friends “match” different parts of our personalities. You might have friends who love to exercise, and this encourages the part of you that wants to stay healthy. You might have friends who are highly motivated at work, and this is a match to the part of you that has big career goals. And you might have friends who just love to laugh, which is a match to your sillier side. 

Beyond that, being a floater means that you are more likely to grow. Resilient people are resilient because they use their life experiences to become better versions of themselves. When you surround yourself with all sorts of different people—people of different ages, cultures, religions, political ideologies, socioeconomic backgrounds, and hobbies—you challenge yourself to learn and grow. 

Treasure and love the people who have been in your life forever—like your best friend of 30 years—but also make room for new people who just might be matches to parts of you that have been hidden, tucked away, and ignored.