"Networking" and "Energy"

My thesis is pretty shaky here, folks, so bear with me - something about how personal energy and networking and friendship are all related. We'll see.

Yesterday I was talking with someone about how the term "networking" is kind of icky. It can suggest that other humans are available to you for your selfish interests and that you should schmooze them enough to get things you want. So my pal and I were agreeing that it feels yucky and why can't we just want to make friends, since friendship in all its degrees is the way that life opportunities arise, for the most part. It's pretty tough to be a successful jerk, in other words, since your peers will eventually ostracize you, and your reputation will blow. Unless you become the powerful jerk in charge somehow - hmm, well this is sort careening out of control already, but let's just stick with the premise that it's better for you life dreams and opportunities and basic connectedness to be likable and sociable and convivial etc. So then "networking" is this way of meeting other people who are into things that you like, and demonstrating to them that you are, in fact, likable and reasonable to work with and maybe funny and nice and punctual, and then you exist in their mind as someone who would be good to bring into the fold of whatever they are doing.

So why can't we just say we're going to go out and make friends? Since this model works for friendship, too - you meet people who are into stuff that you like, everybody sniffs each other out as being fun or game or whatever, and then you end up calling each other to go camping or something. And then you use your connections to people and your reputation to create more relationships, and find other opportunities, and to accumulate ever more and further ways of expanding your life and perspective etc.

So I was all about hating "networking" and loving "friendship" when I thought back to lawyering. Man, you ain't need to be friends with people for this stuff. You need to be reasonable to work with (reliable, friendly, responsive) and good at what you do, and it's important to be in contact with people and spread your good reputation around so that you can gain access to contexts that will let you do the work that you want to do. And this is important, too. It's different from friendship of course in that a company or something will dispose of you regardless of your awesomeness from time to time (but maybe it's not all that different - some friendships are good for one reason but not another, and one friend who goes camping with you might not be the friend you take bowling). But really friendship is still at work in business/law situations. I saw this a lot at my old job in the big firm - the presumption was that everyone was capable of doing the work. You can write, research, finish stuff on time, and it'll be usable etc. Even better if you are capable of being confident and an expert about whatever you just did. But really, the opportunities came to the likable people who made friends with other people or who were somehow charismatic and nice to be around and could joke on the phone, because it really helps your work efforts to cooperate with someone who has pleasant energy to offer, not just a pit of limp availability, even if they are highly capable and productive. I think it's the pleasant energy thing that I'm trying to get to here while thinking about networking vs. friendship.

And speaking of energy, I guess I'm really thinking about this stuff for yoga teaching. This past weekend at the yoga workshop we talked a lot about attracting the kinds of students you actually want, and what that's about and how that goes. Our teacher talked about having a field of energy that is bigger than the situation, and that having a broken energy attracts broken students and then you all end up in a vortext of craziness. Students who don't like you have something else going on, and it could be that you just aren't their teacher at this point in their life, or it could be that the student is toxic and you don't want their energy around anyway - having your own sense of command and presence and power in the room will deter this kind of student. I've been to classes with teachers who don't have a clearly authoritative and compassionate vibe, who are hesitant or feel vulnerable, and the students' vibe feels like an out-patient psych ward. I mean, you can tell that the vibe in the classroom is a down spiral, and it sure doesn't feed the teacher to attract draining clients. And the teacher should want to feel fed by teaching, not drained - isn't this interesting to consider? I hadn't really thought about it this way, but really, even though yoga is for everyone (even, and maybe especially, the crazies), I don't want to share my energetic space with draining or toxic people. This is going to be the next hurdle in my yoga teaching - right now I just teach a small group of my young, fit, emotionally well friends, and it really feeds me to do this. I have to broaden my reach a little bit here, you know, network and make friends, so that I can assert my energy field a little and see how it goes. I guess I just hadn't really thought about treating students as a kind of co-worker or friend before, but it really is the same thing - we all get our best work done with the kind of people who are responsive and inspiring to us, whether they friends, co-workers, students - we don't want desperate or confused or draining friends or co-workers or students. I mean, a bad friend will want a weak and desperate friend to use. A bad boss will want insecure and frightened employees to control. A dangerous teacher will want needy and broken students to manipulate. Yep, it's all the same, I guess, we're all auditioning for each other for reciprocal energy exchange all the time.