On Holidays and Blue Dots
Life tends to get busier the older you get. Humans grow apart from each other and those phone calls to your family become fewer and fewer. Holidays can be a great way to reconnect, but they can also drain your wallet and your patience.
It’s no small feat to fit a ton of family time into a few days. You may have a new significant other to bring to the table and people tend to change over the course of a few years, as well.
It’s also no excuse for you to just connect with loved ones on holidays or special events which is where a lot of humans go wrong. They get too busy with the minutiae of everyday life and use special events as a crutch to make a quick phone call and fulfill an obligation.
There is a solution to relying on holidays to reconnect and it’s incredibly easy. All you need is a phone, your contact list and a few emojis to change how you prioritize calling loved ones.
The blue dot system is a simple way to change your mindset around phone calls and connection with others.
Take your ten closest friends and family members on your phone and put a blue dot emoji next to their name.
Take your ten immediate family members or dear friends/colleagues and put a green dot by their name.
The goal is to call your blue dots at least once a week and your green dots at least once a month. If your blue or green dots call/text you, the goal is to respond to them in 24 hours.
When you’re inundated with calls/emails/texts every day, the dot system is a great way for you to quickly look at your phone and know a dear friend or family member is trying to connect with you. You can prioritize the dots and not let humans that you don’t deeply care about capitalize on all of your time.
A few other benefits are:
Special events are whatever you want them to be now because you no longer have obligations to interact with people you haven’t seen in awhile.
You will now know if anyone has changed and if you do see them at a family event you’ll have a much wider range of topics to talk about because you’ve been keeping up with that person.
You’ll boost your own joy because you’re talking to your loved ones a lot more than you used to.
You won’t have to buy the nicest gift or spend money on gifts because your love is much more important than making up for lost time with a watch.
Try out the dot system and tell me how it works!
