ยป Networking, The People Kind
On the surface, networking is about meeting people then moving up a connectedness ladder, from contacts to interaction to “deep rapport”. Instead, most guides say you should look at it as integrating people into your gift economy: when you meet someone, ask yourself what you can do for them.
This isn’t easy, but it’s at least straight-forward in a business context: find out what their chief challenges are and then keep an eye out for solutions. The classic examples are sending someone an article relevant to their interests or sending them a job posting to escape their current challenges. 
It just occured to me that maybe a bit more of this sort of thinking would help be build my social network. I assume people mostly hang out with me for my wit and charm. When I do think about it, I focus on killer events: but maybe people don’t need more and better events to go to? I’d like to know what my friends need in their lives (besides money or a dancing monkey).
I invented a new chakra the other day, the cheek chakra. Since they’re fictional I thought I’d add useful, non-esoteric ones.
It’s really easy to open, just requires a little grounding and being clued in on the Divine Joke. Pause and remember that everything is absolutely amazing. You know it’s open once you start smiling uncontrollably — hence “cheek”.
Once open “building rapport” as a distinct activity falls away and you just kinda have it. You end up with something a lot more genuine than sending sales contacts copies of articles they’d like.
It’s kinda like the “namaste” salutation, but very direct: Communicate between shared divine nature, not through any reductive left-brain-only language facility.
Jack
10 Jul 09 at 4:28 pm