It’s my favorite time of the year, when my timeline is flooded with graduation photos of young people, faces beaming with hope, who are about to embark on their next chapter. I really do love seeing them. However, since I’m about to qualify for “Auntie” status, I do want to offer a bit of unsolicited advice that may not make sense to you young grads now, but will later. 

You’re just graduating high school or college and in the mix of excitement for new adventures, there are also lots of promises among friends of “We will keep our friend circle forever. Things will never change. We’ll be best friends forever. We’ll grow old together and do everything together: weddings, babies,…etc etc…”

And while good friends are a blessing, I want you to keep this in mind: “The ONLY constant in life is change.” You do not need to limit yourself to a “circle,” even though a part of you is seeking comfort in knowing that there will always be a group of girls to go to yoga with, or a group of guys to watch the game with, be in your wedding party, hang out every weekend, etc…

Because limiting yourself within the confines of your childhood or college circle, or ANY circle, is a guarantee of stunted growth. It is a life of going to the same 3 bars every weekend to meet the same people to circulate the same tired hometown gossips. I know. I’ve been there.

And while it’s good to catch up with your cherished old friendships…the world is wide and we live in the digital age. Get out there, explore and make new connections. Join a local or online hiking or crafting or gardening group, visit the art museums, take up hobbies that you love, and you will meet some new cool people along the way.

There are tons of different people out there who can exchange new ideas and enrich your mind beyond “who’s dating whom, who’s getting married, who’s having a baby, who’s at the local bar this weekend…etc…”

I’m speaking from experience. When I graduated high school, I thought my high school circle was it. Then I tried to hang on to my college circle. Then I even tried to maintain a circle with my colleagues in the oil and gas industry for professional connections, even though I didn’t really click with them, because the old adage is “It’s not what your know, it’s who you know,” right?

Well…it turned out I didn’t need any of those connections when I got offered 4 jobs in 4 different industries years later, in a new city where I have no circle. And now, my social and professional circle is so global and so diverse that I wouldn’t even call them a circle anymore. I have a network of diverse, intelligent, and interesting individuals who enrich me as much as I (hopefully) enrich them.

And sometimes, old classmates from high school who I never really talked to back then are now some of my closest friends, because they have also done the work themselves to grow beyond their circles, and now we find out that we have more in common than we thought.

A few weeks ago, a friend told me “I’m worried what my circle in Tulsa will say about me.” And I responded, “Honey, there are 8 billion people in the world. Why do you need to worry about a circle in a city that’s barely a dot on the globe?”

And that’s your Auntie wisdom for today, kids. Just go out and live life.