Category Archives: Friendships

What You Should Know About Friendship

Friendships, Life Education

When you only become friends with like-minded individuals, you risk becoming narrow-minded and trapping each other in the preconceived notions and judgments everyone shares.  If you expand your mind and your social network, you can be exposed to more ideas that challenge you, and you can learn to be tolerant of others instead of judgmental.  (Don’t Be Yourself)

The more activities you have in common, the more likely you will be friends.  Note I did not say the more you have in common, I said the more activities you have in common: it is in the time spent together that friendship is made, not in the amount of similarities you have–the similarities just increases the potential for friendship, it doesn’t build the friendship in reality.  (Getting Comfortable With a Friend)

“As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other” – Why is it Hard to Make Friends Over 30? NY Times

Time alone is necessary, but not sufficient, for friendship.  Vulnerability is absolutely necessary for friendship to exist.  If you are not your genuine self, then you can’t consider someone your friend because that person is only friends with the act you put on, not your true self.  And if you don’t believe the other person is genuine, then you can’t trust that person and be friends with what you believe to be just a character or act the other person puts on for you.  Also, people in general don’t like being lied to, much less friends.

Money will be a problem.  If you are lucky, you will have friends who make more than you, friends who make the same, and friend who make less.  Some activities cost more than others, so some people will be excluded as a result.  This is just part of life.  (Birthdays and Wealth Distribution)

Not all friendships will last forever.  Do your best to preserve the ones you want to, but move on and let go when need be. (Friendship: Drifting Apart)

All friendships will be different: everyone is different, and your experiences with each friend will be different.  There is no detailed formula for friendship, nor is there a detailed model for friendship, only tips, guidelines, and descriptions of friendship.  Also, a Friendship Contract is impossible because it cannot fully capture all possible outcomes and circumstances.  If enforced, it would limit interactions to pre-defined acceptable behavior, resulting in repetition, which from the Nature of Your Own Identity we know means no identity is formed, where identity in this case refers to the identity of the relationship.  Furthermore, contracts are for business, not personal. (A Time and Place for Business vs Personal).  In fact, it is in how you go above and beyond the social contract that you demonstrate personalized friendship, which is the most sentimentally valuable.  It is one thing to say Happy Birthday because it’s someone’s birthday, it is another thing to, on a normal day, spend time and money to give a gift just to make that person happier.

People become friends for a variety of different reasons, some are activity, location, occupation, mutual friend: the why and how can make for an interesting story, but doesn’t need to–the friendship makes the friendship, not the start.

Unfairness is a fundamental part of friendship.  You will like some people more than others: that is normal, and you must respect that in order to be honest and genuine in your interactions.  (What I Learned About Friendship In 2013).  There is also no need to feel bad about prioritizing friends: it’s just a part of living in an imperfect world with constraints; no need to get depressed from trade-off decisions.

Selfishness is an unfortunate part of friendship: everyone needs and wants to get something out of it. If you get nothing out of a friendship, then it might be time to find friends that are a better fit for you.  However, there is also something I call charitable friendships: someone wants to give, and you just happen to be someone they can give to; that person doesn’t care what they get back.

Tips on Friendship

  • Be consistent – Don’t be a fair-weather friend.  It will confuse other people about whether you are actually their friend, which leads to suspicion and distrust, all of which will ruin or end the friendship unless you fix the problem.
    • Fake friends reveal themselves in how much or how little they care about you.  The mainstream definition of “friend” is just someone you hang out and have fun with.   However, there is a deeper kind of friend, and that is the kind that you care about, and who cares about you.  This is a much more exclusive list both because getting this level of friendship is difficult to achieve, and because you have a limited amount of time, and you can’t care about everyone equally.
  • Focus – If you could only pick 3 people to be your friends, who would those 3 people be?  If you have trouble deciding who to be excluded, then all the people you had difficulty deciding about are your friends.  If you easily picked less than 3, then those are your friends.  To make more: How to Make Friends
  • Take Initiative – Be the one to take action and contact those you want to stay in contact with, don’t be passive or wait for the other person to make the first move.
    • Gary Blauman – How I Met Your Mother Season 9 Episode 21 – “You will be shocked when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever.  That’s why, when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it. ” – Ted

More on Friendship and Social Skills

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How to Make Friends

Friendships

Step 1 of 4. You just met and you don’t know anything about each other.

Step 2. You start getting to know things about each other from other people, from your own observations and judgements, from conversations.  If someone doesn’t shake your hand, you might think they are impolite, or they don’t like you, or they are a germaphobe who never shakes anyone’s hand.  Which one is true?  Your mind will probably guess one and convince you that you’re right, but to find out the truth, only time will tell. Few of your initial impressions of the person are likely to be accurate because you don’t know the person well enough to know what certain things mean to that person.  If you decide to ask directly for an explanation too early in the relationship, they might be shy about telling the truth–being vulnerable and honest is scary–so they might lie to cover up the truth, or they deflect the question with a joke or a change of subject.

Being able to judge someone based on what you see only works if it’s true that the person is behaving in a way that is representative of who that person is.  This is not always true because people’s moods change, and that mood change results in different behavior: If I’m tired, I’ll be slow and quiet; if I’m excited I’ll be loud and active; if I’m having a normal day I’ll be responsive but reserved.  Who I am as a whole changes every day, but pieces of who I am as a person will stay with me as I change over time, and the only way to learn who I am as a person over time is to watch and observe me over time.

Step 3. You build common ground.  This could mean you realize that you both like similar things or have similar backgrounds and experiences, or, if you have nothing in common prior to meeting, you can create common ground by spending time together and experiencing life together.  This part requires a lot of patience, because it takes many hours to learn enough about the other person that you can easily filter what to say and how to say it, based on what you know about the other person and yourself, and what you hope to achieve out of this relationship.  This part takes weeks, and in my experience it usually takes months. The trick is to stay with it, and ask questions: have people explain their actions so you know the truth, and you can refine the accuracy of your judgments of that person.  If they don’t know you well, they’ll give you superficial answers.  If you’ve know each other for several weeks, they might share with you a more detailed answer, but still not the truth because they want to hide it.  Few people go around wearing their heart on their sleeve, telling the absolute core truth.  For most people, you will only get that when there’s a need, when there’s a problem, challenge, or struggle.  Be there to help, and you will complete your quest and unlock the friendship achievement.

The common ground between every two people is different: no two people are identical, or else they would be the same person.  What this means is that your friendship with each person will be slightly different–different personalities will bring out different sides of your own identity.  This is normal–you don’t have to act the same way to everyone, and you’re not being disingenuous by doing so.

Step 4. Both sides make the choice to be friends. Who you run into is influenced by your life decisions, but ultimately it is out of your control.  If you went to the event an hour early you would have had an entirely different experience and met entirely different people, and given them entirely different impressions of you.  Of all the people you meet, however, you choose which ones become your friend, and at the end of the day, the choice must be mutual: if neither person considers the other a friend, they aren’t friends; if one person considers the other a friend, but the feeling is not shared, then the friendship is in limbo.  With time, one of them could change their mind and accept the friendship, or one of them could change their mind and abandon the friendship.  Only if both people say yes is it real friendship.

What You Should Know About Friendship

Resources

1. How to Meet People

  • Google for activities, hobbies, events that you’re interested in, or just go to one for fun to meet people.  www.meetup.com
  • Next time a friend invites you to something, say yes.
  • Go outside for any reason at all, maybe you need some bread and milk <–funny video

2. Get to know the person

  • My articles on: Conversation and Communication

3. Build common ground with the person (this common ground IS your relationship with that person.  This is where it happens.)  I plan to release an app for this, subscribe to hear news.

4. With time, effort, and honest emotions, the common ground grows, and the relationship grows, and if you’re lucky and it works out, the relationship becomes a friendship.

More articles on Friendship:

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Life Lessons Jan 2014

Conversation, Friendships, Life Advice, Life Lessons, Social Skills
Relationships
  • Insecure about friendships.  In the past when I met friends of friends, I would think to myself: who is this enemy trying to steal my friend.  But now that I have relationship security (read How to Make Friends), I know I don’t need to worry.  I am instead happy that my friend found friends to hang out with while I was away or unable to hang out, and I’m excited to meet new people who might be potential friends and who I like because they have the social capital of being referred by a friend.
  • Organizations and clubs and activities facilitate the development of relationships because it takes the pressure off so it’s not like a head on direct judgment or interview.  Consistent interaction helps you get comfortable with a friend. (However, this alone is not enough to develop a relationship–willingness is needed).
  • You must give first to receive.  Looking back on a past social experiment, I am reminded that it took 3 months of hard work, caring about other people and thinking hard about every interaction and relationship development with them, before I started getting any returns at all from my investment: 3 months for someone to take initiative to invite me or something, ONCE.  After that, it took chance occurrences for bonding to occur, serendipitous interaction at the right moment and context.
Lessons From the Retirement of Jay Leno: We can see what is valuable from what guests thank him for.
  • Louis C.K. says Jay calls every time something good happens to Louis to congratulate him.
  • Leslie Mann thanks him for being an entertainer, someone to rely and depend on to cheer up at the end of the day. To look forward to seeing, because Jay brightens up someone’s life.
  • Personalized Gifts (Ellen does this too)
  • Promoting someone’s work, country music artist thanks Jay for doing that for him and his industry.
Responsibility in Relationships, Conversations, and Dance
I had a meeting with a mentor where we discussed this website and its goal of improving relationship health in America, and he mentioned that one of the ways he gauges whether people care about him or not is whether they ask how he’s doing.  So rarely is that simple conversation ice breaker used properly (see http://youtu.be/vc-e-T39Z80); if an honest answer IS given, whether follow up questions are asked is another measure of care.
This is why asking questions is recommended by many conversation and relationship guides for starting out: by asking many questions about the other person it makes the other person feel cared for.  Therefore they may open up and feel closer to you because they have revealed so much–they know you know a lot about them.
Recapping the discussion, I noticed that what he said was true: going into the meeting, my goal was the be strictly business and have my site evaluated by an experienced businessman and investor.  I spent most of my time cutting him off and trying to get in sales pitches, to speak up and say things rather than sit back and listen to him talk; whenever he would talk about something I would think about how I could add to the conversation and instead talk about myself: I didn’t give him room to add to the conversation himself, nor did I ask him to expand on many topics.  This is how you make people feel used.
One of the questions I struggled with during my entire relationship with this mentor is knowing what are the limits and the boundaries: is this relationship business only, life only, or what balance?  Well, the answer came to me when I recalled my mindset towards conversations: Just like it is your responsibility to take the conversation where you want it to go, either making it superficial or deep, it is your responsibility to make the relationship into what you want it to be.  And in both instances, be observant of indications that you have crossed a boundary and respectful of the set boundaries.
#LessonsFromPartnerDance Someone needs to take lead and direct it, you can’t have two followers or both will be confused about the other’s intentions (because there are none!) and go nowhere.
Transparency and Communication, Trust and Suspicion
I went on a retreat recently, and on this retreat I played the game Resistance, where some people are good and some people are bad, and the good players try to find out who the bad players are.  I learned from this game that people who explain their reasoning for accusations are more trustworthy than people who don’t, because we understand them and feel like we know them and what they are thinking, while people who do NOT explain themselves are suspicious because we don’t know what they are thinking and therefore have more reasons to suspect that they are up to no good.
The same thing applies to relationships: communicate your feelings! Be honest about what you are doing, vulnerable in sharing: explain yourself, reveal yourself, to have a chance at trust, one of the foundations for a strong relationship.
Life Advice
  • Just because it is Friday doesn’t mean you need to stay out late. #YoungPeopleLogic
  • Socializing requires good health. Fatigue and bad nutrition give your body a bad mix of chemicals and robs you of energy and mental health, which puts you in a bad state of mind.  Example, if I haven’t had a good nights sleep, worked hard so I’m exhausted, and am hungry, I’m probably going to be in a bad mood; vs. if I’m on vacation, well rested, enjoying life, I’ll be in a great mood.  This is why sometimes, say while driving, I will want to pick a fight till the end for any small thing other drivers do, while at other times I won’t let big things affect me.
  • Mistaking reactions for thinking and critical thinking is apparent in social media–quick answers and short phrases typically mean not well thought out.
  • If you want to do it, decide for YOURSELF whether you do it!  Experiment, try it and see what happens. People who judge you or call you stupid for trying are people who only ever obey, so they are channeling the correctional system they have internalized, they are people who never shook the box or were original.
  • Some problems DO go away if you ignore them (feeling awkward and self conscious), while some don’t (OTHER people feeling awkward and self conscious).

Productivity

  • It’s easier to work hard when you can see the finish line or believe and know you’re close, than when you are just starting and months or years from the success you desire to care about the small improvements you are making.  Therefore, refocus from the long term goal to the short term ones so you aren’t discouraged by how far you are from where you want to be.
  • “I’m not doing anything” is a false statement: you are choosing to do nothing. And choosing to do nothing about doing nothing.  (recursion continues)
  • Exhaustion has nothing to do with vacation or work, and 100% to do with your own responsibility for recognizing when you need rest and getting rest.
    Recognizing is self awareness.  Getting it is ability to take action on your priorities.
  • Instead of Deadlines, think in terms of of Expiration dates.  Everything naturally expires: tasks that you don’t do and you leave for later…after several days/months, the time is not right–it’s too late, life has moved on.  You never set an expiration date, but there was one anyway, you just didn’t know it.  Doing that task 4 months late…is very very ineffective: you’re not maximizing for impact when you wait until it’s the least opportune moment.
  • You can always be more well informed, with time research and resources.  However, you can never have the time back, so it’s a balance between research and development.

To achieve productivity, here are some ingredients

  1. Desire to do the activity/goal
  2. Set a deadline, so it doesn’t go forever.
  3. A short term focus or principles during working: Long term is to make a program, short term is to make it as flexible as possible for future modification, or as fast as possible without caring about future modification; etc.

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