CM 271: Anna Goldfarb on Modern Friendship
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It's a lot harder to keep friendships going because the burden has shifted to us individually. We are much less likely to have institutions that do the heavy lifting of keeping these connections going for us. Most of us may not go to a chirk china gog or not be a part of a league. So the burden has shifted and IT is IT is a really disorienting burden to shoulder.

Welcome to curious mize at work. I'm your host, gale Allen. We know how important friendships are, at the very least for our health and well being, but we also know how harder can be to make and keep friends over the course of a lifetime, especially as we move, change jobs, have families.

That's why, in a gold farm book, modern friendship had a nurture. Our most valued connections is so important. We need friendships for good help.

And in this book teaches us ways to make and keep good friends. And SHE readily shares what to say to build and deep in friendships. It's a terrific book for understanding how to prioritize and strength and friendships.

Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to live rating on itunes or wherever you subscribe your feedback. Since a strong signal of people looking for their next podcast. And now here's my interview with and a gold farm and a gold farm. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on oh.

of things for having me here and acted .

and a public health experts are concerned about the state of adult friendships today. Why is that?

Oh, my god. Friendships are in danger. They are plumbing. And what I learned writing this book is that a lot of IT is in our fault. We live in a hyper fluid society that doesn't set us up for success with our what I mean by that is that our society, for most of us now, and looks like a bicycle, spoke with us in the center.

And these pockets of cohorts from childhood, or college, or post college, or your first job, or your second job, and all these people only share common history with us, not with each other. So that was a big light bub moment for me of, yeah, I get a one harder to keep friendships going because the burden has shifted to us individually. We are much less likely to have institutions that do the heavy lifting of keeping these connections going for us.

Most of us may not go to a church to a nagoya or not be a part of a league. So the burden has shifted. And IT is IT is a really disorienting burden to shoulder.

And you share findings in your book on what's making IT harder to find and make friends. And you just shared one. You know, it's on us of the many reasons that you share, which one surprise you the most.

you know, personality. That was actually one of the last reasons I added I try to inventory like all the reasons that we have trouble making and keeping friends.

And that was one of the last ones I added in, was our own personalities sometimes get the way if you're really introverted and have low agreeability ness, which is the ability to trust others and to assume good things about strangers, then you're going to have a really hard time making friends in our society because we live in a society that Operate a very low social trust um trust in our government has planted trust in our institutions and our religious organizations like they're all pluming. So naturally our interpersonal relationships are going to a mirror what's going on in the larger society. But yeah, the personality thing was like, oh yeah, that's why I can make friends with, you know, everyone prety much everywhere I go. I'm like a labor basically. But no other people in my life are not elaborate, and they aren't quick to make new friends and when what rather keep to themselves and assume that I don't know they're a stranger, I don't know what their modes are, and they just .

retreat shoulder social tech, be making things like this easier.

Well, that was the promise. That was definitely the promise of social media. Like, look, you can have all your friends. You can collect all your friends in one place. And what that does is IT flattens our social lives and is a simulacrum of our social life.

It's not actually a social life is just that this is the appearance this is um and the results of that is I think we're overloaded with information that we don't need and don't need to care about. I know so much about this woman who I know twelve years ago and SHE moved away to ohio. I know the named are her kids and her pets.

And like, I don't need to know this much about this person, it's very disorienting for our brains because our lives, I was meant to be in person. They are meant to be lived in person. They're meant to, you know, be together and create memories and have different senses activated.

You know, our social relationships weren't meant to be mediated that, you know, our brain knows the difference between that. So social media has been great at some aspects of keeping friendships together. You can help, you can find people with common interests. You can keep in touch with long last, best friends. When you put effort in and you see people in in person, it's just a very different outcome for your your emotional, physical, psychological well being.

We're going to talk about that because that's a really interesting part of your book. But before we do, you discuss six hard truths about modern friendship. We're not going to go through the mall. But was there one that was an aha moment for you?

maturity. I don't think we talk enough about needing maturity in our friendships. I don't think we talk about IT ever. I think it's important to be reminded that were all busy adults and we have to be mature with one another. Sometimes when your feelings are involved or you generate a narrative about what you think might be going on with a friend, it's very easy to slip into old patterns and take up you kind of talk yourself into a grug given of, I ve been heard from my friend for why he was not care about me to fight, and then before, you know, IT you like created these these reasons at a thin air that are more likely to reflect our insecurity than the actual reality of the situation. And IT seems like .

with maturity, I remember when I was ready, this in your book, comes responsibility to, right? Like, how will you be a responsible friend? How will you be a friend who does the kind of things that make for good friendships .

yeah in part of maturity is recognizing your friend for all the roles that they play in their life by not just being so self sender with our friendships of, well, I wana go out for a drink well, I want to to go out to this comedy show. I want a and when you're mature, realized my friend is strugling a lot right now.

How can I help them? Like, I think that's a huge leap and that i'm embarrassed how long I took for me to make that that shifted my thinking. I wish I kids like.

I love how you do that in your book. You share, you share sort of your expectations of friends in your twenty years, your thirties than your forties. And it's sort of like, oh.

a light bulb on, yeah, i've really try to spell out how I matured in my friendships. And I I really want to be the kind of friend that people love, having me as their friends, not someone they feel obligated. It's this chick birthday.

I gonna this message you should will be involved at me. Like, I don't want to be that kind of friend. You know, I used to think my friendships were like wild horses, these unknowable untimeous mysterious.

And I just wanted to stop feeling so powerless in one of my favorite relationships i've ever had, so that that's what's set me on this journey of what's going on here. You know that saying friends are around for reason, a season or a lifetime. I've always hated that.

I've always been like a wia season. How can one friends a season and ones not like, I mean, more information added. I need some context here. And I feel like I finally answer that question of this is why a friendship can stay a flow and this is why friendships tendering. And it's been just been wonderful to to have that knowledge .

well along those lives. There's a chapter heading in your book why you feel like you both have hundred friends and zero friends. And I think that's a feeling a lot of us can relate to. You explain its tied to this historical shift in our social networks. Talk about that shift .

when you look back to a few generations, are great grandparents pretty much lived in one town or one village their whole life, like we did not bounce all around and have to, you know, take our new identity is in new rules the way that we do. I mean, even what was available to women was so limited till not that long ago, if you could get married and have children or nothing.

I mean, the kinds of identities we we have, the different lifestyle choices, have exploded in the past few decades. So this really is historically new. These are historical new relationships.

I mean, I don't know about you, but my mom never was never best friends with someone of of another gender. My mom never had guy best friends. And SHE got married at twenty one.

SHE wasn't friends with excess. SHE didn't even learn how to navigate that. Like this is culturally a new thing from all the advances we've made socially.

And like anything, there's person kins with this shift in how people practice their social life. It's just been fascinating to see when you think about our grandparents lives in our lives, like just how wildly different they are. My grandma was made at eighteen.

I mean, he never went to college. SHE didn't have friends from college that SHE met. And then we're blasted apart from like the way that we do, the way that happens to us when we you know have careers and move around and and exported from opportunities.

So I I really want people to feel validated that like listen, if it's hard for you, it's not your fault. Um these are way bigger issues than me or you or the reader like this is this is why you feel so disoriented. And I also I don't really get into this very much, but that we don't we have so few models on TV and movies of how to practice friendship as an adult, like what's realistic.

And all my twenties, I thought I get together with brunch with my friends for brunch sunday for years on end. And, you know, it's a real shock of, oh, that's not, that's not what real life looks like. You know, I was promised these fun brunches.

I was promised Cosmopolite drinks, I was promised cupcakes. And of course, it's gonna feel disappointing to look around and feel like what I have, wonderful friends, and none of them live near me. And I just feel like to fleet IT about IT.

One of your goals in writing the book is to help us understand why we seek the friends that we do. What one thing you think is helpful for us to know about this.

it's worth considering and knowing getting a chance to know us a little bit Better and like to stop and think about something like probably never consciously thought about IT. I just thought I was an interesting exercise. A lot of being a journalist is asking questions and as I was writing the book and getting into like the sociology of the I just had all these more quite like, well, I don't know if i'm picking good people and like, I don't know, let me let me note le that like how do I know? Why would someone want to be my friend?

Is that something I can like work unless I like a dial? Like kind of twist? Like how much agencies do I have here? So IT was more IT was more to me asking questions that I hadn't seen answered and I mean, I red almost every friendship book on the market and I don't remember seeing anyone asking like, you know, those kinds of questions even what .

did what did you learn about yourself? Why do you seek the friends that you do?

When I knew that I like really strong women, I like really independent and hilarious women. But IT was more interesting of why was holding on to friendships that I had expired, and like why I wanted them so badly. Which one thing you learned about that? You know, I think that the the choice theory component was a really elegant way to understand why people behave the way they do.

You know, we see all these studies like lineless epidemic. Friendships are endangered. And I was wondering, like, is IT just french or french like a their own silo? Like, how come friendships are suffering? Like, as opposed to these other relationships?

You know, there's no like sibling crisis. There's no brother in law crisis. Like, what is IT about friends that make such a fraught thing? And part of what I learned is that friendships are so, so ambiguous now.

And by that, I mean, I could think what we were best friends two years ago. Are we best friends today? I don't know.

I was best friends with this person in two thousand and seven. I still call her my best friend. But are we best friends like I don't even know.

And I was IT IT was really struck by the ambiguity because I know who my brother and law is. I know who my sister is. That's what helped me understand if I think this is a failure of language too, and even thinking or knowing that we have two categories of friends. We have memorial friends and we have active friends, like even as having Better language of what each group is can help me know how to categorized their friendship IT can help me put IT in appropriate box.

So tell us what those boxes mean.

Memorial friendships are friendships that you've had their long standing, but there's not much contact between you two. You know, the high affection you would come out for a milestone event may be, but there isn't a real reason to keep in touch, even though you both really love each other. Well, an act of friendship is a friendship that's high in communication, and it's based on shared interest, toby's passions and act of friendships.

You talk to all the time, you do things together, you create memories together and helping me make sense of the conStellation of friends. I had give me a lot of peace, like, you just made me feel okay. I need different expectations for these groups because I was reaching out to memorial friends and they won't get back to me for like a week.

And I like, was going on like, do you not love me? Do you not care? Like my feelings are hurt. And IT just helped me understand what I don't know their life today, I don't know their chAllenges today, I don't know their limitations today doesn't mean that we don't love each other, but i'm just not a part of their life and its okay. What do you think of that?

I think IT is a great categorization. I think it's so true. I think what you do by giving a stand language is you give us a lot of perspective.

And I think IT allows us to depersonalize IT and to say, oh like this makes a lot of sense like the friends in my life that are in the memorialized category. I had friends like that just visit me recently. We see each other you know rarely, but whenever we do, it's just a great, great thing.

And yet we don't do a lot of things actively together. We live too far apart. But it's one of those friendships that's just so comfortable and warm and wonderful, but very different from an act differently and feels different.

You feels really, really good, but feels different. And so I think that language is really helpful. And you know, you do something in your book that I think is to build on that is really interesting. You give us a way to think about our friendships in tears so that once again we can set expectations for ourselves.

Would you talk about that? Yeah I relied heavily on Robin dunbar research and his findings and friendship are brilliant and he identified how many people should habit each tear like um the sending tears of our social life.

And I renewed IT into like watery names to highlight how fluid they are so that you really wrap your head around, just cut someone's in this elite teer and they shufu down like to lower and intensity IT doesn't mean that you know anything's wrong IT just means, okay, where we're dipping out from this to that. And the first tear is what I call the bathtub because there's not many people in there. And h.

Dunbar found that men tend to have one person in their bathtub, and it's usually they're significant other or spouse, while women tend to have two people in their bathtub, their spouse or significant other and a best friend. And right there says a lot about the differences between how men and women practice friendship and what is Normal for them. Like that's fascinating on its own.

The the outer tear is what I call the jaquez I, your jaquez e friends. And those are three to five people that play really, really important roles for you. You know, if you had an academy worry, you would think these people.

And the next year is what I call the swimming pool. And that's ten to fifteen people, the people you go on double dates may be you'd house IT for them, maybe their coworkers. There are people that really brighten your life.

One group of researchers called this the sympathy group. And I was like, oh, that's kind of cute. Like if you want to go out and the sort of event will will be a solder to cry on.

But in actually, they call them the sympathy group because they said if one of these people died, he would be very bond. I thought that was like, kind of quirky. Like, okay, I love you. Like, if you died, i'd be really upset um that's a summer pool and then IT goes on from there from the bond beach, bond fire, fifty people to the water park when I stretched the metaphor at this point. But the water park is one hundred and fifty people and those are the weddings, funerals, huge life events group.

Well, and as you so before, IT IT allows us to have this fluid sense, right? Like somebody could be in my bath right now, but in a couple years they might be in the swiming pool.

yeah. And IT doesn't feel like anything is lost. IT just feels like other being classified here, things wrong.

You know, women are socialized to want everyone to get along. They want everyone to be happy. And I think we spent, we can talk ourselves into a lot of guilt and hand ringing. Now, the near times recently wrote about medium friends. I don't know if you saw that peace.

Tell us about that. Tell us a bit about medium friends.

Journalist, I think Kenny was lisa Miller. SHE wrote about the vexing problem of medium friends. And SHE basically was describing your swimming pool or beach bonfire group of these people there, more tenuous connections.

There isn't a reason for these friendships to be as active. But she's like booming IT. Like what you do with these people? What do you to do with them? And I like, there are hard to just exist. I mean, people, it's alright. We don't need to have this handwringing in this inside eighty over how do we manage these like further out connection like nothing's wrong in this interview and .

a goal farb shares how and why friendship works and what that means to be a good friend. If you'd like to learn more about the power of friendship, check out episode one ninety six of curious minds at work with cat bells. Although of the book we should get together catch, here's a road map for making new friends and managing the inevitable conflicts that arrive in any friendship.

it's not a reasonable expectation to think that a friendship is never going to involve conflict.

If all you want is people who give you compliments or only say happy things are like never have feelings, like maybe friendships, not the thing you're looking for. Maybe you're looking for fans, not friends. If you understand that conflict is a Normal, natural part of any relationship, the focus then becomes on how do we solve problems together, not how do we be perfect people.

Now let's get back to my interview with ana. Gold farm is one of the things I loved about your book, is that I think we would take the pressure of ourselves. We can think of friendships along a continuum.

We need a cast of different kind of friendships to support us and people. Are you going to move along that continue depending on how our lives change and how their lives change? And that is okay. I think that once you see those interactions that way, it's very freeing. And you stop you stop putting everything into the friendship to a point where, as you said earlier, things are so personal. And instead, like you'd also said, you set expectations and maybe that your, I don't know your basketball body and maybe this person is your movie body and maybe this person is your, I mean, to have a real serious conversation about where my life is right now, body. But that's really good.

Yeah, it's really good and its healthy. And honestly, like I think you you know this too, that you you've moved around a lot. You know that there really lovely people everywhere and I i've moved around a lot.

I've had to start over from scratch. And like several cities, and I i've cultivated this attitude like i'm open, i'm open to seeing who I connect with. I'm open to seeing where IT goes. And I don't hold I try not to hold on so tightly because one of the first things I learned writing this book was that a friendship can end at any time for any reason. And the present cons of that are, listen, I know I can do the best I can to try to make my friendships earthquake proof, but I can. I have to be OK with whatever happens, whatever the outcome is, you know, people get sick, people move away, people, no, adopt all sorts of ideologies that maybe I am going to dive with you like, I don't know where this is going, but i'm open. I'm over to finding out.

I really like that because IT really helps. Reframe, I think, some very traditional ways of looking at friendship, and freeze us up to say, can say us, trust, see what happens. And this may not be a friend of a lifetime, but on the other end, IT really could be.

I ve changed my thinking on how to be a friend and how to practice friendship. I feel like so much of culture is get rid of that toxic friend. They're toxic. Get rid of that person. Um you you you you self care you you you and i'm hoping my book is a breath of fresh air ir for people because it's telling them how how people really work. And this is what gets results me caring deeply about a few people and doing IT really well that's IT well imparted at focus is something .

that you write about, which I think is also powerful friendships need and about. They need a reason for being. And that is also not something we talk a lot about. But you share, how is a must talk about this?

I think people over estimate affection as being enough to keep a friendship active. And I really try to put something new together to explain why people are pulled in, what some directions over others. And that's because we need to know why we're doing things.

It's so simple. It's like when a boss says I need to talk to about your job, you show up and makes, well, how come in a friends says we should get together, nothing happens. Is that the friendships fault? There was an invitation not compelling enough?

I was. So talk about that. Talk about the invitation and being compelling. Because another thing you do in your book is you really walk us through language that can help us with this. So if we have a friendship, and the about is unclear, what's some kind of language maybe we can use, either to address that or maybe to make the invitation Better?

I really impress upon people you cannot have a friendship without a clear and compelling reason for both people to seek one another out. I really want people to think more critically about the substance of their friendships. I think women, in particular, don't spend enough energy thinking of things that they want to be doing in finding people to do IT with them.

I think we do a backwards of, oh, you see, nice. Well, let's find a reason to get together. Who are you? Where do you live? What you like? Let's try to find a reason that we both are so excited that will keep wanting to to to hang out IT.

I think a lot of people are using outdated strategies when when extending invitations and IT results in a total lack of enthusiasm from everyone. Thy message like um hey thinking of you, we should get together and there is is so big I know people don't spend enough effort and energy thinking of how their message is is going to land and someone else is in box. I think we're just so so self preoccupied that we're like what i'm thinking of you.

So what do my to do with that? With that message, I don't know. So you know, do I know who knows well .

in people are decision overload. And if you can give people either you know and either or of let's do this at this time, at this place, you know that doesn't work for you, great. Or something concrete that they can latch on to and possibly say no to, which is maybe why we don't do IT.

Maybe we're little afraid i've gotten Better at extending invitations that are easier to say yes to because I I actually go into my dm, I crack up in my dm and I show like, here's that I used to message people and I got, I won't nowhere I used to dm, my favorite writers and be like, I think I love your work. I'm such a fan and we'd be like things end of interaction and I really took me a while to change my my strategy.

And then I started reaching out. Hey, I see that you live in filly. I also live in filly.

I love the article that you wrote, that a beat that I cover. Do you want to get together for lunch? I love to hear what else you're working on. Well, that's a lot more information and that's an invitation that someone else can say yes, too easier.

So I am assume that people have set up to that.

Oh yeah, yeah. sure. Is that my book with this party? Like I even show how I got books, bodies for the book.

I like, this is the message I sent my friend. I said, I see that you're having a book coming out. I have a book coming out.

Do you want to get together and share leads? And I just stocked her yesterday. So like I show, it's not complicated, but by giving a reason that i'm reaching out and offering to help the other person. Um it's like showing up at someone's house with um the difference between showing up in someone's house and demanding a glass of water or showing up with lake a cheese plea in a bottle of line. Like who would you be more excited to get into your door?

But you're also encouraging us to put some thought into IT. It's like any good relationship like don't just put IT on automatic pilot. You talk a bit about this year earlier, but I want to make sure we really talk about this because I think there can be listeners who may might be skeptical about this. Since I want to talk a little bit more about this, it's important to hang out with friends in person. Why in .

person has so many benefits? The spanked lady, the senses being activated, creating a memory. It's it's not impossible to create a memory not in person. But I personally don't remember, I think, any memory i've ever made, just chatting with a friend, long distance.

I never been like, remember that text change that made a very like this isn't a thing um you need novel situations to to summer your bonds and just being your friend, giving them a hug, being able to touch their ARM when they share scary news. Um we need IT like dust animals. We're just animals.

They are born to be social. And that just the differences so stark. And every study shows the benefit of in person hangouts and having having people see you for you and care about you and see for your integrity.

And I think that the pandemic showed that like we've really suffered. We lost a lot by not being able to see our friends. And I mean, that just showed how how important was and how a vital IT is to be around people.

I think it's even interesting if you don't see a friend for a while. I don't think i'm alone in this, but you can have sort of I don't know your attitude toward that would be maybe as positive as I could be. And yet what you're together, all those doubts, all those worries, all those fears, they go away.

Yeah, IT helps that you can see your friend's micro expressions. You can see the the way that they let their eyebrows and, you know, kind of hunger soldiers is listening, hearing you talk about something. I just, I traveled with my best friend for ten days, and I mean, you just learned so much information being in person.

Will I learned so much information about her? And I just find IT so delightful. So I mean, i'm a journalist.

I just love finding stuff out. I'm like, well, tell me, what is your favorite racer? I I didn't know that about you.

Oh, oh, this is your favorite olive. I'll look for next time I go to that store. Like, I love learning all this information about my favorite people. And what do we hear for, if not to learn more about the people we we cherish? You talked a little bit about this earlier.

but also something I want to revisit. Friendships evolve because we evolve our life's change. And it's one of the reasons you encourage us to approach our friendships with a flexible mindset. Same more about this.

Yeah, I realized I had a very fixed mindset of what I expected my friendships to look like. And IT was really distressing to me to not have my expectations met. IT was like a rough lending. And I think especially as people turn, move into the authorities later in life, you might have thought of this friend of, be my life forever, and then you know, something happens, tragic happens, and that friends not there for you in the way you expected. I think I can really shake your foundation of this is not what I thought this was.

But if you have flexible expectations, if you understand, if you give your friends the benefit of the doubt, if you see them for all the things that they do in their life and you're open to change, you're open to doing different things with your friends know it's a gift you give each other. It's like A I wanted to make IT so enjoyable for my friends to be my friend that we'll stick around. That's basically my strategy of I want you to feel seen and loved and cared for and appreciated like, I mean, I do the best job, but at least i'm trying and that's my attitude.

What you have a really great image that comes up because sometimes one of the ways that we can maybe go a little bit off road in a negative way with our friends is we can have what's called our interview ta come out. So talk to us about the inter sota. What is IT and how can we take IT?

Oh my god. Inter yoda is like, I I know the answer. Listen to me. I know everything. I love you so much. I'm just telling you what to do out of love and friendships are a really special relationship, and that is a relationship of peers were on equal footing.

And when you start messing with a dynamic and start dominating your friends by telling them what they should do, you should go to my doctor, me, maybe that's a good idea, but you could say a different way, like you should do that. You should join this class. You should ask that person out.

IT feels like the power dynamic is disrupted. And I read an article for the new york times about this. IT was about IT was called how to give advice.

People will be delighted to take, and I really wanted to dive deep into advice giving. And i'm just shocked how bad I was doing IT. I mean, like I really thought I was a great friend. Let me tell you exactly what you need to do and the result I was seeing, where my friends really way not IT just did share.

share one of your hot tips on advice giving, because I think as a friend, you can either feel obligated to give advice sometimes, or you could be asked for advice. And there are good in bad ways of doing IT. What's one good way?

Well, the I have learned the first thing to say is feel free to ignore anything about to tell you that alone will signal to your friend. Listen, i'm i'm not, i'm not. I know at all, like I don't know everything.

I love you. I'm trying this may not be of IT and what that tells your friend is that you are a temp. You're approaching this as teammates.

And so that's as first thing I say is gale, feel free. Ignore anything about to say if I were me, I would do this. But listen, that am here for you.

That already is a Better interaction than anything I was doing before. There was a woman that was upset. Her podcast wasn't getting more traction, and I just totally annoyed her with all of my ideas and suggestions, like i'm still and SHE distance herself for me.

I I learned the lesson of, well, my way of showing her love didn't result in her feeling loved. So I need, I need a Better strategy than just here's all the things you need to change love you. Why didn't go great for me? I learned my lesson, and now I definitely approached a different way. One of the .

things you have in your book is what's called a fourteen day friendship plans. Uh, tell us about that s what's your goal with that? How does that work? Why should people want to be interested in that?

I can promise you that you will be a Better friend fight following this clans. And I know clin sounds really like annoying or scary or like a sacrifice, but you know, we have plans for our health, we have plans for our education, plans for our career, but we don't tend to have friends for plans for our friendship. We don't have any strategy if I said, what's your strategy for keeping your friends you'd like, hates and only if I know.

Um so my fourteen day clans is a morva regime that synthesizes all the research I did in the book and has presented IT and actionable steps fourteen days and it's stuff like you know of right to figure out who's in your jacuzzi. These are the people you're going to be practicing these ideas with and making note of all very important dates in your calendar like their anniversary or deaths or children's births. Um you know just just having intention like here's i'm going to intentionally connect with my circles and just feeling in control.

And there are two questions I always like to end the podcast with. The first one has to do with the theme of the podcast, which is curiosity, what the most curious about today.

Oh my gosh. I love the word curiosity. My niece was born, and we all picked a word that we wanted for her. And my mind was curiosity. We oh yeah, well, she's more like i've haven't figured out the rest of the world just needs to catch up.

That was the one virtue I wanted for hers because I think your world is so expense is so much more expanded when you have curiosity. And i'm curious about, I mean, right now with friendship, it's men's friendship, to be honest. I'm really curious about them because men's friendships are struggling. And I wanted learn more about IT because I love men and mary doing me an I have been in my family and I wanna know more about why why they're having such a tough time.

The other question is, there is so much in your book, we can't into all of IT. What's one thing I haven't asked that maybe you would like to leave us with?

Oh my god, your questions were so good to pick my a question that I wish you d asked. You know, I haven't taught enough about how mastering these principles and strategies. You can apply them to other relationships that you have, specifically siblings and coworkers.

Yes, these are principles of friendship, but they can be applied to other relationships too. And i've seen, like crossover. Now, my sisters, one of my best friends, and one of my coworkers is one of my best friends. So there, there synergy here with these principles.

Do they know that? Or is that more of a mental shift that youth made?

Oh yeah, I told them. And like, you're maja, uzi. And like, what's up? Like what role do I play? And like, well, you're my collaborator, you're my champion.

And you know, we we have this language now. We know what we are to each other, and we can reassure each other and commit to each other because we know why we're here. We know what we do for each other. And it's it's been really great. It's been really great to just just heavily leave the lions.

I mean, it's is one of those great things in what you're describing that when you have different things happen in your life, you know who to reach out to. So if somebody is a huge champion and you get good news, let's say your book is out in all these great things are happening, you're probably going to want to reach out for that person.

But then if you want that person who is maybe a little bit more political and set up up for something else, you're trying to decide. So IT also helps you reach out to the right person. It's good for them, but IT also gets you what you need.

IT is so such a joy to have direction and to realize I was I was doing patterns that weren't a good fit and like you said, going to the wrong person with support that they weren't best a best position to give. So now I just feel like, okay, I have a plan. I have my friendship plan.

I call this person with good work news. I called this person with good person. I made a pie my life. I'm gonna. I made a pie for my sister who is into pimaicaira.

I know weird that would lean to put all these connections in and to counteract the overwhelm that we have in our society that we are overwhelmed. We have so much information to sort through. And that's my philosophy is simplify, clarify and just enjoy, enjoy these wonderful relationships.

What a great note to end on. Thank you so much in IT. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Oh, my god, I had a blast. Thanks for having me on curious .

minds of work is made possible through a partnership with the innovative or circle and executive coaching firm for innovative leaders. A special thank you to producer and editor rob mak beli for leading the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen. Each episode we give a shout out to something that's feeding our curiosity. This week is rush Harris, book the happiness trap, how to stop struggling, start living, what of the ways we think about happiness and self, talk a limit rather than expand us, and what of their specific things we could do to gain a new perspective? That's this book.