Moment 186: Why You Have No Friends: Simon Sinek
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Are you a good friend? Are you a good friend to your friends? Are your friends good to you? You know, who do you do you call people when you are stuck and down? Or do you make tiktok videos by yourself, which you know and you get, I mean, literally people who depressed make tiktok videos by themselves. I don't have many times they will shoot that either to post IT to get the validation for their feelings, but to call a friend and say the same thing you're struggling with is actually more difficult.

Why doesn't the industry exist? Because type we take you for granted? yes. So the demand isn't there for those kinds of things.

but that's what that's the problem, which is I think the demand is, is, is, is there. We don't realize that, right? Like we know that our relationships fail and our marriages fail.

That is an entire industry to help us maintain Better relationships with friendships fail. And we think we have friends, yet we still struggle and feel lonely. If you have good friendship, you will not feel lonely.

You may have moments of loneliness. And in those periods, you will pick the phone and say, your friend, I need you, i'm lonely and your friends will be there. You will feel not alone, right? Or and you know that i've talked about this about, you will feel that someone will get in the mud with you.

And I think the problem is that we don't give intention to friendship. We so think about IT and you and I both guilty of this. In fact, I would argue that everybodys guilty of this, which is we've got plan's book with a friend.

Let's call IT a lunch. A work thing comes up. We called the friend. I got a work thing. And with the reason we keep bumping our friends is because theyll understand there are friends.

So why on't we prioritising our friendships? Why aren't we saying to the work thing? I'm sorry you've got a thing i've got. If we had another meeting, we would say, sorry, i've a gotten appointment. I can't make IT.

So why don't we treat our friends with the same intentionality that we treat any other meeting? So one of things that will did for a friend that I thought was genius, brilliant, beautiful. Well, gera, who am writing the book with wills friend's dad, died.

We will text to him and said, I feel for you. I know what you're going through. I lost my mum at an early age. I'm sure being in data with calls and texts.

So i'm not gonna call you today, but what I will do is I will call you every single day at nine forty five a do not feel obligated to pick up. I don't mind if you don't, but when you're ready, know that i'm calling you. And for the next, I think IT was three months, eight months, something he called every single day, nine, forty five, A M.

And for the first week, his friend didn't pick up at all. And then after the first week, he picked up every day, and they talked every day for months, like, think about the intentionality that somebody who loves and cares about you so much that they will call you every single day, nine, five, just so that you can see their name pop up in the collar I D to know that you're not alone. I mean, you can bring brings me to tears just thinking about IT.

Like how many of us are? Are that good a friend? You know, I want friends like that.

Here's a good question. Like what's a friend? Like what makes a good friend? Like I don't even know. We have a definition of that.

You know, I ve been asking people and somebody said to me, well, somebody who's there for you, you to support you in the hard times, that's a real friend, right? And I got thinking, and I talk to somebody else. SHE has a friend who he calls mister shadin fryd because he seems to love when things go wrong.

So in hard times, he's always there. He's always there. In hard times, he's got he's the shoulder to lean on. He's giving advice. But in good times, he's nowhere to be seen. And so what what happens is that creates this horrible sort of code dependent relationship that you want to keep the hard times, because that wonderful human being is always there, so you never want to let go, and you become code dependent.

And so you realized that there's something called a fair weather friend whose only there in the good times, but be equally cynical and suspicious of the foul weather friends who's only there in the hard times, because somehow that makes them feel good about themselves. But they're not for there for the good times. And so you realize what's the what's the value of good time verses bad time.

So yes, yes, you and I have friends that in hard times, we would call them, but I would bet money that you have even fewer friends that you want to text out of the blue and say, I want an award, right? Think about that. Like if something was wrong, i've got a group of friends, probably, I probably got, you know, a dozen people.

I could say and say, I need your help. Things are horribly wrong. I need your advice. But if something amazing happens to me, that number probably should understand to four that i'm going to text other balloon and go something amazing happened today and not feel like i'm bragging, not feel like i'm trying to overwhelm them, improve them, that i'm Better than them, but knowing that they will be so happy for me. And so I started thinking that maybe a friend isn't just the person is therefore in the hard times, but the person you can go to in the great time. Think about that I have fewer friends that I can go to when things go perfectly, then I would go to when things go wrong.

So are though .

as my true friends. So this is on the journey. And i'm trying to understand what friend means and i'm trying to understand the responsibility we have to look after those friends um you look at all the longevity studies, you know, all the blue zone work, sure they eat healthy.

Sure they walk a lot, but they also eat with each other IT wears you look at some of the people who are promoting sort of longing vy and all of those biohacking, and how you have to exercise the certain way and eat the certain way, you find a lot of them are pretty unhappy people and pretty lonely people. I don't think they're going to live very long, right? So here's a crazy, crazy one.

Here's a crazy, crazy one physiologically, right? What are the most important organs to keep strong for longevity like we know the data, right? So i'll tell you out there, right?

Number one, heart, obviously, that makes perfect sense, right? You've god, have a healthy heart if you want to take a long time, right? Second one, lungs.

God have a healthy lungs to live a long time. Cardio on all the rest of the right. Don't smoke like we know that make perfect sense. You know. The third most important.

I don't know, I was going to see the brain.

but the size of muscles are the the. So if you have a healthy heart, healthy lungs and healthy size, statistically you're more likely to live longer. I know I said the same thing.

Size, you want to know why? Because historically, size are the most important, most responsible for what motion walking, right? Not exercise social, going to visit your friends. Before they were cars, before they were trains, we had to walk to go visit our friends.

And so people who are mobile, if you are more mobile, you are more likely to main to maintain friendships with, mean, you are likely to live longer. So the three most important organs to keep healthy historically as human beings, heart, lungs and size for mobility, size of sociability, which I think is amazing that we never thought about. So all of these things that, you know, technology is interrupted, mass transportation, cause, you know, take social media, all of these things they've interrupt in our ability to make friends, proper friends, where you can look each other in the eye. You and I could do this over zoom IT wouldn't .

feel the same, but a little the macro. So the remote work culture, the rise in, as you say, screens and phones, optimizing interaction out of our lives. I mean, like you know, if you think about social networking or uber, I don't know, deliver you um you your living your life behind the screen in White walls now and IT feels like it's becoming harder and harder and harder to make friends also to find someone but to make friends.

In fact, just what's interesting thing is sometimes when I stage I, it's always Young men come up to me and you'll get right on my personal space. I get this strange and then theyll say something to me like, how do I make friends and and I I respect them so much for saying IT because I can see how difficult IT is for them to utter that those words. And I reflect on, I was doing something at any worth in a kid in the front row, in a crown of five hundred people.

They are all wearing suits because they're working in the corporate world. He, surrounded by five hundred of his peers, his age in the front row passed the microphone. He is questioned to me on stages how to make friends. Yes, and there's four hundred and fifty nine people SAT next to him that are his age.

Yeah and he's asking in the front row, how do I make front? Yeah and IT was so moving because, you know, looking looking down on the individual, surrounded by people like, well, do you know the brain? The simple brain gets what just turn to the person to introduce.

But clearly that was not not the answer, because if I was so simple, he would just do that. And you set to make interesting as well, which I think maybe overlaid with that, which is we've kind of like lost the art or the skill of making friends. Yeah, what would you certificate?

So i'll tell you by way of a story how I would answer that. So a friend of mine was struggling a her career IT wasn't going as well as she'd one IT and her marriage was in a bad place. In other words, when IT rains at poor like SHE couldn't get a break, right? And SHE isn't a really bad place.

And so he knows what I do for a living. So he said, he asked me, can you help? Can I come and talk to you and get some advice? And I said, of course.

And so we had a standing wednesday meeting. Get together. We got together every wednesday for ninety minutes, and you would tell me what was going on to her life.

I gave her some advice. SHE felt amazing when he left me. IT lasted about two days. And then you would go back into her slump. And then we get together the next wednesday. Sh'd feel amazing for about two days and should go back into his and this one on for months.

This was our pattern, right? So I thought I was doing good work, and I just repeat right then I remembered my own work, and I remembered alcoholic anonymous, which is the final step. The twelve step is service, helping somebody who strugling with the problem you're struggling with, right, is the way to actually help you overcome your problem.

So I I have struggles, I have needs, I have um uh insecurity and I don't have a safe outlet to talk to. So I she's one of my closest friends in the world. I trust her implicity.

So I said to her, can I need the coaching as well? Can we split our time? Forty five minutes for me, forty five minutes for you? SHE agreed. And I was, I was.

I knew what I was doing, right? There was kind of an experiment happening, which I didn't LED on, which is I wanted her to help me as a way of helping herself. And so when in that happening was IT would cease to be forty five.

Forty five we got together, and for nine months we talk about me. And then the next wednesday, we got together in for ninety minutes, we talk about me, and then we ve got together. And for nine years, we talk about me.

And within about three or four weeks, her life was falling back on track, fully back on track. Because when you help someone with a thing that you are strugling with, you actually end up solving your own problems. And so what I would say to that kid is find somebody who struggling to make a friend and help them make a friend, make IT an active service.

Because fundamentally, we dig down deep the the true skill that we've lost service. We've over emphasized taking, over giving, we've over emphasized selfish over self less selfish is important. Taking is important, but not at the expense of giving and not the expensive of serving.