Chapter 3 - How To Become a Better Friend

1 - Introduction

You probably know by now the value and importance of social connections, they help us live longer and happier lives and what's an important aspect of good strong social connections? Friendships.

You've also probably noticed that it becomes a little bit more difficult to make real friendships as we get older once we're at a school where do we meet people who eventually become our friends? Right.

And this is particularly true if you moved to a new city relocated to a new country or if your friends have done the same, this is why it is super important to cultivate the friendships that we have the existing friendships so they can stand the test of time.

And they'll also be helpful when you're forming brand new friendships down the line because of course you will be making more friends throughout your lifetime as you get older.

I'm sharing strategies that will help you build strong friendships that last let's get right to it.

2 - No Ghosting

So in other words keep in touch with your friends and I know that this can be hard if your life is your work right now.

If you're busy new parent or maybe you're in a totally different time zone.

And yes, as someone who's lived in different time zones away from close friends, what's helped me honestly is scheduling of video call or a phone call ahead of time and getting everyone on the same page.

Setting out those calendar invites and reminders that you stay top of mind when you set something concrete like that, you're much more likely to hold yourself accountable and not cancel less minute or anything.

These check ins don't have to be long, right? They you know, can be 10 20 minutes. Sometimes we only have 20 minutes but make it count by engaging in a meaningful conversation.

Of course it's always nice to meet in person when it's possible when it's feasible. But I think we've all recognized the value of virtual communication and that it can be just as effective sometimes.

Also you can keep in touch by doing an activity together even if it's virtual. For example, you might have a workout scheduled and invite your friend to join in and you can, you know, strength trying together.

This could also be in person, but just as well through video chat and that way you're doing something together and you're having a shared experience and you can commiserate over how heavy those weights our whatever it might be.

And I realized that you might not be able to do this for every friendship, right? Because it takes a lot of time.

But for the ones where you can work out a schedule, go for it, don't give up on the ones where it seems like you can never schedule a catch up. That happens to it just might require a little extra bit of planning on both your parts.

But look at it this way if the friendship is important to you and if you value that person and that friendship then you will find a configuration that works for both of you.

3 - Good Treatment

Good treatment, treat your friends with the utmost care and respect. Thank them for doing you a favor.

Show them that you appreciate them. A sincere thank you will suffice do them a favor and apologize when needed. Right.

That happens too. So in other words, be kind to your friends. Be more of a giver than a taker. Listen more than you speak. Ask them how they are, genuinely how they are.

Let your actions speak for you. Even if you're far away in a different time zone. Send them an email telling them that you miss them. Send a care package in the mail. Some people still use the mail. Show them some gratitude.

If you're in the same city, you can surprise them with a fun outdoor activity or enjoy a new cool shared experience together because those are really memorable and special. Moreover, keep in mind that this doesn't require you to reach for your wallet. Right? In addition, just spend a ton of money.

There's actually plenty of activities that can be done on a budget or are even completely free and also still really fun, having an outdoor picnic, doing a nature walk or hike going on a camping trip, going to an outdoor free music concert or festival. Right? Those things are fun and they won't break the bank.

So there are really no excuses not to hang out.

4 - Focus On Quality

Focus on quality as with many things in life when it comes to friendships as well. Quality takes precedence over quantity.

A few close friends with whom you can have those deep, even late night conversations.

People that you can call up at two a.m. With a question or advice that you need. That's so much more fulfilling than having 50 or 100 friends that are more like acquaintances, right? They're not real friends, sharing your ups and downs with these people.

Not just your highlight reels can also help you get closer to someone opening up your heart and your mind asking for advice, showing your vulnerable sides, showing your imperfections, right?

No one is expected to be perfect. So don't feel like you can't show the imperfections that we all have, right? No one is perfect.

Frequency of the interactions is less important than the level of sincerity of the conversation.

Like the depths. In other words, you might be going on a walk with someone every single day, but you might not really get to know them because maybe they don't open up to you or show a reel personal side to them.

However, on the flip side, you might have a friend with whom you only be, say once or twice a month, but when you do, it's heartwarming, it's a real exchange between two people who dig deep below the surface and really get to know each other and know each other.

So which type of interaction do you think feels better and is emotionally way more satisfying the deeper one, right?

That's not as frequent rather than the surface level frequent one. Right? Prioritize now it's unrealistic and unfeasible to assume that you'll have several hours a week to spend on cultivating and maintaining friendships.

This might be the case in ones Teens and 20s, but as you probably know, as we age, we accumulate more responsibilities and as families grow marriage, kids, pets, etc, we only have so much time to allocate, right?

I mean we're not superhuman. So we have to be really responsible with our time, right? And some of you might have already experienced this.

And so this is why you really need to prioritize the friendships that mean the most to you. And look, people change priorities shift people lose touch. If a friendship starts to feel forced, then maybe it's time to let it go.

Not all friendships are built to last and that's okay.

That's the reality. And it's again, it's okay. You might still keep in touch with your best friend from childhood or you might not.

Maybe your college freshman year roommate is still your number one bestie. Maybe not.

The point is don't feel pressure to make something work when it's no longer working just because you were really good friends with them at one point in your life doesn't mean that you still are and just recognize that?

So make the top priority friendships your priority, show them that you care set up a fun online or offline, get together, share your difficulties go beyond surface level exchanges.

No small talk. So small talk is reserved for when you're just meeting some someone.

We use it in the early stages of building rapport and figuring out who they are and them trying to get to know who we are and what are their interests and are we going to align on certain things?

So if you know this person for a while now and are still making small talk, you're stuck in the no friend zone, that's kind of what it is, right if they're not opening up to you and you feel like it's a little bit imbalanced or unrequited, then move on.

With friends we really want to have those deep and meaningful conversations. We don't want to do the small talk anymore.

We're not talking about the weather, we want to talk about life. I want to talk about memories, I want to talk about dreams and goals.

We want to talk about shared experiences. Get nostalgic. Get cheesy crack the surface go beyond meaningful conversations, improve our well being and our overall life satisfaction. And again, you can achieve this with just one or two friends, lift them up, it's not a competition, you helping your friend be better, will also make you better imagine you're wanting to get stronger. So you enroll in a strength training program awesome and you invite your friend to join.

So you're on this strength building journey together, you now have an accountability partner and that's amazing right?

Not just helps you, it helps them and it's a symbiotic relationship, you're way more likely to stick to the program and to share nutrition tips to optimize hypertrophy and enjoy the training much more now that you're doing it together right?

How much better is that than just trying to you know, get strong by yourself when you lift other people up when you lift your friends up, you also lift yourself up, you influence each other in ways that you might not even be cognizant of some of these ways are very subtle right?

Sometimes without even realizing it. Sometimes just on the spot we really learn so much from each other so keep that in mind, recognize it, appreciate it and do more of that.

5 - Why Is Important To Be A Good Friend?

Friendship is a two-way street. If you aren't a good friend, why would someone feel the need to support you?

Being a good friend allows you to continuously learn new things. As you try your best to be a good friend, your point of view could change.

Let's say you're helping your friend adjust to a major career change they're experiencing; supporting them could show you that change is good and motivate you to embrace it in your own life.

People become busy as they try to juggle each aspect of their life. Professional commitments, family time, finishing school or certificate courses, and more take up a lot of time.

But being a good friend means that you’re there through it all, and you support them through all of their experiences. Romantic relationships can also force friendships out of the spotlight.

Don’t forget that your best friend was there long before your significant other and find a healthy balance in how your invest your time in your relationships.

We all get busy, but taking care of our friendships shouldn’t slip down our priority list.

Learning how to be a good friend involves learning how to identify a toxic friendship, too.

6 - Start Investing In Your Friendships

Moving forward, keep in mind that not all friendships are meant to last. Some people will only stay in your life when you work with them or have a class with them. That's okay. But your closest friends deserve a friend that will be there to support them, just as you deserve the same.

Perhaps you read some things that you were afraid that you'd relate to. What matters is that you're taking the initiative to build skills that will lead you to become a better friend. In the long run, your mental health will benefit, and so will your friends.

But this doesn't mean you should change yourself entirely. You can't change who you are, and your real friends don't want you to.

Now that you’re ready to learn more about how to be a better friend, find support from someone outside of your circle of friends. With BetterUp, you can work with a coach to help strengthen your relationships.

BetterUp can also help guide you when you realize it’s time to re-allocate your time in other friendships, too. Part of reaching your full potential is investing in the people who will support you along the way.

7 - Friends Share The Load

How powerful is friendship? Researchers at the University of Virginia wanted to find out whether friendship influences how we approach the challenges of daily life.

In an unusual experiment, researchers stood at the base of a steep hill (a 26 degree incline) on the university campus and asked 34 students as they walked by to help them in an experiment. Some students were by themselves; others were walking in pairs.

Each student was given a backpack filled with weights equal to about 20 percent of their body weight. While the students may have had the impression they were going to have to climb the hill, the researchers simply asked them to estimate how steep the climb would be.

Notably, students standing alone perceived the hill slant as steeper and thought it would be harder to climb while carrying the weighted pack.

But students who were standing next to a friend thought the hill looked easier to climb and gave lower estimates of its steepness. Interestingly, the longer the two friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.

Other studies support the notion that social support helps us cope with stress. When female college students were asked to complete challenging math tasks, their heart rates went up. But when they were asked to complete the math problems with a friend in the room, their heart rates were lower.

Scientists also know that when rhesus monkeys are moved to a new environment, the level of stress hormones in their blood increases.

But when a monkey is moved along with her preferred companion (monkeys form friendships too), the stress hormones measured in her blood were much lower. (Similar results have been seen with rats and guinea pigs.)

All this research suggests that friends can change our view of a challenging situation, and that the mere presence of a friend in the same room can lower our stress. Having friends essentially allows us to outsource some of the emotional burdens of daily life.

8 - Friends With Health Benefits

Most of the research on health and relationships is focused on romantic partners. But researchers have found that our friendships actually have a bigger impact on our health. Here are some of the findings about the health benefits of having friends:

• A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends.

• In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends. Notably, proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective. Having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival.

• In a six-year study of 736 middle-age Swedish men, being attached to a life partner didn’t affect the risk of heart attack and fatal coronary heart disease, but having friendships did. Among risk factors for cardiovascular health, lacking social support was as bad as smoking.

Why are friendships so good for us? Scientists have a few theories.

Logistical support: Friends can run errands and pick up medicine for a sick person, although in most studies, proximity was not a factor in the benefits of friendship.

Association: It may be that people with strong social ties also have better access to health services and care or are more likely to seek help.

Less stress: People with strong friendships are less likely than others to get colds, perhaps because they have lower stress levels.

Positive peer pressure: Researchers have found that certain health behaviors appear to be contagious and that our social networks — in person and online — can influence obesity, anxiety and overall happiness. A recent report found that a person’s exercise routine was strongly influenced by his or her social network.

But it could also work the opposite way, a large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight.

9 - Friendships Make Aging Easier

Dan Buettner, a National Geographic fellow and author, has studied the health habits of people who live in regions of the world where people live far longer than the average. He refers to these areas as “blue zones” and found that positive friendships are a common theme in these regions.

In Okinawa, Japan, where the average life expectancy for women is around 90, the oldest in the world, people form a kind of social network called a moai — a group of five friends who offer social, logistic, emotional and even financial support for a lifetime. In a moai, the group benefits when things go well, such as by sharing a bountiful crop, and the group’s families support one another when a child gets sick or someone dies.

They also appear to influence one another’s lifelong health behaviors.

Buettner’s team created a quiz to help people assess the positive impact of their own social network. The quiz asks questions about your friends and the state of their health, how much they drink, eat and exercise, as well as their outlook. The goal is not for you to dump your less healthy friends, but to identify the people in your life who score the highest and to spend more time with them.

“I argue that the most powerful thing you can do to add healthy years is to curate your immediate social network,” said Mr. Buettner, who advises people to focus on three to five real-world friends rather than distant Facebook friends.

“In general you want friends with whom you can have a meaningful conversation,” he said.

“You can call them on a bad day and they will care. Your group of friends are better than any drug or anti-aging supplement, and will do more for you than just about anything.”

Why do friendships fade? Sometimes, it happens because our own lives are changing and entering new phases.

The friends we surround ourselves with in adolescence serve a different purpose than the friends we seek out when we become young adults. Our needs change again as we marry or partner, when we have children and when we have an empty nest.

And studies show that the nature of friendships also can change over just a short period of time.

In 2000, Dutch scientists interviewed 1,007 people about the relationships they had with neighbors, many of whom discussed job stress and personal relationships and often visited or helped each other with odd jobs. But when the researchers followed up seven years later, about half of these relationships had faded.

While we need to remember that friendships undergo a natural churn as our lives change, some friendships end simply because we have neglected them.

Of course, great friendships can often weather these highs and lows, but imagine how much better those connections would be if we gave our friendships the regular care and feeding they need. Here are some suggestions for being a better friend.

10 - Active vs Passive Friends

Given that we all have limited time and energy, it helps to prioritize a few important friendships that we want to nurture.

But we also don’t want to miss out on new friendships that might form from casual encounters. How to decide? Start by thinking of your friends in terms of active relationships or passive connections.

Both are important to our overall happiness, but passive friends take less time and attention, giving you more time to prioritize the friends that mean the most to you.

11 - Strengthen Your “Weak Ties”

Our casual social networks are larger than we think — we often have fleeting connections with our neighbors, the barista at the coffee shop or fellow exercisers at the gym.

The sociologist Mark Granovetter calls these low-stakes relationships “weak ties.” But the name is slightly misleading. While the ties are not strong, the benefits of these relationships can be great.

They provide networking opportunities and make us feel more connected to other social groups. A 2014 study found that the more weak ties a person has, the happier he or she feels. Maintaining this network of acquaintances also contributes to one’s sense of belonging to a community, researchers found.

The good news is that it doesn’t take much effort to cultivate these low-stakes relationships. Often it’s just exchanging pleasantries when you see another regular at the dog park (put your phone down and make eye contact!) or seeking them out for connection on social media.

Anna Akbari, a sociologist and author who often writes about friendship, describes these “weak ties” as passive friendships — those people you run into at parties, bump into at work and others you like, but don’t quite make the priority list for one-on-one time. Sometimes our close friends fall into the “passive” category over time — we shared a bond with them once, but have less in common today.

Don’t mistake passive friends for relationships worthy of your full investment, she advises, “but stay open and alert enough to know when one of these casual acquaintances should be promoted in your friend sphere.”

12 - Nurture Your Active Friendships

In contrast to our passive friends, our active friendships are those friends with whom we share similar values and a deeper connection — the people for whom “you go out of your way to schedule with, to show up for, to learn from, to make new memories with,” says Dr. Akbari.

If you’re not sure who makes the cut, Dr. Akbari suggests a few simple questions:

• Whom do I learn from?

• Who challenges me?

• Whom can I confide in?

• With whom do I find joy?

“I want the people I spend time with to reflect back to me something that is admirable or aspirational for me — not financially, but on a human level,” says Dr. Akbari.

The bottom line is that by identifying our passive “weak” ties and our active “strong” ties, we can do a better job of cultivating budding friendships and allocating most of our friendship energy and time to maintaining our established friendships.

13 - Finding Time For Friends

Often when we think of living a balanced life, we focus on two things: work and family.

But a truly balanced life really has five key components: It should also include our romantic lives, self-care (including exercise and hobbies) and our friends. While we may not always give all five areas equal time (a new baby or a work deadline can sometimes shift our life balance), in general, work, family, love, self-care and friends are all equally important.

The good news is that friends tend to be less demanding of our time than family members and bosses, so tending to our friendships can take up a lot less time than other demands. Here are some tricks for giving your friendships more time and attention.

14 - Schedule Friends Dates

Just as you might schedule a date night or a business meeting, it’s important to build friendship maintenance into your weekly schedule.

Friend dates can be squeezed in around morning coffee or lunch so they don’t take time away from children, romantic partners or work deadlines.

If your home life will allow it, give yourself a friends’ night out once or twice a month, rotating the friends with whom you spend time. When life gets hectic because of parenting or work demands, your friendships tend to be the first to suffer.

But if you schedule friend dates regularly, your friendships will stay strong no matter what challenges are ahead.

A Few Minutes Of Friendship Goes A Long Way

I’ve never forgotten an exchange with my friend Julie Mason, now host of the Sirius radio program “The Press Pool,” when we were both new reporters at The Houston Chronicle.

I stopped by her desk with a question and noticed she was on deadline. “That’s O.K.,” she said, turning around to show me I had her full attention. “I’ve always got five minutes for a friend.”

The moment made such an impression on me that I’ve tried to make it my mantra: “I’ve always got five minutes for a friend.”

And I’ve also remembered the importance of body language — turning to give them my full attention (and putting down my phone or work) when I see them. While it’s true that some friends are more high-maintenance than others, in general, our friends are more understanding and less demanding than most people in our lives.

Don’t avoid friends because you can’t give them hours of your attention. It takes only a few minutes of listening and care to make a connection and reinforce the bonds of friendship. Take five minutes to call or text, and just tell a friend you are thinking about them.

15 - Consistency Matters More Than Frequency

Creating a tradition — even if it’s infrequent — is one of the best ways to sustain a friendship when life gets busy. My mother-in-law has joined an annual reunion of her college cheerleader squad for the past 60 years. An editor I know has met with a group of grade school friends every New Year’s Eve for the past 40 years.

Look at the calendar and start a new annual tradition with your friends (a joint birthday celebration, a National Dog Day dog walk, an adult Halloween treat night or a tax-day cocktail).

If you want more frequent time together, check your schedules and think about the potential for a consistent monthly meetup. It doesn’t take much effort to start a tradition.

One of my good friends, a teacher and actress, has classes most days, but we discovered that both of our calendars are open on Wednesday mornings. Now we meet about one morning a month at a favorite diner in our neighborhood.

Exercise With Friends

Scheduling exercise with a friend is a great way to stay connected, and it has the added bonus of boosting your physical wellbeing. It can be a weekly walk or a twice-weekly run — whatever works to get the two of you in the same space with time to talk.

16 - Take A Class

We have limited time for both our hobbies and our friends, so why not nurture both needs at the same time and bring a friend in on the fun.

If you’ve signed up for an art class or a cake-decorating or cooking class, invite your friends to join you. And if you get a similar invitation, just say yes, even if it’s a new hobby you haven’t tried.

17 - Small Gestures Make a Difference

Friends, by definition, typically don’t require the constant attention needed by romantic partners and children.

That’s why small gestures that show someone we are thinking about them can go a long way toward nurturing friends who may not always get as much one-on-one time as you'd both prefer.

Technology has made it even easier to show friends we care. Here are some suggestions for small gestures for sustaining friendships.

18 - Share A Song

Choose a song you want to share with a friend. Tell them why you are sharing it — does it make you think of them? Does it explain how you feel?

Or does it bring back a great memory? Don’t just listen and forget it. Take time to talk about it. A large body of research shows that music helps foster deeper social connections.

A number of studies link music to a boost of oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide associated with an increase in bonding and trust between people. In one study, singing for 30 minutes raised oxytocin levels in both amateur and professional singers.

We know that listening to music activates many areas of the brain, including the part that helps us connect with what others are thinking and feeling. Studies show that when parents and young people listen to music together, they have better rapport, less conflict and better emotional health.

Sharing your music with another person helps them to get to know you better and vice versa. And if you like each other's music, all the better. Studies show we like people who share our musical preferences.

So maybe this lesson has gotten you to look at your current friendships and how you maintain these friendships.

Hopefully these strategies help you prioritize the top most important special people and friendships in your life and maybe even increase your understanding of how you might be a better friend.

So to recap, we want to keep in touch treat our friends well, focus on the quality over quantity in terms of friendships.

Allocate time to the friendships that we prioritize and letting go of the ones that don't really serve us anymore and doing so without remorse or guilt.

Dive deep and ditch the small talk, lift your friends up and while we're at it, give them a great big bear hug. That tactile feeling lights up our neural pathways and has calming effects on our cns.

So that's really special. The endorphins and dopamine will get you feeling warm, fuzzy, safe and most importantly, love. So let's go out there and be a better friend to someone alright exporters.

I hope that you enjoyed this lesson, comment below on how you are stepping up your friend game, share that with me and the other explorers in the community of how you're going to be a better friend to someone.

19 - Conclusion

In the event that you need to be an incredible man, you need to step up your brain.

The absolute most powerful individuals in our reality (Bill Doors, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Smorgasbord, and others) use the 5-Hour Rule.

They go through 1 hour daily, 5 days every week, in 'intentional work on,' step up their insight and rehearsing to improve at something they need to dominate.

This could mean perusing, contemplating, rehearsing an exchange, and so forth

Over the long run, this prompts individual dominance—which is a pivotal component to progress.

In case you're similar to most men, you likely unwittingly part with little pieces of your force for the duration of the day.

This can take many structures.

• Saying 'yes' to things you would prefer not to say yes to

• Neglecting to keep up sound limits

• Backpedaling on your choices out of blame

• Collapsing on things out of pressing factor

• Investing energy around individuals who 'dull' your satisfaction and free-soul

As a man, you will turn out to be limitlessly more joyful and better when you figure out how to keep your force as opposed to parting with it to individuals around you.

• Honor your own words.

• Talk genuinely.

• Figure out how to say 'no' to things that you would prefer not to do.

• Try not to concur with individuals or oblige them just to dodge strife.

Adhere to the course that feels really right. This will accomplish such a great deal to help you become a superior man, and is frantically required in our reality.