[00:00:00] DANIEL: Hey there, Spacemakers! I'm Daniel Sih, joined by my good friend and co-host Matt Bain. We bring you The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you shift the way you live and work. More than a podcast, this podcourse will take you on a carefully curated journey around a simple but profound idea that the habits and practices that fuel success in our 20s are the very barriers that hinder maturity in our forties and fifties.

[00:00:28] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, St. Luke's, our health partner from my home state of Tasmania. They're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to be the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:00:39] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:00:46] DANIEL: Welcome everyone back to the Spacemakers podcast. Now, if you could make one life changing choice to live a happier, healthier, and longer life, what would that be? It's a super important question and the research is surprising. Many of [00:01:00] us would think about our health, our fitness, or maybe earning more money, but the answer is actually to invest in meaningful, lasting friendships.

[00:01:12] DANIEL: There's a fascinating set of research studies reported by Susan Pinker, who is a social neuroscientist, and she suggested that failing to keep in touch with people who are close to you is at least as dangerous to your health as a pack a day cigarette habit, obesity, and hypertension. So basically, friendship is the elixir of life, and we want to talk about why we tend to ghost our friends every day.

[00:01:34] DANIEL: inadvertently by simply neglecting them because we're busy. We're going to talk about how to invest in friendships and the research around friendships throughout different stages of life. And this is part of a broader big idea which we're covering in the Spacemakers season two, which is how to make space for life's inevitable resets.

[00:01:53] DANIEL: And we're exploring the idea that the types of habits and practices that set you up for success in your 20s and 30s [00:02:00] often need to be rethought, and even undone to succeed in your 40s, 50s, 60s, et cetera. And that includes friendship. Yeah. So talking about friends, welcome Matt, a friend and fellow spacemaker.

[00:02:13] MATT: Thanks Dan, great to be here. Yeah, so we have been thinking and talking about this for a little while and we came across this quote by an American author, Justin Whitmell Early that I think just best encapsulates the risk presented with losing touch with friends. Yeah. And getting disconnected. And that risk, of course is loneliness.

[00:02:31] MATT: So this is how he described loneliness. Loneliness is the feeling of being a person who used to have friends.

[00:02:39] DANIEL: You read that out to me the other day. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's a ripping quote. Yeah. And it's so, the experience that I've had and the experience that so many of my colleagues who are my age have as well.

[00:02:49] DANIEL: Yeah. So we don't wanna end up there, do we? No. I mean, I, I recently read a book by Bonnie Ware, uh, The Five Regrets of the Dying, and she's a palliative care nurse. She wrote, you know, an essay and it became really popular, so she wrote a book around [00:03:00] it and essentially wrote, what are the five regrets of the dying?

[00:03:02] DANIEL: What do people say at the end of their life that they regret? And one of the big regrets is, I wish I'd stayed more in touch with my friends. So it's the same thing, isn't it? Yes. That we, we look back at the end of our life and we realize that friendship and people who are, you know, our age, who uh, they've got experience with us, particularly old friends and people who know our history.

[00:03:22] DANIEL: They become super important. And yet when you're in the midlife squeeze, particularly in your forties, fifties, sixties, you're super busy, you're stretched with kids, you're looking after aging parents, you're struggling with finances and maybe health issues, the easiest people to neglect. Uh, friends. Yes.

[00:03:41] DANIEL: Particularly the old ones. Yeah. Particularly the older friends. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do we zoom out and actually think about how do you actually do something now, even when you're busy, even when you feel stretched, in order to future proof the thing that you, will really actually extend your life and give you happiness as you [00:04:00] get older, which is to connect with people you care about.

[00:04:01] MATT: Yeah. So that's what we want to look at in today's episode. And again, like always, we want to see how the habits that you form and that lead to success in the first part of life, you're going to have to unlearn those and shift them up in order to succeed in the latter half of life. Yeah. Yeah. And so we want to look at that in relation to friendship.

[00:04:18] MATT: So again, I was thinking about this idea and trying to come up with, you know, with some idea of how to kind of best encapsulate it, like how, you know, the shift from the first part of life to the second part of life. And it made me think of a classic early 2000s movie, right? And I want to ask, have you seen this being a good friend of mine?

[00:04:32] MATT: Have you seen High Fidelity?

[00:04:35] DANIEL: Um, probably, but I can't remember. Okay, yeah, yeah.

[00:04:37] MATT: So again, you know, like you'd remember it if you'd seen it, right? So High Fidelity.

[00:04:41] DANIEL: I've listened, I've watched The Sound of Music. Does that make me cool?

[00:04:46] MATT: Yeah, close, close, but no cigar. So High Fidelity, based on a great book. In the movie, John Cusack, the lead character, like he's describing what he sees as like the foundation of romantic relationships.

[00:04:56] MATT: And he looks at the camera and says that the kind of [00:05:00] almost dirty secret is, it's not what you're like, it's what you like that brings people together. His point being people get together around common interests. That's what people actually bond over. And I think this can be slightly modified and expanded to relationships, to friendships.

[00:05:18] MATT: So we're going to argue that in the early stages of life, so early adulthood, twenties to forties, it's really relationships are about what you like. So it's about forging common interests with other people that will bring you together. So that's like, you know, that's the glue for relationships for friendships.

[00:05:34] DANIEL: Yeah. You find people who have similar interests, similar life stages, similar worldviews probably, and therefore you connect based on what you're like.

[00:05:41] MATT: Yes. Yeah. What you like, but then the shift. So, what’s the habit that has to be learned in the midlife squeeze. So forties, you know, to 65 is more about what you are like or who you're like.

[00:05:53] MATT: So the quality of person that you are and that you bring to friendships.

[00:05:58] DANIEL: So do you mean that the, the [00:06:00] person you are, becomes more important than the common interest.

[00:06:02] MATT: Yeah. And not just the person you are, but I guess like the friend, the kind of friend who you are. So yeah. So again, as we've already kind of talked about and hinted at in that midlife squeeze, life is going to be probably more difficult in pretty predictable ways.

[00:06:16] MATT: So in terms of me being a friend and, and having friends still like maintaining friendships, I need to be the kind of person who will look after my friends when they're finding it hard, when things are difficult for them. So again, it moves from what you like, common interests, to who you like, what kind of person.

[00:06:33] DANIEL: I like it. All right. I'll have to go back to that movie.

[00:06:41] DANIEL: So Matt, last week we talked about productivity and how productivity changes as we age. And so we'd like to feed back on what we've done each week, because productivity and learning is what you do, not just what you hear. And there's so much information out there, we just want to keep feeding back to encourage ourselves to do [00:07:00] something, but also encourage our listeners to do something with what they hear.

[00:07:03] DANIEL: So the framework we talked about last week was that if you're younger, you want to say yes to as much as possible. Just swing at everything using the baseball analogy and, and basically build skills and learn stuff. But as you get older, let's say you hit our age, you're a professional, you're a leader, you've got lots of opportunities, you've got lots in your life.

[00:07:21] DANIEL: You actually need to say no to a lot of things and to be super select in your swing. Sharpen that swing. Sharpen that swing is what we said. So the activity was to do one of two things. If you're younger, you need more opportunities. You're at the start of your career. We want you to swing at something and swing at something that's challenging.

[00:07:40] DANIEL: And that means to say yes to something that is a stretch, something new, a new opportunity, a new responsibility. Push yourself into a position where you're doing something you're uncomfortable with in order to grow and develop. And build your productivity muscles. So what did you say yes to? And if you're older and you're more [00:08:00] experienced, you're further along in your career and you're feeling stretched and busy for, let's say the right reasons.

[00:08:05] DANIEL: Well, then you need to start saying, no, you need to be really intentional about eliminating or subtracting or reducing, maybe automating, delegating, but, but saying no to stuff in order to say yes. Yes. To something that really matters. And that was our activity. So did you do something?

[00:08:23] MATT: I did. I did. I did do something.

[00:08:24] MATT: So I said, I said no to numerous commitments over the past week, actually.

[00:08:28] DANIEL: Is that why you keep ghosting my texts?

[00:08:30] MATT: Yeah, that's why. I mean, I don't know how many times in different ways I could have said no to this podcast, but it's still, there's a lot to be said for persistence, Dan, and you exemplified that well.

[00:08:42] MATT: Yeah. I found it really difficult to be honest with you, because almost all my no's involved people. So there were, it was actually saying no to relational opportunities, which I don't find easy because you know, I, I like people and I like hanging out with people. I don't like disappointing people. And it just kind of showed to [00:09:00] me that.

[00:09:00] MATT: I think again, like the, the real challenge with, with this approach is that you're going to end up particularly like in this stage of life. So again, that, that, you know, classic kind of midlife squeeze, you'll end up saying no to good opportunities and things with fantastic potential.

[00:09:14] DANIEL: When you say people, cause we're going to talk about saying yes to people, actually yes to friendships.

[00:09:18] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you're talking about a different type of no?

[00:09:21] MATT: Yeah, so, so not saying like no to close friends, but more like saying no to work related type of stuff, you know, like network stuff, I guess, even like stuff that involves like acquaintances like that, like that kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:09:31] DANIEL: Which actually can get in the way of having time for your greater yes, which we're going to talk about might be friendship. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:37] MATT: But it's not like, but like in my case, I'm not saying no, it's like to the book publisher that's saying, Matt, we can't wait to publish your memoirs. It's like, oh man, look, sorry, no, like, you know, like, you know what I mean?

[00:09:45] DANIEL: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Well, and look, I'm really good at saying no. I get so many people who say, hey, do you want to help me with this or that? And I'm always asked to speak on different things. And I often have to say no, not because I don't want to do it, but I just don't have time. And it's about [00:10:00] the greater yes.

[00:10:00] DANIEL: But I felt convicted that I just have to carve out space for friends. And so I was invited to a networking thing. I was invited to kind of a social gathering. I'm not big on parties normally, but I said yes to both events and they were excellent. There were people there who I hadn't seen for ages and had some great conversations.

[00:10:21] DANIEL: And so, you know, I, I said yes, but for something that I think I wanted to.

[00:10:26] MATT: Yeah, that's brilliant.

[00:10:27] DANIEL: It's about being intentional, which is this whole, what the whole podcast is about.

[00:10:28] MATT: Yeah. Good, good, good. So, um, Look, Dan, we don't want to pretend to be formulaic about friendships, right? Okay, so that's like, that's the first caveat, but we do want to say there are some real differences when it comes to approaching friendship between, again, early adulthood, 20s to 40s, and then the classic midlife squeeze, the 40s to 60s.

[00:10:45] MATT: Yeah. Now with earlier adulthood, like one of the, like, you're surrounded with all these awesome opportunities. Cause usually you've got more time than later on in life. You kind of, you're trying to differentiate yourself from your family of origin. You're trying to kind of like build your own identity and like, [00:11:00] and you got usually like good health as well.

[00:11:02] MATT: So you've got lots of energy and vitality. So you put all that together and just a great time of life to go about trying a whole bunch of things, getting involved in a whole bunch of activities to like.

[00:11:12] DANIEL: And everything's new as well as the first time you've, I don't know, gone out for drinks. And so there's an, an energy that comes with it as well. Yeah.

[00:11:19] MATT: Well, yeah, a newness. Early on, I wasn't the first son, but I've gone out for drinks. That's probably not a great thing, right? Yeah. So, so, so anyway, all this to say that you're trying to kind of establish who you are and create this identity. Right. And again, so going back to our, our kind of big summary quote, you're working out what it is that you like, what you like.

[00:11:38] MATT: So, again, Great time to find that common glue with other people to build friendships. So friendship's easy in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy in that sense. But again, research seems to suggest that you want like three components to make good quality friendships. And again, we're after both quantity, but also quality friendships.

[00:11:53] MATT: So the three, the three elements are first of all, proximity. So it actually helps like big time if you are geographically [00:12:00] close to the people who you're trying to make friends with and maintain. Okay. Yeah.

[00:12:04] DANIEL: Yeah. That absolutely makes sense.

[00:12:05] DANIEL: And even if it's not geographically close in the sense of I live close to my friends, if you go to the same university, if you go to the same school, same sporting clubs, there's your proximity because you're there every week.

[00:12:17] DANIEL: Yeah. And you just happen to bump into the same thing.

[00:12:18] MATT: Yeah. Well that, that's a nice segue into the second element, which is just like unplanned slash spontaneous interactions. So again, I haven't had to put you down in my calendar or diary a lot particularly, but just the way that my life is set up and your life is set up, there's a very high chance we're going to run into each other and that's kind of cool.

[00:12:33] MATT: Right. So that's also good for quality friendships. And then lastly, the third, the third element is vulnerability. So this is particularly ties into the quality friend piece that is, if we're going to be quality friends, then I need to be able to show you like who I really am over time and you need to be able to reciprocate.

[00:12:49] MATT: So there has to be some degree of honesty, transparency. I have to actually feel known.

[00:12:53] DANIEL: Yeah. So you have shared joys, you have shared interests and shared wins, but also a certain level of shared struggle and [00:13:00] honesty. Yes. So you get to know a person at a deeper level.  

[00:13:03] MATT: I don't, I don't want to be feeling like I've got to wear a mask in front of you.

[00:13:06] MATT: Yeah.

[00:13:06] DANIEL: Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:13:07] MATT: Yeah. Okay. That's good. So friendships of that kind of nature are going to be a whole lot of fun in the moment in your twenties or thirties, but it's not only that they also serve this awesome preventative function. You can think about it as, as a kind of like a, almost like preventative health measure.

[00:13:20] MATT: If I go about building quality friendships with a wide range of people in my twenties to thirties, it's going to stop or at least mitigate the corrosive effects of potential loneliness further on down the track in my forties to sixties.

[00:13:32] DANIEL: Yeah, that makes sense. Like some of the best friends I have came from university, not school.

[00:13:36] DANIEL: You and I were Gen X, and so it's important for us not to look back and think, well, just because we had that type of experience, that's what it's like when you're 20 nowadays. And the research seems to indicate that, you know, Gen Zed has a very different experience, particularly because of the move from what John Haid calls a play based childhood to a screen based childhood.

[00:13:54] DANIEL: So essentially a, a youth where you're spending time hanging out in pubs and, and [00:14:00] on the soccer field and hanging out at the university, talking with each other and experience life face to face compared to having broad, wide social networks online, but not a lot of in person time. And that really changes things in terms of your experience of building deep, meaningful friendships.

[00:14:18] DANIEL: Uh, certainly the research indicates that younger people feel lonelier and, uh, less connected than our generation did. And the more time you spend online, the less connected you feel because you're actually taking the time you would ordinarily have. With real friends in real time in real places and exchanging them for somewhat more superficial experiences Which are wide and broad but not deep so it's like an opportunity cost there.

[00:14:43] DANIEL: There's an opportunity cost and again there's a, there's a mask like you said because you're actually using a medium to communicate relationally and that medium changes the message and so it's quite different when I'm hanging out with you and having a coffee versus when I'm posting a picture of myself having coffee on Instagram and [00:15:00] saying, what do you reckon?

[00:15:00] DANIEL: I think actually some of the things we're going to talk about around friendship in your 40s and 50s, which require more intentionality, more rhythm, and more, I suppose, more of a pattern. It's probably actually relevant for Gen Z and younger now, because if you're not intentional about hanging out with people in real time in real place and actually having that kind of regular contact and spontaneity, it's, it may not happen.

[00:15:25] DANIEL: You might turn around and realise I never had those friendships. So let's look at some principles. If you're 20 to 30, you recognise the need to, to build broad, wide, meaningful friendships in order to have older friends when you're older. How might you go about it?

[00:15:41] MATT: Yeah. Excellent question. So, C. S. Lewis, British author, academic, he went on record and said probably like the greatest pleasure in his life were friendships.

[00:15:49] MATT: So he's a good guy to listen to like when it comes to making and keeping friends. And he wrote, friendships arise when two companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste, [00:16:00] which to that moment each believed to be his own unique treasure or burden. The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, you too, I thought I was the only one.

[00:16:11] MATT: So he's really honing in there on, again, having this thing that is precious to you, almost like a treasure, some kind of interest, yeah, or area of expertise, and you think, am I, like, kind of alone here? And you find someone else who shares that. And suddenly you've got a companion. Yeah. Okay. So what you like, things that you like, common interests that he saw as again, as again, being the genesis of friendship.

[00:16:31] DANIEL: All right. So you watch high fidelity, you know, your real friends watch high fidelity and then you've got something to talk about.

[00:16:36] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. Or the bear. I'm not too fussy. Okay. So, so this means, right. In order again, to have like, to actually discover for myself, these interests, these passions, these things that I feel like that I'm really excited and enthused about, I need to create time.

[00:16:52] MATT: And space in my life as a 20 to 40 year old person to explore life, to find out what it is that I like. Yeah. And the [00:17:00] risk of course, particularly in that kind of 20 to 40 space is that you may be so dedicated to your career and excelling at that so well, or studying for it so much that you squeeze out.

[00:17:11] MATT: Any other extra time for interests and hobbies and extracurricular activities. So you're not, so you don't have the capacity to find out what it is that you like, which means you can't share it with someone.

[00:17:19] DANIEL: Or counter that probably the alternative is like being so absorbed in sitting in a room with high speed internet.

[00:17:27] DANIEL: Yeah. Yes. You actually, you actually don't launch. But either way, both extremes will squeeze out friendship.

[00:17:32] MATT: That's right. Because you're not exploring the world. You're not discovering what it is that you like. And if you don't know what it is that you like, again, you aren't going to have this experience of finding someone to come alongside you who likes that thing as well.

[00:17:42] MATT: So yeah. So the first big principle, make time, make time in your life as a 20 to 40 year old. And second big principle, like as cliche as it sounds like go first. So if I, you know, if I say I'm into, you know, like the bear or if I'm into jujitsu and I'm starting to kind of [00:18:00] sound you out as a potential friend, you know, I'd encourage you.

[00:18:03] MATT: Don't be like the proverbial wallflower, take the risk and say, hey Dan, you know, have you ever seen the bear? It's a really good show. Or hey Dan, you know, have you ever like thought about, you know, you look like you're a guy who gets picked on a lot. Maybe you should start doing jujitsu. You know what I mean?

[00:18:16] MATT: Cause the reality is most of us are waiting to be asked and approached. Most of us really appreciate it.

[00:18:24] DANIEL: So be proactive. Be proactive. Yeah. Again, be proactive in valuing friendships and being the person that gets out and tries to organize stuff. You know, I don't know, go to the movies, go for a walk, start jujitsu, but just be proactive in connecting with people.

[00:18:38] DANIEL: Yes. Yeah. Cause I, that's where I think you and I would say that building friendships is a skill and relationships is a skill and you actually have to practice it. And the more you practice in person relationships when you're young, the better you become at when you're older and the wider and broader your connections are when you're young, the more likely.

[00:18:55] DANIEL: It is that you have some old friends when you're older, which is protective and predictive of a long happy [00:19:00] life. Yeah, that's it. So you want to put in the work when you're young. Yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Look, and the third principle we talked about is ask good questions and be curious because look, I'm an introvert.

[00:19:08] DANIEL: I naturally, like, if you saw me when I was like, 18, I was, I don't know, I was geeky and I wasn't well, geeky, maybe I am now, but I wasn't very good at friends. I wasn't very good at connecting with people. I just didn't have the social skills that would help me meet people, let's say at a party, for example.

[00:19:25] DANIEL: And I remember someone actually saying to me, well, you actually just have to ask good questions and listen. And it was just super helpful. Like sometimes you have to teach people how to connect with other people. And I started to do that. I started to ask some pretty simple questions like, oh, I don't know, what do you do for a job or what's been the highlight of your day?

[00:19:46] DANIEL: Are there any movies you like? I'm not going to ask you that question because we know your answer. But then, you know, to start asking maybe deeper questions as a follow up. Yeah.

[00:19:56] MATT: And maybe on that too, if I'm stuck thinking, oh, like, what do I ask as my [00:20:00] kind of opening gambit question, maybe like a good place to start would be, what would I like to be asked at a party?

[00:20:05] MATT: You know, cause that's a pretty good chance if I'm open to being asked that the person next to me.

[00:20:10] DANIEL: Yeah. And pay attention to what other people ask. I was at a party once and someone said, oh, what's this, what's something strange or interesting no one knows about you. And we had a ripper conversation with like three or four people in that group.

[00:20:22] DANIEL: And so that's the question I've asked as a result of that. Uh, the other thing is to think about, you know, if, if you're heading to a, I don't know, a sports club and you've had a conversation with someone, you got along well, and you think it'd probably be good to have another conversation. Well, actually try to remember what you talked about and follow it up.

[00:20:37] DANIEL: You know, if they said that they were having a hard time because. I don't know, their mum is sick, well then ask them how their mum is, you know what I mean? And, and so I suppose the point is, be attentive, be curious and ask questions, be other focused or other centred, and it's a great way to start, to learn to build skills in connecting.

[00:20:57] MATT: Yes. Yeah.

[00:20:57] DANIEL: So we've got [email protected]. We really like hearing what people are thinking about these episodes and someone wrote about one of our episodes recently, uh, sucks to be an introvert and they wrote it humorously. But what they were saying is they, they get the research that friendships, connections and relationships are super important for long life and for happiness, but it sucks to be an introvert.

[00:21:19] DANIEL: And I thought about that actually, because I'm definitely an introvert. I find that um, I like people, but I'm energised by being by myself. If I go to a party, I'm exhausted, even though I get something out of it. But what I've realised as I thought about that comment is I don't think being introvert means you don't extend yourself and try to build relationships.

[00:21:40] DANIEL: I think it just means that the way in which you're, you build relationships might be different, you know, like I tend to build relationships one on one or one to two rather than in big crowds. But I still think you have to stretch your introvert muscles if you want to build connections because the research is clear that people with deep and regular relationships, [00:22:00] have a better life.

[00:22:01] DANIEL: And so it's important to stretch yourself to actually ask those questions, to get out and to build friendships, particularly when you're young, in order to broaden your social circles. And I remember thinking after COVID, like I used to connect with people, like I used to have 20 people around for dinner every week for years and years and years.

[00:22:17] DANIEL: We had a big dinner. It was exhausting, but it was energising. It was part of life. It always stretched me as an introvert, but I would also often be the one who had one on one conversations in that group rather than group conversations. But then COVID happened. We went into lockdown. Everyone stopped connecting face to face for about a year.

[00:22:35] DANIEL: And I found that it was just super hard to get back into any type of social rhythm. And I realised that actually social connection and relationship building is just like exercise. It's a muscle. It can atrophy. And so I think being an introvert, you might have to stretch yourself a little harder to actually connect with others, but it's still really important.

[00:22:56] DANIEL: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

[00:22:58] MATT: No, I can't speak [00:23:00] as an introvert, so I don't feel qualified, you know, to be out to bed. But, but, if, if, if I've heard you correctly again, so introverts still need friends. You still value friendship a lot. And we're talking about like really quality, not quantity.

[00:23:11] MATT: Yeah. So maybe fewer friends, but really meaningful friends. And again, it's, it's, it's a capacity like all of us that you can work on and become fitter at.

[00:23:19] DANIEL: And look, I think we have a culture which probably defines introversion in a slightly unhealthy way. You know, I've, I've got some great friends who are, who are Afghani in origin.

[00:23:28] DANIEL: Okay. And they have 15 people in the house constantly day in, day out. Grandparents, grandmas, you know, kids, extended family. So if you're an introvert in a communal tribal culture, you've got people around all the time, whereas when we talk about being an introvert, we're talking about people literally staying at home in their bedrooms and hardly seeing anyone for days on end.

[00:23:49] DANIEL: You know, so that, I don't, I think that definition of introvert doesn't work for anyone. And the research suggests that that's not a good way of being. So I think in our Western culture, which is individualised, where you don't have [00:24:00] natural connections and tribe and community around us, we actually need to extend ourselves to spend more time with people.

[00:24:06] DANIEL: Okay. Because introversion can be a bit extreme in an isolated, consumptive, individualised world. I've probably gone a little bit.

[00:24:14] MATT: That's great. I think it's important. Yeah. Dan Sih, making introversion great again. That's great. Making introversion great again.

[00:24:20] DANIEL: I like it.

[00:24:28] DANIEL: So give me a summary, Matt. If you're in your twenties and thirties, you want to build the protective function of having wide, broad, but hopefully increasingly deep friendships. Yeah. What are the key principles?

[00:24:40] MATT: Okay. So number one, make friends around common interests, which means carving out the time and the space in your probably already busy life in order to explore what it is that you like.

[00:24:49] MATT: That's number one. Yep. Number two, be curious, be the person who extends the invitation, you know, who initiates conversations and again, just notices people. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:58] DANIEL: Just ask questions.

[00:24:59] MATT: Just ask [00:25:00] questions. Yeah. And then number three, if you happen to be an introvert, again, I can't speak on behalf of you, but I heard it from good friends who are introverts.

[00:25:05] MATT: If you're an introvert, then again, stretch those social muscles and again, just practice. Again, practice, practice stretching yourself a little bit and at least investing in a few quality friends.

[00:25:22] DANIEL: Alright. So we've talked about twenties and thirties, early adulthood. Let's talk about the midlife squeeze. Recognising that the types of things that happen in one season of life require a different form of friendship or a different type of intentionality in how to connect with friends. And I loved your quote, Loneliness is a feeling of being a person who used to have friends.

[00:25:41] DANIEL: How do we avoid that?

[00:25:43] MATT: Yeah, again, so great quote there by Justin Whitmore Early. There's a couple of, well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, why we may be at risk of this. And the first of the, the first thing again, classic midlife squeeze. You've got pressures from perhaps ailing parents or caregivers.

[00:25:57] MATT: You've got kids who, who you're looking after and you, and you've got the [00:26:00] huge demand of career. So your career could still be very, very demanding. So what that means is that you almost find yourself busier. Yeah. perhaps wealthier, but also more at risk of being lonely and not having friends. And I've heard people describe this as being stuck in a current.

[00:26:16] MATT: And of course the killer thing about a current is that often you don't know that you're in one, you're just being pulled along until it's too late. And it's even more, it's even more disconcerting and harder to pick up that you're in a current if you're in there with other people because you're both getting pulled along in the same direction at the same time.

[00:26:32] DANIEL: Yes. Everyone around you has got the same unwritten ground rules. Everyone's ignoring their friends. Everyone's working hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:39] MATT: So it just feels like you and I are both busier than when we were younger. You and I are both probably wealthier when we're younger. You and I, without even kind of maybe acknowledging it to each other, perhaps feeling a bit more lonely than we were back then.

[00:26:49] DANIEL: And, but even with the wealth, I feel like there's a greater pressure and urgency to save for when I'm older as well. So that's the squeeze.

[00:26:56] MATT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a squeeze. Yeah. That's a squeeze. So again, no one chooses this, [00:27:00] right? Because it's the current, it just becomes a default. And that's the big point.

[00:27:03] MATT: So we're not suggesting that anyone actively says, you know what? I want to start losing friends and just get busier and maybe, you know, for the sake of making some more money. No one chooses that. Yeah.

[00:27:09] DANIEL: Yeah. And again, when I read the book, The Five Regrets of the Dying, Bonnie Ware gives a story, an example, I can't remember the person's name, but someone at the end of their life, they're in palliative care, and they just simply said that they realised that they've lost all their old friends and it wasn't that they did it intentionally.

[00:27:26] DANIEL: They didn't have fights. They didn't, you know, kind of clash. They just neglected that and moved on and they lost each other's numbers. Yeah. And they didn't, you know, use social media because of the age group. And basically they just realised that they had no friends anymore. Yeah. And that's just, that's the current.

[00:27:44] DANIEL: If you follow the current, you'll end up being a person who used to have friends - by friends, we don't mean work friends or deal friends as Arthur Brooks says. Yes. We're talking about real friends. People who've got history, people who care for you just because of [00:28:00] you.

[00:28:00] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

[00:28:01] MATT: So yeah. So the big takeaway there is that, is that again, just by neglect and passivity. So just by not doing anything, the people who are probably most likely to kind of neglect in our lives will be our old friends, because again, they're the ones who we can most often take for granted. We think they've been around for decades.

[00:28:17] MATT: If I just don't invest very much in the relationship, they're going to be around for decades still. And of course, they're the, they're the riskiest ones to lose cause there's a shared history there that you can't get with new friends.

[00:28:30] MATT: Okay. So just like picking up on something else you said, there's also this phenomenon of again, particularly in the, in the kind of midlife squeeze and particularly if you've been relatively successful with your career and you're a pretty good networker, you can have what Arthur Brooks, the author has termed deal friends as opposed to real friends, which is super helpful.

[00:28:45] MATT: Yeah. It's such a good distinction. Right. And, and once someone points it out to you, it's like, aha, yeah, I see that.

[00:28:49] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was in Port Douglas this week and speaking to a big conference, I was speaking to a CEO of, you know, he's been a CEO in multiple like ASIC big companies.

[00:28:59] DANIEL: And I just [00:29:00] mentioned the idea of deal friend versus real friend. I didn't have to explain it. Like he immediately knew what I meant. And he liked the term because he just said, you know, at like my level, everyone I meet is a deal friend. Yeah. Like they’re lawyers, they’re, you know, stakeholders, they’re shareholders, like there's no one in my life who is a real friend anymore because he's got too much power and the people around him need stuff from him.

[00:29:20] DANIEL: And that's a real risk at certain levels, but we can all fall into that trap where we spend a lot of time with work based friends. We spend a lot of time just kind of having banter with people who are in our life because we see them every day, but then you leave your job. And there's crickets.

[00:29:34] MATT: Yeah.

[00:29:35] DANIEL: You know, six months later, you might get a text from one or two people, but yeah, you turn around and realise, oh, what about all those other people who have been in my life?

[00:29:42] DANIEL: Friends, family, real friends who shouldn't have neglected along the way. Yeah.

[00:29:47] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[00:29:49] DANIEL: It's hard in the moment to zoom out and realise, oh, when I'm in this I need to both look for real friends in the moment. So, you know, some of my deal friends are actually real friends. If I was to spend [00:30:00] time with them outside of work and how do I actually invest in all friends?

[00:30:03] MATT: Yeah, that's it. That's it. And we're not saying there's anything wrong with deal friends. Yeah. And we're also, the other thing I'd add to that is that particularly if you reach a leadership position or seniority at work, then it's almost inevitable. That people start to regard you differently being like a boss person again.

[00:30:18] MATT: So there's just not much you can really do about that. So it's being conscious. I've got these, these kinds of friends in my life or colleagues I need, like you said, to invest in these other real friends over here. Yeah.

[00:30:26] DANIEL: And look, everyone needs different types of relationships, right? You need someone who can mentor you.

[00:30:30] DANIEL: So someone who's maybe a bit older and wiser or experienced that you can go to and ask questions of. You need colleagues, you need deal friends, you need people to walk alongside with and do stuff together with and, and you need old friends, you need people probably as well younger than you that you're helping out.

[00:30:44] DANIEL: So it's, it's just recognising you need a breadth of relationships, but don't neglect the ones who are your peers.

[00:30:50] MATT: Yeah. So principles for the midlife squeeze. Yeah. So how do we actually go about making this happen? So at the very start, we talked about, again earlier in life. [00:31:00] It's what you like and then at this stage of life it's who you like, who you like and again, we're talking about character. What type of friend are you and this is like this is really, really important because at this stage in life, I'm not sure if you found this but I certainly have. So once you get to you know your 40s you can have these old friends and when you're in your 20s and 30s you had so much in common. So you're at the same age and stage you're both like, maybe you didn't have kids.

[00:31:23] MATT: They didn't have kids. You were both at university. You were both like, you know, you were both living in the inner city. You hadn't moved out to the suburbs or whatever. Yeah. But as the decades move on, these things, these commonalities can shift.

[00:31:36] DANIEL: Yeah. I used to be a physiotherapist. All my friends were physios.

[00:31:39] DANIEL: They're in healthcare. And now I'm a productivity consultant. Yeah. So we don't have anything in common. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:44] MATT: Yeah. That's right. It changes. So if the cement and the glue of your friendships with those people was solely what you had in common, common interests. Then you're in like, you're in really dangerous waters.

[00:31:55] MATT: So this is why it has to shift to what kind of person are you? What kind of friend [00:32:00] are you? Who are you like, are you going to be the kind of person who still invests in these people for want of a better term, you know, who cares for these people, who notices these people, particularly because as we've already talked about, they could be going through a difficult.

[00:32:11] MATT: Time of life or they're surely going to encounter like we are some difficulties. So, will you be the kind of friend who attends to that?

[00:32:18] DANIEL: Yeah. So you have to be willing to actually sit through people's pain, their sicknesses, their divorces, the anger, the grief, that's right. Yeah. And you don't get much out of that.

[00:32:29] DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, that's right. But the point is it's who you are and, and the loyalty you have to that relationship. Yeah. And vice versa. Yeah. That's right. Hopefully that, hopefully they'll be there for you when you're going through that. Hopefully it's, it's uh, it's reciprocated.

[00:32:40] MATT: So you're there. So you, you were there for them and you're interested in them as a person, not as opposed to just what you had in common.

[00:32:48] DANIEL: That makes sense. And I think it also means you have to be more intentional because if you don't have any natural crossover points, well then it does require that you are very deliberate in chasing people up and creating patterns and [00:33:00] rhythms, which we'll talk about in a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So that you actually have touch points and connections again.

[00:33:05] DANIEL: Yeah. I know we've deliberately steered away from talking about romantic relationships and marriages in this podcast series, particularly cause we don't feel kind of expertise in these spaces, but also there's a lot of pain and struggle in that.

[00:33:18] MATT: Yeah.

[00:33:18] DANIEL: But I do see commonalities when, you know, when friends have come to me and said, oh, we just drifted apart.

[00:33:23] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, well, actually, no one just drifts apart, or, or probably more accurately, everyone will drift apart. Because we're all in the current. Because we're all in the current. And the point is to make those small everyday decisions to sacrifice what you want in order to walk alongside of the person you're with and change alongside of them together.

[00:33:43] DANIEL: Otherwise everyone will drift apart.

[00:33:45] MATT: You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm not sure if I've told this story, but maybe like two or three years ago. Right. Let's, just an example of a real friend, you know, and again, someone who's an old friend. So, so this old friend, we haven't got a whole lot in common anymore in terms of like, we've got some common interests.

[00:33:59] MATT: We've got loads and loads [00:34:00] and loads of history. Like he's probably my oldest friend, but on the surface, you know, we haven't got very much overlap. And about two years ago, I was having, um, a really hectic, stressed out, bad day. It was a weekend and I had to move my wife's car and she could have moved it so I could get out, but I was just, nah, I'm going to do it myself.

[00:34:19] MATT: So I was rushed and I was stressed and this car happened to be an automatic, right? And so I was so rushed and so stressed. I opened the door and instead of like, being a regular normal person, jumping in, shutting the door and reversing it, I decided to save time. I was going to put one foot in with the door open and leave the other foot on the ground and it was an automatic and it got stuck in drive, not reverse.

[00:34:38] MATT: And I couldn't hit the brake because again, I had one foot in the car and I literally drove through our front garden. Through, uh, our neighbour's fence and ended up in the gutter outside. Thankfully, like there were no small children around and I was just so embarrassed and felt so bad. And I thought, man, like this is one of those moments in life where, you know, who would you call at 3am in the morning if something was really going bad?

[00:34:58] MATT: I thought I'm in one of these moments [00:35:00] and I thought of this guy like right away, called him my friend and he came around and he like literally patched up the fence. So like strapped it back together for now, help me clean up everything. And then like checked in that I was okay. And then like, I think two weeks later, like insisted on taking me out for a coffee just to kind of check in and actually make sure that I was okay.

[00:35:19] MATT: That's a real friend. And that's an old friend. And that's an old friend. Yeah. Again, like an old friend who, again, on the, on the surface, we don't have that much in common.

[00:35:27] DANIEL: But it's hard, isn't it? To, to think forward. Yeah. You can do it in the moment to think forward though and think, okay, who are the people that I would actually call or who are the people who might call me?

[00:35:37] DANIEL: And how do I just not neglect them? You know, like I, again, I've got a similar friendship and I was doing an exercise from the good life where they ask you how many years do you have left? You know, I'm 47. Let's say at the best I live until I'm 90, maybe the same thing. My friend's a bit younger, but you know, one of my close friends, let's say they lived to 90 as well.

[00:35:55] DANIEL: I did the maths of how much time I would have left, right? And I see them about an hour a [00:36:00] month. And, and that's a stretch, which it shouldn't be. I used to see them every day, you know, but now I see them about an hour a month, if I average it out. Okay. So it's like, let's say 12, 15 hours a year. When I multiplied it, I'm like, well, I get like 30 days with them for the rest of my life.

[00:36:16] DANIEL: It's just like nothing compared to how much I work. And when I think about friendships like that, and they're the people you're going to call on. Yeah. Hmm. They're the people who statistically will make you happier and healthier as you age. They're the people as you get older that you rely on. So you won't be lonely.

[00:36:29] DANIEL: You know, it's great to have kids around, but there's nothing like having people who are your colleagues and friends and people have shared experiences with you. It's, it's different than your kids. I don't want to just spend 30 days with them until the end of my life. And so, you know, that pushes me to say, okay, how do I be more intentional?

[00:36:45] MATT: So trying to bring all that together. Yeah. The first big principle is. Don't neglect your old friends. Yeah. And, which is going to require intentionality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:54] DANIEL: Being deliberate and thinking about who matters.

[00:36:56] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's go back to that other analogy. [00:37:00] Swim against the current. Yeah.

[00:37:01] MATT: Okay. Swimming against the current. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Swimming against the current.

[00:37:03] DANIEL: Yeah. So the, the second principle you and I've talked about is actually locality. Which I think is a challenge for our culture. So I used to be a physiotherapist. I worked in aged care rehab for about four or five years. So I spent a lot of time with people who are just about to head into nursing homes to help them delay that transition.

[00:37:21] DANIEL: And I suppose live independently as long as they could. I had some great conversations with people and I often ask people about what they cared about, what they valued. But one conversation really stood out to me and there was this elderly guy. He was super intelligent. He was super wealthy and so he told me about how amazing his life had been. So what he had done is he had a holiday house or a house in Switzerland. He had a house in Hobart and he used to basically just rotate six months of the year and he did that for like 15 years. So he always had a summer, he got to experience the European summer and then he got to experience, you know Hobart which is where he's from. But what was interesting is when I observed his life and the people who visited, the people [00:38:00] who he would speak to, and I suppose just we tried to book a family meeting, there was no one, like, there was no one who visited, there was no one he called, and when we had a family meeting to help work out how do we, you know, help this person live independently, there was no one he could call on.

[00:38:16] DANIEL: And it just really struck me as not what I wanted.

[00:38:20] DANIEL: Yeah, you know, you can have wealth and you can travel and you can have all those great experiences. But if you have no place, I think that was it. He had no place. He, he, he chose to live in places that were fun and great, but it led to just a bunch of deal friends rather than real friends, acquaintances rather than people he could call on.

[00:38:38] MATT: Well, it sounds like he had places, but he didn't have a home.

[00:38:40] DANIEL: He didn't have a home. He didn't have a home and maybe didn't make a home because he was always moving to the next thing. It makes me think of the vows that ancient monks used to have. They have a vow of poverty, of chastity, of, of, of obedience.

[00:38:53] DANIEL: But I heard someone once say that in our busy, individualised, mobile Western world, we actually need [00:39:00] to reclaim the vow of locality. That, that to choose to be in one place and to choose to make decisions to stay in one place in order to be embedded in a local community, to know your neighbours, to build regular friendships is actually a sacrifice because the current, like you described, is about pushing us out.

[00:39:21] DANIEL: You know, even the whole grey nomad thing. You know, when you retire, what should we do? Get in a caravan and travel around Australia. But that's exactly what will separate you from old friends, unless you do it with them. Right. And, and so I've really considered that. And I suppose in my life, particularly when my friend Mick died, I thought, actually, I want to take up the vow of.

[00:39:39] DANIEL: Locality, particularly because so much of my work is overseas and so many of my clients are in different places in the world. I can coach them online and on zoom. I was having these great connections with people all around the place, but I realised that actually, if I continue in that direction, I might actually stop talking to my neighbours and I might not have a place of my own and I don't want to be like this guy from [00:40:00] Switzerland.

[00:40:00] DANIEL: So yeah, I think that's one of the, the things that we might need to consider as you get older to stay put.

[00:40:06] MATT: Wait, as in you and I are getting up in the same nursing home? Is that what's going on?

[00:40:10] DANIEL: Sorry, retirement community. It's a retirement community. That's what I'm hoping. Although, you know, I'm hoping, you know, you'll be the guy who get goes out and buys me takeaway Chinese so I don't have to eat that terrible food.

[00:40:19] DANIEL: So anyway, I think that is actually a commitment to think about where do I live and am I willing to stay in a place where, and not take that job promotion because I recognise the importance of friendship and place and home.

[00:40:33] MATT: I've got a feeling C. S. Lewis also wrote something about this.

[00:40:35] DANIEL: Is that right? You have a feeling?

[00:40:36] MATT: Oh, I don't know.

[00:40:38] DANIEL: What kind of quote could you come out of from the top of your head?

[00:40:42] MATT: So I believe he said something like if I had to give a piece of advice to a young man or young person about a place to live, I think I should say sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends, sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.

[00:40:58] DANIEL: No, I'm not. Look, we're not saying [00:41:00] don't travel. We're not saying don't take up new experiences. But I think we are saying don't let money and career be the predominant or the guiding star of everything because actually place and friendships matter.

[00:41:13] MATT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. And there's probably a link between place and friendships.

[00:41:22] DANIEL: So the last principle is predictable patterns. And I've talked about this. We've talked about this in our previous season. But if you're in your forties and fifties and you recognise you just aren't connecting with people who matter. What do you do? And you and I both think you have to create a pattern.

[00:41:40] DANIEL: You've got to create an intentional, regular rhythm, which isn't spontaneous necessarily, but it'll actually get you connecting. I mean, you and I both have a friend, Daz Oldclass, and he once said that spontaneity, unlike its name suggests, needs to be planned. And I kind of laughed when I heard that the first time, but I actually think he's right.

[00:41:58] DANIEL: And what he's saying is [00:42:00] actually, you, you and I have busy calendars. You and I don't just spontaneously say, hey, let's go to the movies or catch up or do blah, blah, blah. Uh, it has to be planned because of the nature of our calendars. But if you, if you create space in your calendar that is unbusy, well then you can be spontaneous in that space.

[00:42:17] DANIEL: So again, it's the same thing. How do you create regular patterns with people you care about so that you don't end up,

[00:42:27] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Look, and this is a tough one for me because I really value spontaneity and I'm not naturally organised whatsoever. And so I've long lived with this ideal, I hang over from my twenties and thirties that I could just, again, at the drop of a hat, you know, see you and catch up.

[00:42:41] MATT: Right. So I'm not saying this is easy, but I think it makes, it's wisdom, right? It's wisdom. And it's particularly suited for this season of life and maybe our culture as well.

[00:42:50] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. The way we live. [00:42:52] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:52] MATT: Yeah. So again, like giving credit where it's due, Justin Whitmore Early has a lot of good stuff to say in this particular space.

[00:42:59] MATT: His [00:43:00] big idea is don't let the ideal be the enemy of the good. So almost like something good enough. So something in terms of seeing people scheduling something with people is better than nothing. Right? So take your life and think, well, there's got to be one variation of schedule that I can make fit for my particular circumstances when it comes to seeing people.

[00:43:17] MATT: So. For example, you could go high frequency. So a bit like, I think your example from before you used to see this person daily. Well, maybe you can move the daily to the weekly. So I could, maybe you can arrange to see someone on a weekly basis. Maybe that's, you know, during the evening catching up for a coffee, or maybe it can be weekly in person.

[00:43:34] MATT: So you're catching up for a movie, a lunch or a meal, you know, or maybe again, it's going to be like a, a weekly lunch or dinner. Cause everyone's got to eat. Yeah. So you just build that in weekly.

[00:43:43] DANIEL: So we've done that with our neighbours where like we eat a meal, they eat a meal. So we'd, every week.

[00:43:47] MATT: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:47] MATT: Every week. Yeah. Yeah. So, but weekly is pretty high frequency. It's high frequency.

[00:43:51] DANIEL: It's high commitment and it's been difficult, but they're really close friends. Weekly is a high bar and I couldn't do that with most people.

[00:43:57] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So what you don't do is throw up, oh, I can't see these [00:44:00] people weekly. So, you know, forget about it.

[00:44:01] MATT: It's all too much for blah, blah, blah. I'll just go back to chaos and the current. Then no, it's well, like, what about if you can't do it in person, you could at least do it perhaps like during the evening via a phone call or a zoom. Cause again, that's still something, right? That's still better than nothing.

[00:44:14] MATT: Or if the weeklies is too much, then you can look at doing all those things, all those different options, coffees, in person meals, or a zoom catch up fortnightly. So again, maybe weekly is too much for fortnightly is doable or monthly, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Or monthly. Yeah. So monthly for a lot of people is probably like a sweet spot and that's still, and you know, going back to your example, maybe that only ends up.

[00:44:34] MATT: So, you know, 30 days together for the remainder of the year, but it's more than you would have had. Right.

[00:44:39] DANIEL: Exactly. And actually something you said to me once is if you're in the busiest time of your life and you're really, really struggling for friendships, at least maintain a minimal viable product. So if you catch up with someone once a month and it's only an hour a month, for example, then when life does slow down a little bit and there is a change that often happens like when you retire, for example, [00:45:00] well, you're not someone who turns around and says, I haven't seen you in 20 years.

[00:45:03] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. Who are you again? Who are you again? Now it's not, it's not ideal, but it's, it's, it's building a rhythm that actually invests in the people who you care about. That's right. You know what they're going through. You can be there through their hard times so that you don't also turn around and say, oh, sorry, I wasn't there when you got divorced at all.

[00:45:19] DANIEL: Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So monthly is a, I think monthly is an excellent rhythm. In fact, I even have a quarterly rhythm with some people, like when we had book club, we used to meet four times a year because I thought that was realistic, but we did it for seven years and I still have friendships that came out of that quarterly rhythm that mattered to me.

[00:45:36] DANIEL: And, and so, you know, I think, I think any rhythm works.

[00:45:39] MATT: Yeah, that's right. So any rhythm works and any rhythm is demonstrating to people that you're not neglecting them. And it's also demonstrating to yourself, which I think is super important that you're not being passive. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm not just like, again, I give up, it's all too much, life's too busy, throw my hands in the air.

[00:45:55] DANIEL: So look, we always have 30 seconds of silence. We've talked about a lot of stuff. We've talked about what it looks like to build [00:46:00] friendships when you're young, to build wide and broad friendships, and to be intentional, to build patterns, to stay in one place when you're older, to do sacrificial things based on who you are, not what you're like.

[00:46:11] DANIEL: So just take a moment of silence, experience space and think about what stood out to you from this conversation.[00:47:00]

[00:47:13] DANIEL: So we've talked about friendship, we've talked about breaking the friendship recession and about being intentional in how we approach people in our lives because it's people ultimately that we look back at at the end of our life and think, it's those relationships that made me happier, that had meaning, that actually lead to longer life.

[00:47:32] DANIEL: Yeah. So what do we do about it? We always finish with a practical activity and you and I have wrestled long and hard with what type of activity would we give people to help them invest in friendships. And rather than actually give a prescriptive, you know, do this once a month or do this once a fortnight, we can't really speak into your life stage, but we can help you reflect on your current friendship map, your current state of experience.

[00:47:57] DANIEL: And where you want to head and that's what we want to [00:48:00] do. So we're going to share an activity, which we are wholly ripping off from the good life, but it was an excellent activity that you and I both found helpful and it's based on the research. So when you look at the longitudinal research, the two major, major predictors of happiness, uh, how regularly you see people, frequency, and the quality of those.

[00:48:19] DANIEL: Yes. That does also include romantic relationships and family relationships, but basically the quality of your relationships and frequency matter. So what they've done is they set out a quadrant. So imagine a quadrant, you've got a vertical axis and you've got a horizontal axis just as a cross. So you've now got four boxes.

[00:48:35] DANIEL: Okay. So, so this is what I want you to do. You get a piece of paper and I want you to actually write down. And then the vertical axis is, is the quality quadrant. So at the top of the axis, you want to write energising and at the bottom depleting, meaning who are the relationships that energise you, where you hang out with people, you feel bigger, you feel greater, you feel stronger, you feel more connected, you've enjoyed their company.

[00:48:58] DANIEL: You've had something worth doing. [00:49:00] connecting over. Depleting are those relationships that make you feel small, maybe belittled, where there's some toxicity. It doesn't mean you neglect them necessarily. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Especially if they're family and, and close relationships, but you, you at least want to recognise that they deplete you rather than energize you.

[00:49:18] MATT: Yeah, that's good. That's good.

[00:49:18] DANIEL: So that's the vertical axis. The horizontal axis involves infrequent to frequent. So infrequent on the left, frequent on the right. And then uh, fill it with people you regularly have in your life. So you might start with obviously your family, maybe close relatives, put in your closest friends, maybe old friends, maybe new friends, but people who are kind of connected to you and who you care about.

[00:49:43] DANIEL: Uh, but then think a bit more broadly, are there old friends that you simply don't see or who you haven't connected with, but who certainly energise you, where do they fit? And is there anyone you could think of who might become a good friend, but you don't see frequently or you don't know well.

[00:49:59] MATT: So some of them with [00:50:00] potential, yeah, potential friendship.

[00:50:02] MATT: So that's your current reality. So, yeah. So, so what you're telling me is that once I've got this in front of me, it's giving me a good lay of the land of my current reality.

[00:50:10] DANIEL: Yeah. So map out the lay of the land right now. So it's your current reality and being like a productivity person. Well, then we want a current state and we want a future state.

[00:50:18] DANIEL: So what the good, good life guys recommend is. Circle particular friendships that you think, like, they energise me and I would like to spend more time with those people. And then circle those names and put an arrow where you'd like them to be. Uh, and that just gives you a sense of the kind of direction of movement you might need to have to invest in these friendships.

[00:50:40] DANIEL: And that can also be, you know, I see someone regularly, they de-energise me, uh, I'm not going to ghost them and take them out of my life.

[00:50:47] MATT: Yeah.

[00:50:47] DANIEL: But actually I am going to put in some steps to maybe see them less regularly or to give them, you know, less of my best time if I need to put healthy boundaries in place in order to create a bit more space for people who I'm [00:51:00] neglecting, who do energise.

[00:51:00] DANIEL: Yeah.

[00:51:01] MATT: So again, like, and it sounds like a horrid term, I know, but it's also, this helps you realise the opportunity cost.

[00:51:06] DANIEL: Yeah. It's the opportunity cost. And, and look, the alternative might be, I actually need to have some robust, hard conversations to deal with some conflict or to deal with an elephant in the room, which is what de-energises me.

[00:51:16] DANIEL: It might not be the person itself, but a situation that you haven't dealt with, old conflict. So it might be a stimulus to say, actually, it's time to deal with this so that this person I see regularly can be energising again. Yeah. But it's a good exercise. So our suggestion is to book half an hour, sometime ideally in the next week or maybe the next fortnight, put it in your calendar, and, you know, set time aside to do your current and future state, think about where you would do it, I'd think of a cafe or go to the beach or be somewhere quiet, sit on the deck of your house with a coffee, pull out, you know, just a pad.

[00:51:50] DANIEL: And to do this activity. And we also have a handout, uh, all of our activities and our practical exercises and a summary of what we've been talking about. It's all at [00:52:00] spacemakers.au/S2 for season two. Uh, we would encourage you to sign up at spacemakers.au/s2 and there's a handout that you can print up and use if you want to use kind of a set and forget yeah like a template which I reckon is a great idea.

[00:52:17] DANIEL: Any last thoughts if you had anything to recommend to people about friendship let's say in the midlife squeeze yeah what would you say

[00:52:23] MATT: Yeah I'd say I think this idea goes really well with the stuff that we talked about with the happiness curve, the U shaped curve of happiness, and particularly with the midlife squeeze.

[00:52:34] MATT: You know, we talked about that idea of a good life in the second half of life involving that idea of being generative, that is being invested in people and causes bigger than myself. I think that ties really nicely with what it means to be a good friend in the midlife squeeze, who you're like. You're someone who's interested and invested and taking notice and attending and caring for other people.

[00:52:59] MATT: It's no longer [00:53:00] just about you. What am I getting out of this friendship? It's more, what kind of friend can I be?

[00:53:04] DANIEL: Yeah, nice. So next week, we are going to talk about health. We're going to enter the realm of health and how that changes in your 40s and 50s compared to 20s and 30s, I get to put on my physiotherapy hat, which I haven't put on for a long time and talk about my experiences of health.

[00:53:21] MATT: You can take the guy out of physiotherapy, you can't take physiotherapy out of the guy.

[00:53:25] DANIEL: Stop slouching, Matt. That's right. We're going to talk about how to exercise smarter. Not harder. And we're going to talk about how fitness goals change as you get older in order to stay the distance. So I'm looking forward to that episode and until next time, make space.

[00:53:41] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:53:44] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, St Luke's, our health partner from my home state of Tasmania. They're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to be the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:53:56] NARRATOR: Email sucks. That's if you don't have a system. Our [00:54:00] Email Ninja eLearning program is Australia's most popular inbox zero training, with over 30, 000 students worldwide.

[00:54:06] NARRATOR: Watch three free Email Ninja videos and start taking back control of your inbox today by signing up at emailninja.au. Until next time, make space.