TSSL - Episode 8 - What Is a Friend & The Social Circle

This week we are grateful for electricity and we also ask ourselves, "What is a friend?" Well, it's regular shared positive emotions with another great person, simple right? We also talk about the Social Circle and how if you aren't expanding your Social Circle then it is probably shrinking. Be sure to check out a couple great books I mentioned on this show about better etiquette and how Feng Shui can make your spot the spot to be!

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Thank you!! - Nathan.  : D

As a Gentlemen Would Say & Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui

Transcript

Unknown: 0:44

Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the social skills lab. I'm your host, Nathan Hope you're having a good day, whatever you're up to I saw on the or I was listening to the radio, and they were talking about all these studies are coming out about having gratitude how it makes you feel better. And I've been a little stressed out lately. So I was like, you know, keep hearing that, about this. And I have done that where I've, you know, wrote down things that I'm grateful for, but I wasn't very consistent at it. So I decided I was like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to list off things, just verbally, I'm not gonna write them down, I'm just gonna say them out loud. I'm just going to state things that I'm really grateful for. So I've been doing that every morning. And then also in the evening, so I've been trying to do it twice a day. And I think it actually is starting to make me feel a little better. And I've been doing it for about a week. So wish me luck. I'm gonna keep doing it. I'll keep you posted to see to lane how it goes. Because that's one thing about social skills. If you have a, if you're in a good mood, you're going to put off a better vibe. No doubt. Okay, so let's talk about what we talked about last week. So last week, we talked about being funny. And we also talked about the personal boundary. So being funny. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things. I like being funny. I like making my friends laugh. I like joking around, I think that you can get better at it. I think that what you really have to do if you really want to be funnier is you really just have to go for it. You just have to start saying the things that you think are funny out loud. And people will give you feedback, they'll let you know if it's funny by laughing. Or they'll just won't do anything. And that will tell you that you need to work on it. Like when people do go up and do stand up comedy, like an open mic. There's no mine, the audience is going to tell you for fun or not. I think a big part of it, too, is delivery. So the more you go for it, you'll start getting some laughs you'll start getting a little more confident. And the more confident you get at it, your delivery will be better. And if you want to see someone with amazing, impeccable delivery, just watch Dave Chappelle, that guy's delivery is so onpoint. Like he can actually make people laugh, just by saying like four words. Without even there being a joke. He's just his delivery is so good. his vocal tonality is just, man. I mean it. You just watch some videos of Dave Chappelle, you'll see what I'm talking about. Okay, so we also talked a little bit about the personal boundary. So the key part points of that was learning how to say no, and learning how to hear now. So I think I'm getting a lot better at saying no, I'm still working at hearing now. Like, yesterday, I lost my air pods. And I was pretty bummed out about it. And even though I told myself, I'm like, Look, it's just, it's just your air pods. You know, the universe told you no, you don't get to keep them. Even though I lost them. Like I opened up my air pod container, and I looked in, there's nothing in there. I'm like, where the helmet, my air pods go. And I looked everywhere. couldn't find it. So today, I just ordered a new pair. I'm not happy. I'm not thrilled about forking out another 150 bucks for him. But man, they're just so useful. They're actually I've had so many pairs of headphones in my life and the air pods are like the next level of they're not the greatest sound quality, but they are. They're really good for wireless earbuds and I use it for work. I use it for FaceTime, stuff like that. And I work in noisy environments. So I have to have something like that. Learn to learn to say no learn to hear. No, I think a lot of people don't understand that hearing. being okay with someone saying no to you, is really important. I mean only very mature people. are totally okay with that. I hit my friend up. I was like, hey, there's this drive thru art show in Sacramento this weekend. I was asking if you want it to go. And he's like, yeah, let me know on Friday. I'll let you know by then. So Friday rolled around. And I was like, so do you want to go to this art show? He's like, he's like, yeah, let's, let's do it. So I go online to buy tickets, and they're sold out. Like, oh, yeah, they're sold out. Now. He's like, Oh, dang. And I'm thinking in my head, like, you know, he could let me know, yesterday, if you wanted to go, Well, I don't know why we always got to wait to the last minute. But at the same time, the universe just told me no, again, you're not going this art show. And so I was like, Oh, yeah, well, I guess it's sold out. And he's like, Yeah, he hit me later. And he's like, Man, I'm really sorry. I should probably let you know earlier. And I was like, Yeah, don't worry about it. I was actually, I was actually totally okay, with not going. I did want to go but hearing No, you know, I'm trying to be mature. And it's working. I'm totally okay with, like, sometimes things just not happening. And, you know, sort of being a whiny little bitch boy about it, you know, be be an adult. And we'll just plan on the next thing. Because there's always there's always the next thing, you don't ever feel like you're missing out on something, there's always gonna be something going on. Like, I remember, I was living downtown. There's so much stuff going on. And eventually, someone, you know, it would happen here. And there was someone would be like, Oh, man, you missed out this great party that has happened last night. And my response always was, Oh, that sounds cool. But you know, there's always another party. And there always is another party. Hopefully, there is another party, because we're in a pandemic situation. Hopefully, there won't be a party eventually. But I think you get my point. Okay, so also with the personal boundary, man, that's just such a huge concept to think about, like the whole when when making Win Win deals instead of win lose deals. that's a that's a that's an important thing, too. Because I think actually, when I was thinking about it, it kind of relates to game theory, the, what was it like in that movie, beautiful mind, like that mathematician came up with this thing. I think that's what it was, I think it was game theory where it's basically, he was at this bar. And he was, there's this beautiful woman that walked in with their friends. And him and his friends were trying to like, figure out how to talk to her. And he realized that if everybody talked to her friends, then somebody can go and talk to her. So basically, it was like, the concept came down to the way he described it was, what is good for the group is what's best for the individual. And that's like a real long term strategy to get like positive results. So I think that really goes along with making Win Win deals. Because basically, a win win deal is what's best for the group. And then there's also other ways there's like, lose, lose deals, win, lose, lose, win, but you get the gist. You want to stick with Win Win deals. Because even though win lose deal might be good for the short term, or medium term, and long term, Win Win deals is gonna get you much, much further down the road. So keep that in mind. So this week, let's talk about what is a friend. So this guy, Dr. Paul dobransky, I think he mentioned this in a book, if I remember correctly, but he said that a friend is someone with whom you share regularly. A friend is someone with whom you regularly share positive emotions with regularly share positive emotions with so regularly, that's a big thing. Like if you're only hanging out with them once a year, or once every two years. I mean, like if it's college buddies, or something like that, you guys get together every couple years, you know, that's one thing. But I'm really talking about someone that's a close friend usually want to live relatively close to them, that we could see more, hang out more. I mean, and it seems like anytime I've had friends moved away, even though I could text him any time, I usually don't hang, I usually lose contact with them, with the exception of two of my friends, which I still text pretty regularly. But I also do see him like I'll fly out and see him every few years. But in general, your close friends are people with whom you share positive emotions with regularly. So I guess it just means like, you know, if you know someone that you hang out with who's quote unquote friend of yours, but they're always negative or you're bickering all the time, you're not having a lot of fun, or you're constantly bored, then you might want to move them to the back of the line, and meet new people with who you actually have fun with, with whom whom is very positive person in your life. It's the other thing too, is, you usually want to have this in person, like I know, nowadays. Maybe like you're a gamer. And you you're online with your friends, every night, playing video games. Sure, that has its place, but I would say your close friends or people that are, you can actually meet physically in life. So like, you know, like if you need help moving, or if you need a ride from the airport. So in person, meet him up, meet up with them regularly. I remember, when I was younger, I'd hang out with my friends, like almost every day. But now when you get older, that doesn't, you know, have work life responsibilities. So it might like dwindled down to like maybe once a week, to once a month to every other month, just you know, really focus on that. Think about that, like, you know, if you really want this person in your life, try to, you know, increase the amount of times you meet in person, like just, you know, even if you have to be like, hey, let's, let's do like a monthly, you know, first Monday, mixer will like grab dinner, first Friday of each month or something like that. Like I remember, when I was living downtown, me and my friend, we were roommates. And it was perfect. Because a we were downtown. And then he had his group of friends. I had a group of friends. And then we also shared friends. And we started doing a I think we were doing a weekly, Thursday night. Happy Hour. So like, and it got to be a bit much. So we kind of did it like every other week after a while. But it was, you know, we hit it, we text our friends like, hey, tomorrow, Thursday, if you want to come out, we're going to grab some drinks, we're going to hit up this bar meet up here at this time to send a text out to like 10 people, five people or whatever. And then just let them know, we're going to do this every other week, or we're going to send once a month, that's actually a really great way to make things happen. Just start doing a regular night, once a once every couple weeks or something like that. Also to like if a friend invites you out to something, and you can't make it for one, let them know right away. That's the polite thing to do. Actually, when I when I'm thinking about this, I read a book called, as a gentleman would say, and also a book called, I shouldn't look it up. I read this book, it's called as a gentleman would say it was written by john bridges. And Brian Curtis, I found that said like, grabbed it like in a bag sale. So you've filled up a bag with as many books as you can. And I was like this might be a good read. So it was as a gentleman would say, and then the other book he wrote was, as a gentleman would do. But either way, so these books are basically books about etiquette. And sure there's a lot of stuff about etiquette that you don't really need to know, like, which direction do you move your spoon across the soup when you drink it? It's actually away from you, I think. But there's a lot of things in these books about etiquette that are really important that I never even thought about. Like if one of the things I remember reading was if someone invites you to a party or an event, and you say yes, and then somebody else invites you to another event afterwards. And actually, it sounds way cooler. It would be impolite to, you know, you should still go to the first one because you said you would go and you know, that makes sense. I could see that. I mean sure they're sure there's exceptions. But there's a lot of good stuff in there. So I recommend either this book, as the gentlemen would say, by john bridges or any other etiquette books are probably pretty good to just give you some ideas about you know, social graces. I'll put a I'll put a link to that book too in the in the podcast description for you. So you don't have to look it up right now. Okay, so let's also talk about the social circle. So as you get started to get more friends, you'll basically you'll be expanding your social circle, which is I think you're either growing your social circle or you're shrinking your social circle, there's really not much in between because people move away, people grow apart. So in my opinion, it's always good to, you know, keep socializing, keep meeting new people working on yourself. making yourself a more social person to keep expanding your social circle. I saw recently that there it says three out of five Americans are lonely. And I'm, I wouldn't be surprised if worldwide, that's actually starting to happen that a lot of people are pretty lonely. It's probably because their social circles, they never had one or they have been shrinking over time. And they've never learned how to expand their social circle. And everything we've talked about so far in these podcasts is definitely good stuff to work on yourself to expand your social circle. But I want to talk specifically about the the con, the idea of the idealized social circle, because I think, you know, on television, it's easy to think that that is an accurate description of life. And I think, if you're anything like me, you'd realize my life is not anything like that. So like on the show friends, yeah, I'm sure there's, there's people out there. I mean, there's, like 7 billion people on the planet, there's definitely going to be people like that. But for anyone that is kind of just starting out, you want to realize that, you know, don't idealize any type of friendship, or group of friends, like you've seen some people that are hanging out having fun. Don't think that, oh, yeah, I can never have that. Or they would never want to be friends with someone like me. Because what I've learned is, I've never met anybody who has ever said, Yeah, you know, I already have too many friends, I don't, I don't need any more friends. Like, if you're hearing that the only reason you'll probably be hearing that is because you're annoying or you're needy, you're acting needy, or you're, you know, calling them two months or something like that. So if you're actually like a mature, fun person to hang out with, who are very social, you're gonna make, you're gonna make friends pretty quickly. But I would just say don't idealize any friendships, or think that it's hard to get into like, I mean, there's that's another thing too, I've seen questions posted about, like, how do I get into this group of friends? Well, for one, it's not really a group of friends, it's individually, you got to look at it as individual people. So if you met a person, or someone who's like you think is in a group of friends, you just make friends with that one person. And if you actually make friends with them, you'll meet their friends, too. That's how it always happens. Like if I, if I meet someone, and I become friends with them, pretty quickly, I'll meet their friends. And that's actually a really great way to meet people. Because if you like this person, there's a good chance you'll like their friends as well. I think a really good way to expand your social circle is, is to like, you know, like I mentioned earlier about planning something like an outing, like a regular event, that's a good way to like just get people to come out. And then you could say, Hey, bring a friend or something or, you know, meet their friends and stuff like that, that's always been a very easy way I found that to make new friends is meeting my friends, friends, usually have a very similar vibe and stuff like that and get along really well. And then also, if they, if anyone invites you to something, you know, go go out to it, it's probably going to be a good time. And then if you, if you don't accept the invitation, make a mental note and say, Hey, you know, this person invited me out to this, I'm going to make sure to invite them out to the next thing. It's kind of like a social currency type deal, you know, you know, I'm going to hook you up with this, I'll hook you up with that, they're going to give this they'll hook you up with that. And then also to i, when I'm out with friends, I'll buy a round of drinks, you know, and I, and I do it not expecting that they'll buy me the next round. Most of the time they do sometimes they don't. But I'm not expecting it either way, I'm just buying them around drinks, because I'm actually, I just I don't know, it's kind of just what social people will do. Sometimes, you know, just be generous. Sometimes. It's always good to be real generous with your friends. And do it not because you're trying to impress them, or because you expect it back later. It's not why you do it. You just do it. Because that's what nice people cool people do. I've noticed too, that like, when you do like nice things for people, other people that you don't even know do nice things for you. I don't know, you just put off this vibe, that you're like a generous person and people are generous to you. It's weird, I would just you know, there's like a network of generosity going around. And you can get in it too by being generous. Another thing another really good thing to do with your social circle is just make make a note of whenever their birthday is you'll probably like if you make if you add them on Facebook, you'll see what it is but I actually don't send messages, happy birthday messages on Facebook to my close friends. I'll give them a phone call. I'll actually call them and to say Hey, what's going on man, happy birthday and stuff like that. Or invite them out for a drink. You know? That works too. Another good thing to do is when you're, when it comes to like the social circle thing is, like, if you're out with your friends or something like that, and another person caught you run into someone, you know, make sure to introduce them to your friends, like always introduce people to each other. I think that I mentioned that before, too, but it's super important to do that. It's just, it's like a social glue. It's like a has compounding effects when you do that to people. Because for one, it trains people to do that to you. So they know, you know, because I actually thought people did this regularly. But I've noticed a lot that people really don't like I've been, I remember I was going out to this, this music venue for a while. And I knew a lot of people there. And then after like a year, I was talking to a friend of mine. And then another friend came up and I started talking to him. And I just assumed they knew each other because I met both of them. They're like, from a long time ago. And then I was like, I realized that they didn't know each other. I was like, Oh, you haven't even met Mike. And I was like, I was like, holy cow. You guys don't know each other. They're like, Oh, no, we haven't met each other. And I was like, holy cow. How is this possible? It's like a real small music venue. And I just assume everyone knew each other. But yeah, people should be introduced at all times, it's a really good way to you know, it's just a good, it's social, good social etiquette. I'd say one thing to like, with your friends, if you're, if you're going to be a very social person, like where you live, make sure it's like clean, because I've definitely been over people's houses where I'm like, I walk in the bathroom, and there's like clothes. There's like clothes, on the floor, in the bathroom, like by the toilet. And I'm like, Oh man, this guy needs a laundry basket pretty bad. But just make sure your place is clean and organized. One thing I really got into is Fung Shui way like I was at Jamba Juice one time. And there was this book, it said clear, it was called clear your clutter, clear your clutter. With Fung Shui, it was just like a little small book. And I bought it from my mom, because my mom was kind of messy. And she loved it. And I loved it to actually read it as well. And I kind of got into Fung Shui a little bit, it's just like a real minimal list stick. And I'm into minimalism as well. Having not a lot of things in your, in your living space, you don't want a lot of clutter. And just the way you organize your room, like I always had, like, if I had a coffee table, always made sure I was like oval around like no sharp corners, putting plants on places where there's a corner or something like that. Putting mirrors up and stuff like that, I don't know, but just having like a nice place, like so if you have your friends over, or bring people come by for a drink before you go out. Or if they're going to come over watch a movie or place or something like that, that if you have a nice clean place, that'll definitely help grow your social circle. Because nobody really wants to hang out at a dirty place. That's uncomfortable to be in. You know, it's just, it's not good. So make sure your places clean. Make sure it's clutter free, maybe pick up some stuff on funk schwag an idea of what it is. It actually is. It's pretty interesting stuff. I'm sure there's like modern architecture has like learn from it, try some scientific basis on a lot of stuff from that, that anything from like old Eastern philosophy frickin amazing. We have a lot to learn from some of the real old wisdom that they discovered like 1000 years ago. Okay, I think that's gonna be it for this week. Next week, we'll be talking about putting out a good vibe. We've talked a lot about that somewhat, but will we be talking about it a little bit more. And we're also talking about apologizing, because eventually you're gonna have to do it. And even though I'm sure you already know a little bit about it, a little bit about it. We'll talk about some of the details that actually might make it go over a little better because when you're practicing your social skills, eventually you're going to drop the ball so but that's okay, because we're going to learn how to take care of that. And I hope you guys have a good week. I'll talk to you soon.