Friendship Green Flags: How to have (and BE) a better friend.

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host Castunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to another solo episode of Crappita Happy. So lovely to have you here. I want to talk this week about friendship and in particular, what makes for a quality friendship. The reason I want to talk about this is because the quality of the connections in our lives are key, a crucial are in fact, the single most important factor in determining not only your happiness across your life span, but your health and even your longevity, like how long you live on this planet is directly connected to the quality of your social connections.

1:17 Nobody is an island. As much as you might think that you are fine on your own, or you don't need a lot of people in your life, and maybe you don't need a lot of people in your life, but the quality of those people that you do have in your life makes all the difference. And also I think as we grow we live in these societies. I mean, look at me, I've left Australia, I'm living in London. Like, we are quite mobile, and we are often moving away from established connections, established friendship groups, family connections and needing to start again really and that can be really tricky. That can be really challenging starting over and making new friends and having those new connections. You know, we all meet people, and there are various ways that you can meet new people, but then moving those casual connections into something that is deeper and more meaningful and more lasting takes more effort. And then I guess it's just like, of all of the people in your life, who are the ones who are most likely to be the ones who are friends for life versus the ones that are for a season, And what are the ingredients of a relationship or a friendship that are going to contribute to that connection going the distance and really being an important relationship in your life regardless of where you go and where you move to. Because we all, you know, many of us also have people in our lives who we have moved away from and we can go years with no contact and then pick up where we left off

2:48 with them. And so those kinds of really deep lasting connections that have stood the test of time and distance, how do we have more of those in our lives? So that's that's the topic for today. And I would like to point you right now to my third book in the Crappy A Happy series, which is called Crappita Happy Love who You're With, which is not a book about your marriage. It is actually about general advice about how to have more fulfilling relationships in your life, friends, family, in the workplace, everywhere. How do you have higher quality relationships generally? So you can probably still get that on Amazon.

3:29 You can definitely listen to it on audible if you don't already have it in your collection. It's not going to be available for sale forever. I don't know what the stock situation is like. Came out a few years ago now, but it was actually something that I had included in that book, a chapter in that third book which I want to share with you now in case you haven't read it, And if you have read it and it's a while ago, this could be a timely reminder because sometimes I remind myself of these things too. I have so much information packed away in my brain and go, oh, that's right, I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, that's handy information. So refresher for me, refresher for you. So when it comes to now that we've established the importance of quality social connections, and beyond your intimate partner, if you are in a relationship, I'm talking about the wider sort of social circle that you move in and you'll have people who are you're quite close to and people that you're less close to. But when you're sorting through all of those various people in your life, like, what are the ingredients required for a high quality relationship?

4:30 Shasta Nelson? I think I'm pronouncing that correctly as a woman who I don't know, but she apparently wrote some books about friendship in particular, and she wrote about these three ingredients of high quality friendships, and I thought this was so interesting and really easy, you know, like practical. I don't know what the science is behind it. There's probably no science behind it, but it's just from an intuitive perspective, Like you know, sometimes you hear a thing, you hear a theory, and you go like that makes sense I can see how that works. It just makes logical sense, and it's just an easy kind of a guide that you can use to almost audit your existing connection.

5:11 So if something's feeling a bit off in one of your relationships, if there's somebody that you're kind of feeling a bit avoidant of, or somebody that you want to spend more time with, this might help you point to what it is about that person that either turns you off or brings you in closer. Just help to give you some idea about what's going on there and what's causing you to have that response to those people. Okay, so the first one, let's get straight to it. The first one is consistency. So Shasta talks about consistency being obviously frequency of contact. Now this makes perfect sense. If you think about the best friends that you've ever had. You have probably met in the workplace, or at school, or at UNI, or if you're a parent, maybe it's through your kid's school, your kid's daycare. It's this con consistency of interaction. And even if you've met somebody not through any of those places, and they's just somebody that you happen to come across through a mutual friend or a social circle or something. It is the consistency of the interaction that's going to help that relationship move from a casual acquaintance to something more deep and lasting. So consistency is key. I think that makes perfect sense. Now you might say, oh, I don't know about that, because you know some of my best friends, like I never see them, I haven't seen them for years, and they're still my best friends. I would argue that that is because those relationships have benefited from consistency earlier on. So they might be somebody that you worked with or that

6:42 you went to school with, or that you had a very regular connection with that you saw frequently, communicated with frequently, and then you moved away and then there was distance. So once it was established that it was solid enough that you could probably move away and drop back on the consistency and you know that that friendship is there and available to you. But at some point there's got to be that consistency. We all know as well that you can work day in day out with a lot of people and you don't want to be best friends with all of them. So while there is consistency, and that is one key factor what is it about the ones that you choose to want to take maybe outside the workplace, or you want to invite them over for a barbecue on the weekend rather than just meeting them at the daycare drop off or whatever it is. And so the second one is positivity. We all gravitate to people who make us feel good. People who are kind, They laugh, they have a sense of humor, They make you feel good about yourself. There is just a general overall positive tone in your interactions. You enjoy your interactions with this person, clearly, I mean it makes sense, right if somebody doesn't make you feel good. If they're argumentative and they're grumpy, and they're always complaining, and they're always telling you about the worst thing that's just ever happened, or they're bringing up negative things in the new whatever it is, or they're a bit sarcastic or in soul, and it's not just about the content of what they're talking about, it's how you feel in their presence. Is it overall a positive interaction? So now we've got consistency and we've got positivity. The third ingredient is vulnerability. So

8:16 do you feel comfortable enough to share things that are a bit more personal, a little bit beyond the superficial, as you start to share more of yourself, as you move from this casual acquaintance you know, occasionally catch up on the weekend, and you start to share more vulnerability, more things that are intimate and personal to you, and you establish trust in the relationship. You know that that person can hear you, can be there for you, and perhaps they start sharing with you things that are vulnerable, and there tends to be this back and forth as you slowly get to know each other better and you start sharing more intimately and you build this deeper sense of trust in the relationship, you move it beyond the superficial to something that is deeper than that is the third ingredient to a high quality friend. So now we've got consistency. Regular contact relationships need investment of time. They're not going to flourish if you never make the time to follow up with somebody, to spend time with somebody, or to message and communicate and check in and just keep that connection alive. Positivity overall, it's a positive, happy interaction.

9:22 That's what we all want. And then do you feel comfortable enough to share? And so as you form new friendships. You will see hopefully that they move through these stages, you know, like you start to gradually become more intimate the more time you spend together. There are theories around about how many interactions or how many hours of communication are required for a friendship to go from casual acquaintance to friend to really close friend. There are people who have researched this, and it is really it does boil down to time spend. And again, they might be some exceptions to that where perhaps people are thrown together because of a really like a tragic circumstance brings people together, and there is an immediate connection and immediate bond that forms between people. Those things happen in life, and perhaps there hasn't been that consistency. They're immediately vulnerable with each other because they're coming across each other at their worst hour.

10:22 You know, that's an exception obviously, but then you know, it would be interesting to see, well, how much do those connections sustain and remain beyond the immediate, that immediate kind of connecting event. You know, once things move on and people start to heal and recover from whatever it is that they've gone through, then do they last, and I think you would find that it needs those other ingredients beyond just that vulnerability. It needs to be maintained through the consistency and the positivity. If you think about people in your own life, you might notice that, oh, yeah, I see that person all the time, and it's always positive. We always have a really happy time. But it never really moves beneath the superficial. It never really gets vulnerable.

11:06 So therefore that friendship is great, that person. I love to be around them, loads are fun, but I don't really feel deeply connected to them, you know, because that vulnerability is not there. Or it might be that you know, you might have a friend going through a hard time at the moment, and there's a lot of consistency, there's a lot of sharing, but it doesn't it's not very positive. You're constantly offering support, you're constantly propping them up. And this happens in friendships obviously, like we're not writing people off because they're going through a tough time. But it may be that if you're starting to feel depleted and drained by connection, it might be that it's it's just tends to never really be positive. There's always something negative there's always a drama or an issue or something deep to be discussed, something deep and vulnerable, and you just want a little bit of lighthearted and positive occasionally. So maybe what you really need is to be fined either shifting the dynamic of that relationship or making sure that you've got other people in your life and your world who are giving you that positivity as well to balance that out. It may be that there is positivity that you feel good around somebody, that you feel really comfortable to share with them, that you feel like there is a sense of trust there, that you're developing a level of personal intimacy, You feel really comfortable to talk to them, you enjoy their company, but there isn't the consistency. You're not making time for those people, and therefore maybe they're not going to be really well established. So you can kind of do a little audit of your own of

12:37 the people in your life, and you know, kind of rate them against these three criteria. Now, obviously there's a whole lot more that goes into friendship. There's people who have spent their whole professional lives researching this stuff. I don't profess to be one of them. I'm just giving you one little theory that somebody came up with that I thought was kind of handy. But people have devoted academic careers to researching this stuff. But I think just some other kind of rules of thumb about friendships and relationships. Now that you understand that, and I've talked a lot to this point about looking for those ingredients in your connections. And I don't mean to make it sound like we're requiring other people to meet all of these needs of ours either, right, So in any relationship, we've got to take responsibility for our own contribution. So maybe it's asking yourself, am I willing to be vulnerable with this person? Am I opening myself up to share? Or am I keeping myself to myself and not allowing that relationship to go any deeper than superficial? Am I the one who is bonding with somebody over something that we both hate. We've all done this in the workplace. Oh my god, we've all bonded in the workplace over our mutual hatred of a colleague. You cannot tell me that you haven't done that.

13:54 When you get together and all you want to do because you bond over like something that really annoys you or irritates you at work. It's a person or a policy or something that's going on, and you get together and you talk about your shared experience of like whatever latest thing has got you fired up about that. Oftentimes those relationships, funnily enough, fizzle out after that issue was resolved, after you've moved on from that, or that source of irritation is removed. Suddenly there's nothing to talk about And there Wasn't you realize that there wasn't any substance to that connection beyond your shared dissatisfaction over whatever it was. That just made me laugh because I can recall situations in my own life where that has been the case. Yeah, So are you the one who is always bringing the drama?

14:40 Are you the one who's always coming to the connection, coming to the relationship, coming to the conversation? You know, because there's stuff going on and you're winging about your ex or your kids, or your stress or your this or your that or your health or whatever, like, do you need to look at yourself? Am I actually able to bring something that's a little more positive? And I'm not talk talking about toxic positivity. I'm not talking about pretending that things up great when they're not. That is not helpful to anybody. But when you're leaning on friends for support and if you're starting to feel like maybe they're backing away or they're not there for you, then is it because maybe the balance isn't right? Is it? Because maybe you know they we just need to bring a little bit more positivity. And then if we're looking at other people to be available to us and we're looking for that consistency, am I'm making myself available. Am I'm making an effort. Am I reaching out to people and offering invitations and saying we should catch up and actually following up and making sure that we do catch up.

15:36 Because we are also all guilty of reaching out and saying, oh, we should catch up, and then six months later we still haven't caught up because there's no follow through. Right, So let's just not put all of this expectation onto other people to be bringing the vulnerability and the positivity and the consistency. But let's look at what we're bringing to these relationships as well, and keeping ourselves in check and holding ourselves accountable for creating the kinds of relationships that we want. It's like, be the friend that you want to have, you know, like, let's look out what it is that you would want in a friendship, in a relationship, and how much can you be that person for somebody else. Be the bright light, be the positivity, be the connector be the one that makes the effort, even if it feels hard, even if it feels vulnerable.

16:24 Then this is the way that we actually make progress and we move from casual acquaintance to friend to hopefully good friend lifetime friends. That's what we all want, and we don't need a lot of those, you know, like we don't need loads of close friends. Ideally, if you've got three to five people in your inner circle who you can call on, who you feel comfortable enough to share if you're having a hard time, you know, feel comfortable to call on to make plans with, then that's great. You know, three to five might be even a stretch, but two to three even is good. Sadly, there's loads of research that says that now many many people now can't name even one person that they feel that they could call on in a crisis. So they've done this research where they've asked people how many people if you're having a really tough time, if you were in a crisis and you needed to call on somebody, you know, one in the morning, you need to call on somebody.

17:21 How many people could you call? And people typically have said one to three. I don't have the stat right in front of me right now, but as more recently, like in the last ten twenty years, when they ask that same question of people, many people can't even name one. And so going back to what I said right at the beginning about how fundamental social connections are, social capital, social support, how important that is to our health and our well being and our longevity and our happiness, then we've got to start putting ourselves out there and making a bit more of an effort and really investing in deepening the quality of our relationships. Maybe also, just as a final note, I'm going to keep this one pretty short and sweet, but you know, opening your circle if you've got quite a close knit group of friends. When I was back living in Brisbane and my daughter was going to ballet or dance class or something one of those activities that she quit, you know, like all of the other activities that she quit, there was a woman there who was another mum and I remember bumping into her in the supermarket one day and having a chat and we were talking about. Truthfully, I don't even remember what we were talking about. I don't remember who we were talking about, but I think it was another mum who was a part of the group. All I remember is this woman who was lovely and friendly and we're having a lovely chat in the supermarket. But what I remember her saying was no, thank you, I've got enough friends.

18:52 I'm not open to that. I think she was talking about another woman or another mum trying to reach out or trying to connect or trying to and it might have been like a really annoying person, so she was feeling like, no, I don't want you to invite you into my life. But I remember her saying, no, thank you, got enough friends. Doors shut. She literally said that, And I remember thinking, okay, well that's fair enough, but also like wow, like okay, like and she wasn't even talking about me. But the message I got was, oh, okay, Well, don't try to have any more contact with her, because she's obviously you're not going to be getting invited over for drinks at a place anytime, sane like she is very clear on that, so you know, sometimes we've got to just keep the la Glennon Doyle says, you know, like open the circle, horseshoes not circle, so that there's always room to invite other people in, because it can be really tough and vulnerable if somebody is struggling and feeling lonely and it's hard to make the effort to reach out and make connections with other people who you don't know very well. So if somebody does that, then invite them in. Be welcoming, be framed, and maybe even make the effort. Like if you recognize that somebody is new in the workplace and in the city that you're living in, in the neighborhood that you're in, then maybe be the one to reach out and make a connection andvite them in and not be the person who says doors shut, friendship circles full. Just you know, be the person to make an effort for somebody else. Okay, that's

20:26 end of my preaching today. I have just brought two tickets to an event in later this month in London, and I was planning to take my husband with me because that's what I do, or just take my husband wherever I go. And as I'm talking now I'm thinking, well, you know what, I might just reach out to a woman who I've met here in London, who I might want to get to know better. I might invite her to my event, might walk my talk, and make an effort to establish a deeper social connection with somebody. So there you go. I will leave you with that, Do with that what you will, and have a great the rest of your week, And thank you again for being here, and as always, cannot wait to catch you next week for another fabulous episode of Crappy to Happy