درسنامه اصلی

Friends - Main lesson

Hello, welcome to our VIP lesson this month. How can you enjoy deeper friendships in your life? No, this is not a topic about achievement, we’re not talking about how to get a better job and have a better career or anything like that. We’re talking more about fulfillment, how can you just enjoy your life more? They’re kind of these two important things that we need to focus on, two important categories in life, whatever you want to call them.

On one hand we have achievement where we’re trying to get things accomplished, big goals that are meaningful to us. All those things are great, important to us and have many benefits.

But, if that’s all we focus on, if we’re always just obsessed about achieving things all the time, then our life can become empty, it’s just a focus on getting, attaining and working and that’s when you can become a driven person, who doesn’t have much enjoyment in their life. You may know someone like this already in your life, or maybe you’ve read about them or seen them. The problem is they don’t have a balanced life, it’s all about achievement, getting, working hard and all that which is great, but you need the balance of fulfillment.

Fulfillment is enjoying the ride so while you’re doing all those things, while you’re going for those big goals, while you’re working on your career, while you’re chasing your dream woman or man, whatever it is for you that you’re also just enjoying the process of it. You’re just enjoying your life, you have happiness and contentment and awareness and mindfulness of this moment. That’s the purpose in my mind of friendships.

It’s not a utilitarian idea. Utilitarian means very practical. It means it has a practical benefit, something that’s often measurable, but friendships are not like that of course, friendships are about a deeper connection, a deeper enjoyment of life and sharing that with other people. This is a very personal topic for me, because I’ve found in my life that I’ve had a few special friends, and still do, that have really enhanced my life. They’ve made my life more meaningful and enjoyable. I think of them as kind of compatriots, meaning, they’re my fellow travelers in life and that as I go through all these experiences, ups and downs, terrible experiences, wonderful experiences, it’s so great to have people that share those experiences with me.

Sometimes directly they’re doing things with me, they’re actively sharing the same experiences, or sometimes I can just talk to them, it’s nice to know I can call them up on the phone and tell them about what happened. So it feels like I’m not just going through life all by myself.

Of course, we all have families or hopefully you do, and families can serve that purpose but as we also know, families can be difficult sometimes. Sometimes we have clashes with our families. Sometimes they don’t totally understand us. We love them but they can be challenging at times. So families have a certain place in our lives that’s important and they’re wonderful, but friends serve another purpose, they tend to be more in sync with us. They tend to be more our peers, of more similar ages and similar experiences, so they can understand certain parts of us better than our families, oftentimes.

I think of them as my extended chosen family. So I have my biological family and then I have an extended chosen family of a few close friends that I’ve chosen because I have a special connection with and they’ve chosen me. My two best friends are, Kristen and Joe, which you probably know because you see them in our bonus lessons each month. Kristen and Joe from Learn Real English. I’ve known them for many years. Kristen, I’ve known for over 20 years actually and Joe for, not quite that long, but still a very long time.

And, I’ve shared a lot of travels with them. We’ve traveled to Southeast Asia together. I traveled in India with Kristen. I’ve traveled with Kristen and Joe all through Southeast Asia.

We’ve supported each other many times. We’ve created a business together. We’ve had some challenges. We’ve had fights. We’ve had wonderful experiences together and throughout it all we’ve supported each other, so that when they have tough times I support and help them and when I have tough times they help and support me.

I think this is actually quite rare nowadays that it’s increasingly difficult to keep friends for that length of time, because as we get older we get distracted. We get romantic partners or we get married, have kids, get busy with jobs and it can become more challenging to keep those longterm friendships, they require some work. And the reality is that this is becoming more and more difficult in our modern culture. Sometimes maybe I sound like I’m against the modern culture because I’m always pointing out the difficult parts about it, but we have a great many opportunities, wonderful things that come to us from technology, from the global economy and globalization, many great things.

The ability to travel, connect and learn instantly, with people all over the world and that’s fantastic, but there are also challenges and one of them is that we have a lot more distractions now. We already have very busy lives and then we have the distractions of the Internet and mobile phones, television and all this media and these things pressing in on us all the time.

Some people now at their jobs they have to stay connected with a mobile phone, so when they go home they’re still not quite free from the job because the job can be calling them at any time. So that makes the task, the goal or activity of keeping long-term friends even more challenging, it requires a bigger commitment.

To keep those long-term friendships, what I’ve realized, to keep a friendship for years and years through many changes, because they change and you change, so to keep a connection despite all of that, of course it takes commitment and communication. You have to think of it just like any close relationship with a family member, you have to communicate, because otherwise a friendship will not survive that many years and those many challenges and there’ll always be challenges without communication. You have to talk. You have to talk face-to-face whenever possible. You can write, whatever it is, but you have to be open and when something is bothering you with that friend then you need to tell them and talk to them about it.

It’s not always easy.

I think another element that’s important for building and maintaining long-term friendships is forgiveness. Because there will always be points where they are going to upset you or do something that angers you or even hurts you, and likely you will do the same to them. You’re not trying to but it happens. This has happened with Kristen and I, many times and Joe as well. We’ve gotten in some big nasty fights, one I remember in particular still and if you don’t develop that ability to forgive and let go than those things stick in your mind and they start to poison the friendship. It can be tough to do this when you feel like you’ve been wronged by the other person. You have to decide if this friendship is worth it and you have to let go and forgive.

Let’s talk about the rewards now, of a long-term friendship. There are challenges. It’s not easy to do, but there are great rewards and one of them is trust. It’s the kind of special trust that develops over many years that can only develop over many years. Of course, you can develop this with your romantic partner, but also with friendships. Trust is something that is earned.

Everybody will say yes you can trust me, of course I’ll be there when you need me, but only through years of experience will you find out whether that is actually true, through real life events.

When you find those people in your life that do come through, that when you’re down they’re still there to help you and that when they need help you show up and help them, even when it’s not convenient, even when it’s not easy. That’s when you really develop a special kind of trust and that’s what builds these friendships over time. It takes times, years and you won’t really know if you have that kind of connection until the friendship has been tested. But when it has and when that other person comes through and you come through for them, it’s a magical thing that develops that kind of friendship because then you have someone that you are connected to for life and that’s another great reward.

It’s just that deeper connection, because the more you trust someone the more you can open up, share who you really are and they share who they really are, and all of this creates a richer life emotionally. Because life is quite empty if you’re just constantly achieving things. Let’s say your goal is to be a multi-millionaire and then you achieve it. Well, if you do that guess what happens? You say great, I’m a multi-millionaire, now what do I do? Then you make another goal. Now I’ll become a billionaire, and then you do that. Then what do you do? Without those rich relationships those achievements become kind of empty because you’re not sharing them with anyone. When you have friends and family to share them with they are much more meaningful.

Let’s just talk about how the very simple things you can do to build and keep long-term friendships. None of these will be shocking or surprising but they are things you must do. Too many people neglect these things or forget about them in the bustle and busyness of daily life, so let me remind you.

1. Stay in touch.

This is the simplest. It’s really the easiest to do and yet it’s the one we all neglect at times, just stay in touch regularly. You can call, email and best of all, visit your old friends. Not once a year, but at least if you’re going to call them, call them at least once a month. If they’re really a close friend, maybe once a week. Of course there are many ways you can stay in touch. You can email, that’s a simple thing you can do is send an email, and when I say stay in touch, I don’t mean once a year. I’d say at least once a month and once a week is even better and daily if your friend doesn’t mine, why not?

Emails are nice, every now and then you can send a little picture, just stay in touch with them.

Even better is to call or text, because it’s a more intimate connection. They can hear your voice or with a text, you can do that very quickly and often. Most people don’t mind getting a few texts a day even. My friends, Kristen, Joe and I, we text each other several times a day. I talk to them on the phone almost every day.

Of course best of all is visit your friends, see them face-to-face. If they don’t live in your same town take the time, make the effort to see them face-to-face. I would say at least once a year, depending how far they are. No, it’s not necessarily easy but I think you’ll find that the effort is worth it in the long-term.

Another thing you need to do, that we all need to do to keep those friendships and maintain them is…

1. Listen to your friends.

Many times we want to talk, talk, talk about our lives and our problems, that’s a great part of friendship is that you can share those things. But you also have to be on the other side because your friend needs to do that too, so make an extra effort to listen to them. Ask them how they’re doing, because they might not volunteer these things. They might not be talkative, it depends on the person. So make the extra effort to ask them questions and encourage them to talk to you and when they do just listen.

Again these are so simple…

1. Give your appreciation.

Tell them sometimes how much you appreciate their friendship, and be specific, tell them why.

I appreciate that you listen to me talk about my problems, it means a lot to me. It really helps me feel better afterwards and I value your friendship for that reason and many others, whatever. You can do this in an email if you feel weird saying it in person. Everyone is different, some people are fine to just talk about these kinds of things and give compliments.

Other people feel strange.

Different cultures have different ideas about this, so you could write it. You can text it. You can email it or you can call them on the phone or actually tell them face-to-face. Just do it. Express that appreciation sometimes. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming where they feel uncomfortable, but every now and then do it, because they will appreciate it just as you would if you heard that from them.

I guess the overall point is to give those important friendships as much energy and care as you give your career. In this VIP program we’ve talked many times about career development and how you can achieve success in your field, whether that’s something in your personal life, a hobby, a non-profit or your actual job. Of course it’s important to put a lot of energy into that, but you need to put at least as much focused energy and value at least as much those friendships, those connections.

See, your job demands that you do that. Your boss typically will require you to do that so it’s easy to get sucked in and give more and more of your focus and energy to that and to sort of neglect your friends a bit, because if they’re good friends they probably won’t demand that as much. So it’s really on you, it’s your responsibility to keep that balance, because deep friendships are lifelong. You have to think of this, again, long-term. That you’re developing a relationship. You’re developing this connection, ideally, for life and when you think in those terms it puts everything in perspective so that little problems, little arguments don’t become quite so important anymore, easier to let go of those things.

We’ll talk more in the commentary about ways to develop friendships and keep them. I’ll see you there. Bye for now.