017 - Making Friends as an Adult, Finding Time for Goals, and Seeing Real Progress

[0:00] Welcome to build horizons, a show about picking the life you want to lead and how to make it happen. Uh, today we're going to talk about, uh, something, few things, time. We're going to talk about goals and we're going to talk about friends, but first we're going to show our intro.

[0:53] some things i think katy has some intro things for but first, like I mentioned, that's Katy. I'm Jeff. Click subscribe below and Katy, go ahead and kick us off. Where are we starting with this? First, I want to say hi to Lennon. Well, I think I can't really see it very well. We'll figure this out. They asked how we're doing. So how are we doing, Jeff? How are we doing? Okay. It's a little bit of a crazy morning. We did enjoy, um, the, the cool air this morning. We had two back-to-back days in the 30 degrees. oh it's been so great and we're both runners and so being able to get outside when it's not you know the heat death of the universe happening just a reminder of it's happening well i feel like we were just in a heat dome for so many i mean i think it's been like record it was a record breaker this year for kansas i think we had like over a hundred and some odd days of 100 plus or 90 plus degree days but it's well and proper behind us now oh thank goodness it's yeah very very much relieving to be able to run outside when it's not dripping sweat constantly um okay so we really don't have much planned for our little intro okay there's like stuff going on that's happening in the chat i'm so sorry you guys i can't see the chat very well but i'll maybe jeff

[2:08] can go over keep talking okay so um one thing i wanted to talk and i think we should just do this live jeff and this is kind of fun so my boss heidi keeps asking me what we are being for halloween this year oh shoot and we aren't the best at dressing up for halloween what are we so i feel like we should figure this out just on the podcast okay what are we i feel like we should dress up this year and walk out with the kids. So first of all, to give a little, our kids this year are going with the inflatables, which are so funny. I just like, it cracks me up every time I see an inflatable. So our son's going to be a minion and our daughter's going to be like a wiener dog. And there's Dosh and Hound, Dosh and Hound, however you say it. I think that's perfect. Dosh and Hound. Anyway, so what are we going to be? Are we going to go inflatables too? Dude, I can't. I don't think that that's a good idea. Why? Why is it not a good idea? Well, for one, we end up carrying at least one of our kids home from trick-or-treating, I feel like, every year. Maybe this is the year we don't, but so far, it's a pretty rough hit rate on everything just going swimmingly. Well, I feel like, at least here in

[3:24] Kansas, usually around Halloween time, there seems to be a swarm of sickness. And I feel like we haven't been lucky enough to have a very healthy Halloween. Lots of sick Halloweens. Yep. Okay, so what are we going? I don't know. Somebody asked what's in our white boxes on the live stream. It's a secret. No. It's a secret. They're empty. They're just decorations. Okay. Well, what was going to be your secret? Like Harry Potter? No, it's just a secret. Oh, well, there's nothing, actually. I guess I'm a bad secret keeper. You've got to keep the people wondering. And now you just, I mean, there's only so many different reasons why you'd watch our show. And the mystery bosses could have been all the people we're latching on to. Oh, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Well, you screwed that up. Sorry, I really did. All right. Okay, before. Anyways, Halloween costumes, what are we doing? Let's decide right now. What are we going to be for Halloween? I was thinking nothing. so oh my gosh i mean i think we should what's the what's halfway between a wiener dog and a minion oh what i was thinking is the ones where

[4:40] it looks like you're writing something like you looks like you're like writing an animal because then you still have your like top half like you can do things what you need to do but then you just have your bottom half inflatables i would i would be down we can each pick something to you know i'm talking about which ones i'm talking about the wonder it looks like you're writing something yeah but the other problem is there's 12 days till halloween at the time of recording this i'm just gonna what if i just order you one will you commit on the podcast that you'll wear whatever i order you oh okay i'll wear whatever you buy uh you're welcome podcast we'll report back okay because this does we are recording this one actually pretty far in advance so it's actually a timely discussion this will be a very halloweeny type episode so yeah sure fine i'll buy i'll wear whatever you whatever amazon delivers to our front door perfect thanks that's all the that's all i needed all right all the permission okay uh anything else so um yeah no i have we have to touch on this so we got a comment so when we record our podcast we usually won't be usually we do take our um basically little clips from the podcast and make shorts and reels from them um we had somebody comment on

[5:58] one of them where we were talking about how we could just like jump out of bed and are ready to go like 10 seconds which probably would have made more sense if you would have been watching it prior to like you know had a little bit more context but their comment was you both are so weird and so I I just wanted to acknowledge that yes that might have been a moment we looked a little weird of saying that we jump out of bed and are ready to go 10 seconds later look here's the thing i don't think that i was going to ever come out of recording a podcast not looking a little bit weird and so that's true um you know that's the thing that does it then that just like the mystery box that you have now revealed is nothing um you know it's just a matter of time before people know that we're weird so not to not to beat up about that okay it looks like excuse to date each other so i can't read all of the do you read it can you read it yeah we're actually married oh yeah so we have two kids we've been married 15 years yeah yeah so i like that lady though she's okay it is an excuse to talk to each other a little bit though yeah i honestly it's been pretty

[7:13] fun because we have i mean we obviously we're married we live with each other but we um have really good conversation down here that i don't know if we would have had outside of the podcast so yeah it's been good all right should we do some questions sure um or do we want to talk about some app stuff yeah talk about so you have our app so we have started a app development company called um bravely.dev and we have several apps for sale but then there's also some apps that you've just really built more for the bravely team and um helping us with our day-to-day and i think some of them are so fun and interesting i mean they're not out for sale yet for people to get but i don't know i think that you should talk to them a little bit more because i think they're really cool i don't know if talking about the actual individual things themselves are is particularly interesting or just talking about more like the capability in general these days to build a um you know build your workflows in a way that just didn't exist before um i mean i don't know is there a particular app you want me to i think robot pager is kind of fun yeah and bravely help i don't know those are the two that i thought would be cool to talk about well i mean bravely helps kind of interesting just because like literally right before

[8:30] we were recording this podcast um it so when we send out or when somebody signs up for uh an account with us we send out an email that is from me uh but then when people reply we have some like logic built in that it goes into kind of like a ticketing system so that like i'll be made aware of it or katy or aaron you know the team will be made aware uh so that it's not just waiting on me uh to to respond and also just being able to do some tracking on that over time and and see you know any sort of trends or things that we can improve on and so we we had a an issue with one of our apps and so somebody uh replied to that welcome email and it went into our queue and it's set up right now so that i get alerted when that happens which is super nice because i'm not a very good email reader and so if somebody just replied to the email like it could be days or weeks before or i would just make potentially even never notice it and because we have this thing built uh it allows us to really quickly have you know a quick reach out and we're not going to have like a, a, you know, 10 second resolution on figuring out exactly what's wrong with that. But after this, you know, I'll spend a little bit of time, uh, see if we can't get that fixed up for that person.

[9:46] Cause you know, I want people to have good experiences. And so it really cuts down. And, and here's the thing too, is, uh, for me, I would rather, I mean, we're a development company. And so being able to build some of our own tools and then seeing like, you know, when we build it, is it something that I think would be helpful for other people and if so uh you know we can look at building that out such that it could be made available for other people to use but if not it's and if it's just something for us i still think it's a useful uh use of time because we can spend the you know effort in learning how some of that stuff works and and usually that knowledge is transferable to other things too so i i find it really cool and just that general principle of um just with the way that the world works now being able to have a concept and get something into reality and whether that's something that we ultimately sell or not is kind of you know kind of a tertiary uh you know consideration it's really about how do we make sure that this works best for us and then if it happens to be something that we want to commercialize then we can yeah yeah and one other thing i just want to put out there we still haven't released our sydney video we really need to do that yep we do

[11:03] um it has been a particularly crazy time um there's a chance that it might happen but i at this point i make no promises we will get it out we have to get it we'll get it out it's just that big win i'm not gonna say by the time this episode's out we're gonna have that because i've done that before and uh it did not happen we're trying um okay so yeah i think that that's a good we can go to your questions some questions okay so this comes from user bring back dotry and the question is how are you finding the time to make a new path while working your full-time job and so they go on to say my current job includes commute um sorry my current job including commute takes up to roughly nine hours, nine and a half hours of my day. How are you finding the time to apply or upskill while working and having other obligations like exercise, sleep and social life? Um, and then, so then they did say their schedule's pretty inconsistent as they're an hourly. And so they've switched their hours around for greater consistency. Um, but yeah, so what feedback do have on that one? Um, so I'd be kind of curious from your perspective. I mean, you have a lot of different obligations just to how we

[12:18] kind of divide our lives up a little bit. So maybe you have different feelings, but I'll, I'll say for me, what has been really eyeopening is going through the exercise of actually looking at what you're spending your time on. Um, so like this person, for example, let's say you get a full eight hours of sleep, um, and you have a nine and a half hours that you're spending at actual work um you know that's 17 and a half hours so that means just off the top of every weekday you have six and a half hours available to you now of course you're going to lose some of that to like you know getting ready in the morning yeah and some dinner yeah you have to eat yeah breakfast dinner stuff like stuff like that um but almost assuredly there's more time in there that you are unintentionally spending than you realize. Um, plus, you know, you have weekends as well. And, you know, so just right off the top, if you just take out sleep and what you're spending on work, like this person, they have 64 hours a week that they are spending somehow that's, you know, not getting to and from work and not asleep. And so being able to audit what you're spending that 64 hours a week on is it could be a really eyeopening

[13:35] activity. There is a lot of time there. There's a lot of things that you can do with 64 hours a week. Um, yeah, you are going to have to make trade-offs that it sounds like a big number, but you know, that, you know, if you take 15 minutes here or there per day to do something like that is going to add up and eat into that 64 hours a week, but it's still a lot of time at your discretion. And, uh, if you take even, let's say 30 minutes a day of that 64 hours a week. So, uh, whatever that is, three and a half hours of that. So really not even taking that big of a dent at it. But if you took 30 minutes a day and allocated that toward working out, um, then that does like over time, over the long haul, um, you will accumulate a lot of time that you've spent improving your physical fitness and that will make a difference over time so i mean you if if you can intentionally use that that cumulative effect uh you can you can definitely take huge strides in in this area yeah but i'm curious like from your perspective what how have you found the ability to you know

[14:51] make time or reallocate time or, you know, how do you fit things into a schedule? Yeah, I think for me, it's, you know, not scrolling on my phone. And I don't know, just just being really intentional about, like you said, auditing my day, making sure I'm writing things down. And I think for another thing, too, they did say they want to like they were wanting to find time to make a new path but then they have other obligations like exercise sleep and social life and i do think sometimes with our social lives we have to like think about that a little bit are there things that we you know if we really want to like build a new path whatever that means for this person are there things that we would need to give up within our social lives too um not saying that you should like do all of it because i think we all need to have some social life but also if you're really trying for example to build a business it is just going to take more of that time out and I think that you have to just be okay with that but yeah I don't know I think for me it's a lot of being really intentional with my day I think when we plan

[16:06] things out and write things down and write down times it does a really good job of keeping us consistent to that schedule um so i that's what's worked for us and worked for me and even so like um during my work day if i do have like a whole bunch of things that i need to get done like just writing it down um so for this person if they wanted to make a new path while also working a full-time job i think if you can maybe write those things down um and you know make a plan on how okay this week what am i going to work on or today what am i going to work on i think a lot of the times that can also help put intention to it. Um, but yeah, that's, those are just some tools that I've found that really have helped me with making sure that, you know, I can stay consistent and, but I will say one thing that's been, that was eyeopening to me. So I just went to New York for work a couple of weeks ago and living here in the Midwest, we, we genuinely do not really have commutes compared to what most people on the East coast have to do. Um, especially New York. I mean, even with all the folks that I work with out in Colorado, they have very similar situations where like, it's not uncommon to have, you know, 40 to 90 minutes that

[17:22] you're spending one way and you take that twice a day and just how like traffic can really like throw a wrench in that and can easily, you know, add, you know, double that. Well, even traffic or getting on trains or using the subway it's it's pretty mind-blowing and it definitely it makes me sympathize because if they're working eight hours a day and then if they're traveling an hour and a half that is just so much time so I would maybe even encourage you like if you are on a train or if you're on a you know if there's ways that you could try to use that time to plan things some things out like try to take advantage of sitting and commuting but again I don't know what the situation is but if you're as long as it's safe and you're not actually driving but if you're using like public transport that's you know another thing that i think i see a lot of people working on the trains and so but yeah it's really interesting so i do sympathize with very long commutes because here in the midwest we genuinely do not even know what that would be like one of the things that also i wanted to point out is as you go through your work day oftentimes i see folks uh, let the requirements of the job define what you can spend your time on.

[18:37] And certainly you do have to spend the time on the things that are requirements of your job. That's part of being employed, but there is a lot more, uh, latitude that people could have if they would be, you know, just bold enough to ask a lot of times the, uh, stuff like you mentioned upskilling in the question. And upskilling is something that you could do during your job almost certainly. If you have something that is a skill that you want to learn that also happens to be beneficial to the role that you're in, I think most employers would make that trade 10 out of 10 times because you will be a more effective employee and a happier employee. And that's worth it, even if it means that they have to sacrifice, you know, an hour a day or 30 minutes a day or a couple hours a week of your productive time. And, and also most people are not going to be under the delusion that every single hour that you are on the clock or at the job is going to be the most productive thing. And so, you know, let's say you on a given day, there's probably a couple hours here, uh, you're you know not necessarily the most

[19:54] productive in and obviously this can kind of depend on the role and the specifics sometimes the work comes to you and it's just a matter of you know checking the box that it's done um but the but but in a lot of different roles you know the there's there's flexibility there and i i just i don't want to pass by this question without acknowledging also that some of that uh upskilling and and that personal growth can happen as a part of those nine and a half hours that you're spending at work every weekday. Yeah, that's really good. Okay, do you want to move to question number two? Let's do it. Okay, so this comes from user insights for misfits. And the question is, what made you realize you are progressing toward a goal? And they say, being someone who wants more for yourself, you may go through periods where you want to give up, but you keep applying yourself and showing up anyways. What made you realize you were actually progressing towards your goal and if you don't mind sharing what was the goal yeah so this is like a almost the other side of the coin of a question that we asked or that we answered last yeah i thought so too which was how do you keep going when you don't see anything uh indicating that you are truly making progress toward a goal um and this is the you know sometimes you are fortunate enough to have indications that you are going

[21:11] down the right path in, in seeing something. Uh, so I, I was just, um, you know, I have a couple of things that I've, I've jotted down here, but what are, what are some things that you have, you know, set a goal and seeing the progress and found, you know, that to be something that's helped drive you forward, at least, you know, some, sometimes I, I hate talking about some of this just because, uh, to really achieve a lot of the big things in life that you want to do, you do have to be able to persevere through not seeing progress or through not having that motivation, but it also is sometimes not okay to, you know, set up the sails and let the wind carry you a little bit, the motivation wins. So what are, what are some times where you've been able to kind of just like, yeah, I have that affirmation that, you know, I had this goal and it's going the right direction and that can help, you know, continue to more effortlessly pursue, you know, progress. Yeah. And I know we talk a lot about fitness, but this is just something personally for me that I've seen that I think it was really cool for me. Um, so we just finished training for two marathons, um, for those of you who are just new listeners. Um, and so I've kind of like shifted my focus more to lifting weights and trying to lift heavier weights just because it's harder

[22:28] to do that when you are training for a marathon. I mean, you definitely can still lift, but I think not training for a marathon you have the more opportunity to do so but i was um doing some lifting and i actually pr'd on my weight i was able to do heavier than what i've been doing forever like i've been at the same weight for so long um and it started it was i think it was um like dead squats um what are dead squats i've heard of dead lifts so dead squats are when you so we do them in the muscle pump class that i go to don't make fun of me but totally making fun don't make fun of me because it was they're hard um but you you use like a bench for this like um like uh you know like step classes like you have the two two little risers thingies i don't even know what they're actually called i'm going to be made fun of so bad on this section why did you have to ask but um i guess they're like a little mini bench um and you load up your bar and you have your arms wide and you stand up and you're you get really deep on the squat um and you do

[23:45] have to make sure you have good form or you're actually you really are going to hurt yourself and it took me a minute and explode your knees actually you'd hurt your back really bad your low back so um but anyways i did it started to feel easier and easier and i did more weight but that's a dead squat but even even in just normal you want to show us i'm just kidding no stop jeff you convinced me to do this podcast with you don't make everybody else is just gonna have to imagine what a dead squat is and just look it up look it up yeah just google it or chat gpt it um anyways so yeah I I PR'd I made I went heavier than I have before and yeah but that was you know obviously a very I don't know what the word I'm looking for but real way that I could see that I was progressing towards a goal um and you know and then it's really actually been like that with a lot of the lifting I've been doing I've been able to do more and more weight and more reps and so yeah it's cool to feel like you're getting stronger um and then i think the other thing i kind of we we were kind of like post or pre-podcast talking about this a little bit um of how we really we've so we recently

[25:02] moved into a new community and um i'm trying to think of how to get into this maybe you could expand on it a little bit more but like having our kids go to a new school and like where we're at now and yeah i think you know one of the things that's kind of been on our minds is we've been you know young parents trying to figure stuff out is like what sort of because it is just so easy to especially midwest uh values type stuff like so easy to wherever you find yourself uh to um to just continue down that path and and so for us um that looked like you know a small town and um as we have grown in careers and um you know have hobbies like running and and fitness and things um we kind of like started eyeing what it might look like to, to move into the metropolis of Wichita, um, in the surrounding metro area and, and, and a number of reasons and to be able to, um, you know, eventually find

[26:19] a house and then have the kids kind of find their way in the, you know, the, the bigger school and more diversity to yeah like a just a yeah a more well-rounded uh experience that they'll have and just also i really love the you know access to a lot of things that i just i never had growing up not that we didn't have access to like you know whatever but like just the proximity stuff i've never never lived in the city before yeah and so and and that's just a thing that you know for us personally that was a thing it was a goal yeah uh yeah and and decided to make that shift and and the benefits that we've been able to have from that um i don't know it just more like affirmation that we made a big change with intention and it's having the um outcomes that we're wanting and so it's a nice nice you know encouragement down that path yeah yeah and then yeah. And then obviously with running and us, you know, running marathons, I never thought in a million years I would be running marathons. I'd always been a runner, but I know we've talked about this of just, um, like doing like five Ks, 10 Ks maybe. Um, and the fact

[27:37] that, you know, we've got four marathons under our belts now and I think that's really cool. Yeah. And, um, running is a funny thing for me. Like when I first started, uh, running, I, you know, if you, if you haven't been a runner and then you make the effort toward, you know, trying to, to see if that can be a thing for you, which for me, it was like, I'm going to give this a month and see, you know, if I can truly make a difference. And if so, I have like all these, you know, I had, I had a race that I wanted to do and stuff like that. And, um, as you actually spend the time doing the thing you do early on, um, start to see like, Oh, okay. There this, this, the nice thing about running is it is a very much like you, you get out what you put in, especially in the beginning. Uh, the, the progression could be, uh, fairly quick, not, not necessarily as quick as maybe you would want, but noticeable, like in the sense that, you know, month to month, you can, you can see the numbers different. So like, especially if you're running with a heart rate monitor of some sort and, uh, and something to track your runs. So you can see pace to heart rate and see that change over time. Um, that could be like really affirming that that does, uh, plateau, uh, some as

[28:56] you progress and can be a little bit harder to move that needle, you know, down the road. Um, but when you're getting started for sure. Uh, you can, you can see a lot of progress, which can be really, uh, affirming. Um, the, the other thing that I wanted to mention that was, uh, along these lines was, uh, when I, uh, stopped drinking the first like month or so of that is pretty tough. Um, but the, the real affirming thing eventually of being able to go through a day without it really being on my mind was a big deal. And then also like, as I would go through events for the first time without drinking and have it be like, okay, well that was, that was good. There were like a couple of things here or there that were, you know, a little uncomfortable, but the overall theme was, it wasn't so bad. And you kind of get through the other side of that or even some things that were more fun without. And you just don't think that that's possible when you're in that, but then being on the other side of it and realizing like, oh, okay, well, just like with most things, there were some pros and a lot of cons. And then with this, there are some cons,

[30:11] but there's also a heck of a lot of pros and actually being able to experience some of that rather than just more of the psychological discomfort of like, oh man, if I make this life change. I'm going to have so many things that are going to suck so bad. And like, that feels overwhelming, but then, you know, you're like, well, I have to, for, you know, who I want to be and my health and family. And so the, you know, I have to do this thing and then realizing like, oh, actually I should have done this for a thousand different reasons well before now. And it's a lot, um, a lot easier, a lot more doable than I expected. And I think, too, like progressing towards a goal is you had had some blood work done while you were still drinking and then had blood work done when you hadn't been drinking for, you know, I don't know what the time length of time was. But like your numbers, even from the lab results that you had, were dramatically different. Just crazy amount of like just just how much healthier you were. Yeah, some real objective measures of things going in the right direction for sure. All right. Do we want to do our question number three? Sure. I think this will be a fun one. Yeah.

[31:26] We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Okay. So this comes from User Playful Exams 2804. This person has a lot of words. I had to cut some of them. Yeah. I'm going to try to make sure I get the question. Yeah, get the gist here and some of the context. So they are struggling to maintain friendships as an adult and they want to understand what they're doing wrong they say i'm a 32 year old man living in central european country working as a software developer about four years ago i noticed that i was gradually losing friends and this has continued ever since and i want to do something about it he says i'm starting to feel like um i'll remain a lone wolf and i might just have to accept it accept it um and he says currently i have around three real friends but i rarely meet them anymore because everyone is busy with work from what I've noticed been most of their time with their partner I've known these people since high school or even earlier except for one who I met at a previous job um so then he goes on to say he's trying some new hobbies like dancing crossfit but I noticed most people seem to be doing um their activity and then go home and says it also didn't help that my primary motivation wasn't the activity itself but making friends um so what advice do you have for

[32:45] this person that is struggling to make friends yeah sorry there was a lot here i didn't read so maybe it didn't make the most sense but yeah i think the overall just is what are some tools and what are some ways that um people can make friendships as you know adults yeah and i think uh i think we have a bit of a mixed bag on the topic. And so I think that, uh, it'd be good to unpack some of this and talk through, you know, what our experience has been and, um, and maybe share a little, sure. A little advice. Um, so I guess, first off, what has been your experience with, uh, friends as adult? Oh my gosh. Okay. So I feel like I've gone through some rollercoaster friend, um, eras. maybe the word to say. Um, so I guess in my twenties, I had really unhealthy friendships, very needy to me. And basically I was putting in all the effort for these friendships and not really getting a lot of return. Um, and I just, I did that for quite a while. And then, I mean, surprise, surprise, these friendships

[34:00] kind of just dropped off and nothing really came from them after a certain amount of time, which made me really sad because I had put in a lot of effort into it. And I actually had to go like to some therapy for it because it was hard. Um, and I'll say, um, one of the things that pops into my mind when, you know, kind of reflecting on a lot of that, um, was a lot of those were conditional friendships, meaning like it was only as long as you would, you know, be putting in a astronomical amount of value into, into them, uh, would it be a, a thing that will, would continue on? And then if that ever changed or if their, uh, perception of that value changed, then, um, then, you know, their, the condition, the conditional part of that wasn't met. And so it would, you know, go South. Yeah. So then I feel like I kind of had a period of time where you were my friend. Like we didn't, you know, we just kind of had each other, which I actually think was really good for us because I think it was a harder season and we were able to grow through that together. So I'm really, I'm actually really grateful for that.

[35:16] And then our kids, you know, started school. And I know this isn't the case for everybody. And I think this can be hard for people that don't necessarily have kids. But once your kids start school or you kind of start to meet other parents that have kids, you know, the same age as your kids, so you get to know each other that way. And we've had we had a couple of friendships, but now that we've you know, and then we moved and kind of had to start from scratch. And I will say, I feel like in this season of life, and I do think there's a point where as you get older, you kind of learn who you are, like what you value, what things you feel strong about, and also just become a little bit more confident in yourself. I know that for me, I'm, you know, I could still work on my self-confidence, but it's definitely something I've grown in as I've gotten older as I just, I kind of know what I like and I know what I don't really want to be around. And that helps me kind of navigate that. Well, a long way to say that now I feel like I have some really great friendships and some, especially one since we've moved. And, you know, we have a lot of things in common and I think that that's really valuable. and um yeah it's been and i also think

[36:31] being really picky about your friendships is important because you do spend a lot of time and investment in this and i've gotten to the point where i am i mean i'm friendly and i'll hang out with people but i do feel like as far as like putting in that really that strong investment time i'm more picky however all that to say this friend that i've you know, we've been friends, I guess, almost a year now. Um, we, uh, it's easy. I don't feel like it's a difficult friendship. And I think that that's another really important thing is it should not feel like a ton of work. I mean, you have to put the work in, but it shouldn't feel that you're just like running yourself ragged, trying to be a friend. It shouldn't feel that way. And this is really, I feel like the first time in my life I've truly experienced that. Yeah. So what about you? that's just my kind of background of friendships but and i'm sure i have even more but i will i can sympathize with friendships are so hard to make with as adults so i would say you know a couple things uh one i think your uh point about kind of internally defining who you are and what

[37:47] you value i think that's important um i think letting yourself completely be defined by who you're around is, um, a way to, to feel a lot of, uh, cognitive dissonance potentially with how like you behave and the things that you are filling your time with versus what you actually believe. And so I think being internally defined is a very important thing. And also I think people that you want to be around are going to be more appreciative that you have a little bit of a backbone, a spine, uh, to, to have opinions, um, to have personality. That's not just a sponge of everybody around you. So like, I could definitely, uh, you know, as I've gotten older, um, that, that come has come a lot easier for me. Uh, whereas that like young Jeff had a really hard time with that. Uh, one thing I also think was a really important point that you made, uh, which is it shouldn't shouldn't be forced um the the things the the people that you that you ought to be around um will find reasons why it makes sense for you to to spend time

[39:03] together and if you are you know the the person who wrote the question mentioned showing up to crossfit with the intention of making friends, I think that is a little bit hard, uh, because, uh, that can happen. Like you can go to, you know, a group fitness thing and make friends that absolutely can be the case. But if that is your primary motivation for being there, um, that's just going to be out of alignment almost certainly with everybody else who's there, their main purpose of being there usually is like, Hey, I want to better myself and I want to be around other people who are wanting to better themselves. And yeah, exactly. And sometimes you'll find friends through that because you both wanted to do the same thing. Um, but if you are, if your motivations are misaligned, um, that is going to, to make things hard. It also sets up a, just a unnatural dynamic where you are continually having to put in effort as opposed to something being effortless and becoming friends through effortless means because those are the more sustainable things. If you both want to spend time with one

[40:21] another because it is the way that you want to spend time, that is a lot different than trying to reconnect with someone from your past that you don't have any natural connection to because like as soon as you lose the motivation to continuing to reach out to them for whatever reason then you're going to go back to whatever the default was um and so i think leaning into the people that you just by default end up spending time with is is really helpful um i i will say like one thing that we've never really had much of is i think like the like top tier friends section of friendship uh where you know they uh have been long-time friends for decades and they vacation together and stuff like that like that's never really been our jam uh a little well we have one we have some friends live in california that we go like we go see them and i would consider them top tier friends yeah i don't mean that sorry i don't mean like uh like we go do everything together type of situation there are some people that literally spend you know let's say 20 plus weekends that's true a year together like that's not the situation that we're in um

[41:39] nor nor have we ever had like a a 20 plus weekends a year very true and that definitely exists um i i would And, and like, and so like that, like tier below that of like, you know, medium or high level friends, this is how I wrote it on here, but you know, people that you can, um, you know, you know, that, that is a good example. Spend a couple of days with, or, um, that, you know, when something exciting happens, you have people that you can text or, or, or hang out with for some event or something. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I have a lot of those through work and not work. For sure. um and i and just as us as a couple too i feel like we have some good friends too that if some i think that's a good way if something exciting happens you're excited to tell them about it too and like share that um so yeah i definitely think we have we're really really lucky like we have some good friends in that group too yeah and but and the kind of like the funny thing about it is like i don't really have any like to go back to the forcing it at this point i like i don't have anybody that I feel obligated to like force time into those relationships. Like the, the people that I spend my time with are the people that I want to spend my time with. I don't

[42:55] feel like there's any, like, I'm only doing this because I'm obligated for some, you know, some, some reason to feel like I have to fit in or whatever. Like I just do the things that I want to do. And I think that is a lot healthier way to, to go about friendships. Um, the, I guess I had two more, two more points on the topic. Um, one being is understanding, you know, if you're in a position where you feel like you want to have those real close friendships, um, what the, like, what's the motivation there? Um, sometimes that can be from just external comparison. And, and so I would, if that's the case, like if you feel like, Oh, well, that's what happy people do is they have those top tier 20 weekends a year friends. And so that's what I need to strive to figure out how to make that happen. Um, I just don't think that that's true at all. Um, I think you can, I mean, I, I'm very content friendship wise, and we don't have that. And, and so if that, if that ultimately was the, the motivation, I think that's at least worth,

[44:12] um, acknowledging and, and, you know, deciding what, what's really driving these feelings of inadequacy in this area. Um, it, it can though legitimately be like that connection thing. And, um, this, this person, um you know they mentioned they have a partner and so you know what what of those things could you you know double down in your in that relationship uh versus what sort of things are you actually looking to get from the the other more companion like for you know platonic friendships and and understand really in yourself what it is that you're after and then the the last thing that I wanted to mention on the topic was the importance in general with friendships, but also just your own personal development is, um, is focusing on yourself and being a little bit selfish with how you spend your time. Uh, and if you do that, if you are spending time to make yourself be the best version of your, of you, then that obviously is going to be beneficial to you personally, but also makes you a better friend. And you, if you are down in the

[45:28] dumps because you're never spending time making yourself better and you wish you like who you want to be is up here, but how you actually live your day to day is down here. Um, and, and, and you feel that disconnect, that disconnect can make you a less fun person to be around as opposed to somebody who maybe they spend 30% more of their time on, I don't know, fitness or building a business or whatever, um, you're going to be a much happier and more interesting person to be around. Uh, and, and as a result, that remaining time may be more, uh, conducive to, to building friendships and having those meaningful connections with other people. And one thing I wanted to say, because I know from this, they kind of wanted applicable ways to make friends and they said they had been recommended some different ways. So they, you know, they like music events. They like to do the CrossFit stuff. And I would say, I would try to find, if you are trying to make friends, ways to have conversation. I feel like that is when you do connect with people is when you can talk to them and find what

[46:44] interests are alike so you know book clubs might be a good thing to look into game nights you know if you have things that you want i'm sure like there's like trivia night things you know you could go to local places and do um finding ways that you can really um have conversation i think is another really good way to figure out kind of groups of people um that you might you know connect with yeah my my only like caveat to that that i would say is if you are again going to those things with the purpose of like well that that's a good place to make friends i still think that you end up having a real hard time with that even like a book club or something that unfulfilled i think that if you are the sort of person who loves reading and you like what the book is and you like the topic and you if somebody told you hey uh if you go to this book club for six weeks you're not going to make any friends uh do you still want to do it if the answer is no then i don't i i i think you're gonna have a hard time if the answer is i will do this

[47:59] regardless because this is the stuff that i love then i think go for it. Yeah. Like if you, if you genuinely love trivia and, and, and you're like, I don't care if I never make a friend doing this, I do it because I love it. Then by all means go. And you'll probably make friends if you're like, man, okay. I'm, I'm looking at the list and I asked chat GBT, what are the top 10 activities to make friends? And I'm just like going through the list and I'm going to be the person who goes to book clubs. I'm going to go to group workouts. I'm to go to crossfit i'm gonna go to trivia night like i'm gonna do all these things i'm gonna find all the friends i'm gonna have so many friends and like if it's just not you it's not you're if you're showing up with uh without actually being the sort of person who cares about that it's just you're not gonna make friends just in the same way like if you showed up there's a ton of uh running group stuff that exists probably in like every major city um if you go there because you want to be a better runner i guarantee you you'll make running friends through that if you show up there and you don't have any interest in running you're just trying to make friends it's not gonna work does it sound like a very fun time no there's actually

[49:16] a lot less miserable ways to to not make friends at a thing yeah maybe start with trivia if you're gonna just do things that aren't gonna work uh but no like seriously i think find the like that's where it's like focus on yourself be a little bit selfish yeah yeah i think that that's good too and you will by virtue of being around people who are doing the stuff that you love doing you'll find like that's where you get those effortless friendships if you show up to trivia but you actually don't really care about trivia and you make friends with super trivia lady then you know that that's a little bit of a misalignment um and yeah there there has to be a reason that you just both naturally want to spend time together because you have those shared interests well and i'm you know and with my new friendship too i think the thing that uh we've just really connected with is we both like genuinely love working out and genuinely love talking about it and that organically has just kind of grown into other conversations that you know we found that we have other interests and and yeah it's felt easy um and yeah just it's not you know we were a little selfish about that but um I had another thing I wanted to

[50:31] add but just oh I know now just I wanted to be encouraging and say keep with it I promise you there is somebody out there that has the same interests as you and would be a good friend just keep trying you know just keep trying stuff all right I have to leave the house in like three or four minutes. Oh, I didn't realize we were already there. Yeah, we already have made it to the end of the episode. Any last thoughts or topics or do we move to the housekeeping part of the show? All right. Housekeeping's great. Okay, so housekeeping part of the show. First and foremost, if you've made it to this point, go ahead and hit subscribe wherever you found us. If you would like, you can email us at buildhorizons.com. If you have questions or topics or want to say hi or have other stuff that you just want to spam our inbox with feel free you can also follow us on all the social medias and with that i'm going to turn it over to katy to send us home thanks for building with us and we are cheering you on