Tiny Buddha

Tag: friendship

  • Before You Reach Out to That Person from Your Past: 3 Things to Consider

    Before You Reach Out to That Person from Your Past: 3 Things to Consider

    “You don’t have to rebuild a relationship with everyone you’ve forgiven.” ~Unknown

    It’s natural, when you’re hurting and lonely, to want to reach out to people you’ve been close to in the past.

    Especially if there’s unfinished business with someone. And especially given the added isolation that comes with a global pandemic.

    Whether or not you do reach out is entirely your prerogative. For what it’s worth, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea to try—in most cases, a “Whoops” is better than a “What if…?” Whatever the result, you’ll learn something. It might be an unpleasant truth, but it’ll help you, one way or another.

    But, before you draft that text message, or email, or even pick up the phone, I also believe there are three things to consider:

    1. Why are you reaching out? What’s really behind your impulse?

    If you’re only doing so to take the edge off your loneliness, think again.

    If the relationship with the person you’re thinking of contacting has broken down, there’s probably still some hurt there. For them and for you. Contact will re-open that wound.

    Perhaps a long time has now passed, and any pain is vastly less profound than it once was. But let’s not kid ourselves—if things got so bad between the two of you that you haven’t spoken for months, things are pretty bad. There’s going to be something there.

    The benefits of reaching out have got to outweigh the possible hurt that comes from doing so. And the only way that can happen is if you genuinely miss that person. In short, the person, and that relationship, has got to be worth the pain that might initially come from speaking to them.

    So, ask yourself, honestly, do you really want to speak that person? Is it really them you miss, or is it just the connection you once had with them?

    Are you, in fact, just lonely?

    If, upon reflection, you realize it is just solitude prompting you, don’t reach out. It’s really not fair to either one of you. The pain won’t be worth it. It can’t just be about you, or what you’re currently feeling; the other person has to genuinely matter to you.

    Don’t let them be collateral damage in your war against solitude. Because that’s all they’ll be, a casualty.

    Your loneliness will pass. Like desperation or the need to get something off your chest that feeling is, in most cases, a temporary one. It will abate. And, when it does, so will your need for that person.

    I’ve been on the receiving end of this more than once, and it’s not nice.

    A former partner once contacted me out of the blue. It had been a turbulent relationship; during the time we’d spent together, our lives had both been raging dumpster fires, and we’d never been able to quell those flames adequately enough. Eventually, our relationship was consumed by them. But I still felt there was still something there. Despite the final rites having been administered, I knew I had never truly given up hope.

    Initially, I was beyond happy they’d reached out. I didn’t know if anything could be salvaged, but I was willing to try.

    However, after a short time, I knew my hopes were unfounded.

    A few days after we began speaking, this person began to drift away. They even told me directly that they weren’t feeling desperate or lonely anymore, but I had already guessed that; their waning interest was obvious in the way the messages started drying up, in the manner in which they suddenly avoided the big topics, which we’d freely discussed up until that point.

    I had served a purpose, and I had taken an edge off whatever they were feeling.

    And once I had, I was let go again—I was no longer needed.

    Because it had never been about me; it had been about them and what they were temporarily experiencing.

    I was hurt but not indignant; I’d done it myself before, and it’d be hypocritical to damn them.

    But, overall, there wasn’t a good enough reason to have those wounds re-opened. Reconciliation is a long, painful process; it can’t be built on loneliness. It only works if both people genuinely want to reconcile and be back in each other’s lives.

    If you’re in the same boat, try to find a healthier way to feel connected. I know, I know… loneliness is vile, debilitating. And not an easy thing to tackle. As someone who has battled loneliness for a long time, I am in no way denigrating the devastating impact it can have on your mental health.

    But being aware that you are lonely is a good first step in doing something about it. Knowing that you don’t really miss a particular person, that you just miss people per se, is a foundation. It’s something to build upon.

    However, if you’ve seriously thought about this, and it is genuinely them you miss, then there’s something else to consider…

    2. What do you want to achieve by reaching out?

    In the same way you need to be clear about your reasons for reaching out, you’ve also got to have a firm idea about what you want to achieve.

    It’s okay if all you want to do is try and re-establish contact with the future hope of reconciliation; there doesn’t have to any grand, overly complex plan in place beforehand.

    But there does need to be something, some sort of objective. And it’s got to be realistic based on the relationship you had. If it was a fundamentally unhealthy or codependent relationship that took more than it gave, then expecting all of those flaws to be resolved in one message is simply ludicrous.

    Perhaps you simply want to see if there’s a chance that something has shifted, and that there’s a glimmer of repairing the damage. It’s a small something.

    And you need that something.

    If all you’ve got is, “I don’t know; I don’t know what I want to achieve,” then it is probably the loneliness talking, or another random impulse, and stepping back is the right thing to do.

    Don’t jump into this with no idea about what you want. There’s going to be some hurt, some pain—think about what you hope to achieve by (potentially) re-opening this particular wound.

    If you’ve done that, and the answer works, then there’s only one more thing to consider…

    3. You might not get the response you want.

    Although you might view that past relationship and the other person involved through rose-tinted spectacles, they may not view you and the relationship in the same way. Just because you’re feeling conciliatory, it doesn’t mean they do. They might be perfectly happy with how things are, thank you very much.

    Plus, if it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for some time, you won’t have a clear idea about what’s happening in their life. There’s a global pandemic unfolding around us—people have lost livelihoods and loved ones.

    Your message may arrive while they’re in the middle of dealing with something huge. A message out of the blue from you may be the last thing they need.

    There’s also the simple fact that people change. Not many, but some of us do. And that can be confusing.

    Again, I was recently on the receiving end of this.

    And, again, it was that very same former partner.

    Time had passed since our last abortive communication. And, by this stage, I wasn’t so amenable to their approaches. I still had feelings for them, but those feelings had changed, mutated, in line with the work I’d done on myself in our time apart.

    Simply put, I’d moved on.

    As a result, I now saw that person completely differently. Whereas there was once a deep affection, now there was a solid realization that my own mental well-being was better for having removed them. The sad truth was that I just didn’t miss them anymore.

    Sometimes you need someone from your past to re-emerge to show you how much you’ve changed. I was very aware that, six months earlier, I would’ve been much more open to their words. I simply wasn’t any more; I was happy with how things were.

    The affection (or connection) was gone, and I just wanted to keep moving on.

    I couldn’t give them the answer they wanted, and they didn’t take it well. It wasn’t the happiest of experiences, but it did teach me that this was something to be aware of if the roles were ever reversed.

    If you’re not feeling strong enough to face a response that isn’t overflowing with kindness, a flat refusal, or worse, no reply at all, don’t do it. You’ve got to embrace the possibility that this isn’t going to go as planned.

    And you’ve got to be in a place where you can emotionally deal with that rejection.

    If you are, it might be worth the risk. If you’re not, don’t do it.

    —

    These are strange, lonely times. Reaching out may seem like an entirely natural thing to do. Maybe you’ll get the chance to rekindle an old relationship.

    Or maybe you’ll discover that the relationship truly did die a long time ago.

    It’s always worth taking the risk, but make sure you truly want to, and that you’re prepared for any response, good or bad.

    Reaching out—it can be a chance to reset a relationship, or to deliver the final rites. Both of which can be useful, and you might learn something invaluable.

    Most of all, paradoxically, it might give you both a chance to finally let go.

    And that’s something always worth doing.

  • Friends That Understand Your Antisocial Phases

    Friends That Understand Your Antisocial Phases

  • The Signs of a Strong Friendship (and an Unhealthy One)

    The Signs of a Strong Friendship (and an Unhealthy One)

    “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    “How on earth am I supposed to survive? I have no friends whatsoever!”

    These were the thoughts that ran through my mind then when I first set foot in London five years ago. I felt raw and vulnerable in the beautiful new city that I had to make my new home, alone, with my two kids, while my husband was overseas. I wondered how I was supposed to do it all.

    Well, I had J, a friend I’d met on my honeymoon in Bali, but we had only kept in touch occasionally, so I didn’t expect much from her. I couldn’t really call her my friend, maybe a pleasant acquaintance, but surprisingly she turned out to be my much-needed rock-solid support system and guardian angel.

    Every Saturday after work, she came over to my place, and we hung out. Sometimes we would walk to the park. Other times she would encourage me to drive (something I resisted). She visited my daughter when she fell and was in a cast and made my four-year-old daughter’s birthday memorable. She even helped me put up my garden table and chair. To say that I was grateful for her kindness would be an understatement.

    I was grateful—one, because the help and friendship she offered was unexpected. Secondly, because she did it with a great and open heart. And lastly, because she accepted me for who I was and what I could offer at that point.

    For the first time in my life, I was a ‘receiver’ in a friendship. Until then, I was always the giver.

    But with J, things were different. Her generosity touched me so much, so I thanked her often and told her how much I truly appreciated the trouble she took. But she always shrugged it off. One day as I was thanking her for the millionth time, she said, “Lana, the friendship goes both ways. I too appreciate hanging out with you and your little kids. They add a lot of joy to my life also!”

    She then proceeded to tell me that she lost two of her friends to cancer in the last few years, and the sudden losses left her feeling devastated. She said spending time with us helped her through that. I was shocked to hear it but was also pleased to know that my kids and I could fill that void for her in our imperfect selves.

    Her honesty and generosity taught me some essential lessons on friendship and helped me differentiate between a healthy and unhealthy one. So, let’s unpack them.

    The Tell-Tale Signs of Healthy Friendship

    1. There is an equal amount of give and take in the relationship. Both people’s needs are considered essential, and the friendship doesn’t feel lopsided.

    2. You’re both honest and transparent with each other. When J honestly opened up to me, it cemented our friendship because it made me feel equally important. Till then, I thought I was the vulnerable person in need of her, and I was surprised to know that she needed me as well.

    3. You’re both kind and compassionate, and you completely accept each other. Whenever J arrived, she was always considerate of how overwhelmed I was. She was happy to have an overwhelmed, scared, and disoriented friend and accepted me for who I was.

    4. Good friends don’t try to control, dictate, or tell you how to live your life. Though I was new to many things, she didn’t try to control me. She offered suggestions and sometimes pushed me out of my comfort zone but never crossed any boundaries. She gave me the space I needed.

    5. Good friends are generous—with their time, resources, or whatever they have to give. J was generous with her time and company and took me to various places. I was happy to have another adult with me as I visited new locations with my girls.

    6. Good friends appreciate each other and don’t try to take advantage of each other’s vulnerabilities.

    7. Good friends don’t try to manipulate the other for personal gain. They may help each other, but they don’t use each other. They spend time together because they care for each other and enjoy each other’s company, not because they want something from each other.

    Whenever there is an equal amount of give-and-take in a relationship, honesty, respect, and empathy for one another, you can be sure it is a keeper.

    Through J, I learned that friendship is a two-way street. Before that, I had no standards and welcomed anyone and everyone in my life as friends. Even the ones who walked all over me and took advantage. J upped the bar for me.

    So, what are the signs of an unhealthy friendship?

    1. It feels one-sided. The other person dominates the friendship and prioritizes their needs and wants over yours.

    2. They’re insensitive to your needs—they don’t consider them essential, or they trivialize them as unnecessary, either by joking or making your needs sound insignificant.

    3. They subtly undermine you, implying that you aren’t good enough, can’t do what you want to do, or shouldn’t bother pursuing your wants, needs, and interests.

    4. They see you as a means to an end, meaning you are useful for some specific purpose. Maybe you can help them move forward with their career, or you’re a bridge to connecting with someone else.

    5. They do not respect you—they ignore your boundaries, talk to you in a condescending tone, and/or treat you like you’re not a priority.

    6. They don’t respect or appreciate your time or effort.

    7. They’re demanding and think everything rotates around them.

    8. They have numerous issues that they can never sort out on their own. They never ask about you; you’re only there to listen to their problems and service their needs.

    9. They’re always competing with you, and everything is a game where they want to be the winner.

    10. They don’t want to know about you—your past, your feelings, or your interests.

    11. They repeatedly bail on you unexpectedly, as if they don’t value your time together.

    Walter Winchell says that “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” Here’s hoping you find that real friend who understands you, lifts you, and brings out the best in you!

  • Text Me When You Get Home

    Text Me When You Get Home

  • The Reason Life Works at All

    The Reason Life Works at All

  • Knowing When to Let Go of Relationships: 3 Signs It’s Time to Move On

    Knowing When to Let Go of Relationships: 3 Signs It’s Time to Move On

    “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” ~Deborah Reber

    Thanks to the Internet, our lives are full of people. We’re connected literally all the time.

    And yet, despite our ceaseless connection, we feel disconnected.

    As the pace of life becomes ever more frenetic, we’re like charged atoms, bumping into each other more and more, pinballs in the machine. We come into contact (and conflict), but we don’t commune so much.

    As real relationships of depth and quality become harder-won in this busy new world, their value is more keenly felt. Simply put, in the words of Brené Brown, “Connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It’s why we’re here.”

    As we fight to carve out space for these connections whose value has become so apparent, it’s natural that we cling to them more dearly.

    However, sadly, often the tight clinging to something is the sign that the time has come to let it go. With something as valuable as a relationship, how do we know when that time is? How do we know when it’s time to move on?

    I’ve unintentionally become an expert at moving on. Having lived in perhaps a dozen countries and had jobs with as many as 200 days of travel a year, I am keenly aware of the centrality of relationships. Living out of suitcase and having a rented apartment fully furnished by IKEA, they are all I have. They are my lifeblood. But sadly, I have also become far too practiced at needing to let them go.

    Traveling so much and relocating so often, my life has been enriched by the people I know. So many nights alone in my hotel room, I wasn’t alone. I was writing, speaking, and despite the physical distance, connecting with my dear friends.

    I’d arrange business trips or weekend travel so that I could meet them in some city somewhere in between. It was an effort that I would gladly expend, but I learned to see when that effort was no longer worth it, as difficult as that was to accept.

    Here are the three simple signs that tell me when it’s time to move on:

    1. When you need to plan and strategize how to present yourself

    As life moves forward, we change. Our jobs, our looks, our economic situation, our habits, our interests—everything changes all the time. It’s the one constant in life.

    As two peoples’ lives change simultaneously, gaps inevitably form between them. In a relationship that will stand the test of time, these gaps are bridged with each meeting. It’s the classic case of “We haven’t seen each other for five years, but when we met, it was like no time has passed!”

    However, there are times when, with each meeting, the gaps get wider, and soon they’re more like gulfs. In these cases, we often spend time before the meeting fretting about how to explain, obfuscate, conceal, or excuse. Shame has crept in, and we feel like we can’t be ourselves. We’re either embarrassed of who we’ve become, or we suspect the “new” us somehow will not be acceptable to the other person.

    I’ve put on too much weight—she’ll never like me this way. My career hasn’t taken the same trajectory as his. I got that divorce, while he has the same wife and now three kids. When the joy and anticipation you should feel when reuniting with someone is replaced by anxiety and inadequacy, that’s a really bad sign.

    Of course, it could be all in your head. You don’t give up on the first go. You should make an effort to “be real” and lay it out there that things have changed. You might find it was a lot of worry about nothing. However, if your fears are confirmed and your efforts repeatedly result in awkwardness and shame because the other person rejects this new you, then it’s probably time to move on.

    It’s important to understand that this is not a matter of blame. True love is knowing someone fully. It’s when two people become one but maintain their individual integrity. If you need to be someone else in order to get along, then you cannot be in a truly loving relationship.

    2. When the relationship drains more energy than it gives

    There is almost nothing more nourishing, refreshing, and perhaps even exhilarating than truly connecting with someone. All life is energy, and when someone opens up to you, they share their energy with you, and your share yours with them. Both parties are enriched.

    That laugh you share with your old friend who calls unexpectedly. The warm feeling in your stomach when he smiles at you. The rush you get when she tells you she feels the same way about you. That is all our life force.

    However, some relationships do just the opposite: they drain us. Our interactions with these people do not involve connection, but instead armoring up and deflection, and that requires energy.

    What does this look like? It’s the stressful gaming out of what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it in order to avoid conflict with that person. It’s the unease you feel when you learn that she’s going to be at that party. It’s the constant bickering with your boyfriend into which otherwise joyful occasions degenerate.

    How does this feel? After being with the person, you feel tired, relieved to be away, or annoyed. Beforehand, you may feel nervous, low-energy, or simply like you’re going through the motions or doing your duty.

    Two big caveats:

    First, if this was a relationship that you considered important to begin with, this does not mean you give up on the first bad vibes. Of course you try and try and try again to make things work, but at a certain point the act of pushing the square peg in the round hole becomes too much. It’s just too draining.

    A single negative interaction cannot be enough—in fact, an intense argument shows, if nothing else, that you care about what’s at stake in the relationship.

    Second, this is not a recipe for selfishness. Getting energy does not equate with being the recipient of another person’s affections and generosity. In fact, quite the opposite: anyone who has loved knows how much better it feels to give than to receive; it’s a cliché that happens to be completely true.

    And yet, if over time you are the only one giving, it starts to feel wrong. At some point you realize the person comes to you for help, not to share. A lasting relationship is inevitably one of mutual sharing and generosity. Anything else will start to wear.

    3. When you’re the only one making the effort

    I never thought I would need to face this topic, but today’s world of constant connecting without connection has given rise to a terrible new phenomenon—ghosting.

    Always having access to a connected device, people can easily just switch to some other form of distraction when there is any negativity (or even effort) associated with reaching out or responding to another person. As our reach expands, our time in each other’s physical presence shrinks, and hence it’s now possible to erase people from our digital lives.

    Now, it’s rare to be the recipient of a “hard” ghosting—to literally be blocked. To get to that point would involve a clear and unmistakable rupture in the relationship. However, “soft” ghosting—consistently not responding to messages in a timely manner or not at all, and opting for quick texts over thoughtful outreach and connection—this is something you’ve likely experienced.

    Responses to your outreach become fewer and further between, and at some point you realize that you’re basically out of contact.

    In these cases, the other person has either consciously chosen to focus on other things they deem more important, or they’ve gotten lost in the world of easy connecting. Or, they may simply have decided they no longer care to maintain the relationship and want to avoid the awkwardness of telling you.

    As I began to encounter these painful situations some years back, my first instinct was action and confrontation.

    I made an effort to increase my touchpoints with the person in question, invited him/her to dinners and other meetups if possible. When rebuffed (or more likely ignored), I got to a point where I directly conveyed my distress about where our relationship seemed to be heading and asked if he/she wanted to turn it around and what we could do the change the situation.

    Never once was this route successful. If someone is moving on with his or her life, and there’s no more space for you, no amount of guilting, cajoling, passive aggression, or begging is going to turn it around. That person needs to value your relationship above the alternatives that constantly compete with all our time each second of every day. He or she needs to want to keep you as an important part of his or her life.

    In these cases, the best you can do is reach out, but that outreach needs to taper off—pushing and insisting and pleading will only serve to create negative emotions and likely lead to conflict, or even worse, the person feeling the need to respond to you out of a sense of guilt or obligation. Your relationship lingers on and becomes more stilted and forced and loses its value.

    In fact, in any of these cases—when you feel like you can’t be yourself, the relationship becomes draining, or you’ve been ghosted—it’s difficult not to generate a lot of emotional or actual drama. It’s a sad situation involving someone who at least was once very important in your life. You naturally want to fight for it, and you should, to a point.

    But, like life itself, in relationships you have to learn to trust the flow. You can swim against the current for a little while, steer yourself this way and that, but in the end you cannot control the river. Instead of ratcheting up your response to the situation and effecting an emotional crescendo, do your best to reach out to your friend with honesty and compassion.

    There will come a time when you know it’s not worth it any more. You will feel the negative emotional vibration in the form of resentment, frustration, fear, hopelessness, etc. At that point, however, you risk tainting even the good memories of your time with that person with the bitterness of the breakup. Rather than gratitude for the time you had together, you feel loss. You rob yourself of the relationship you had.

    There is no way of knowing when to act, but in this case you’re not taking action, you’re letting go. The best way to know when to do that is to follow your instinct, and when your time being with and thinking about the person becomes a negative experience, that’s probably a good time.

    The other benefit of letting go rather than fighting is that you allow space for a reckoning if the other person decides to reengage. And though that’s unlikely based on my own experience, it could happen someday.

    After all, you rarely know the exact reasons and motivations for the other person’s behavior. Indeed, they’re often unknown even to the other person, and perhaps unknowable. So, one day you may find your phone ringing, and it’s your friend—people always retain the capacity to surprise you!

    And as hard as it might be to imagine, there may be a good reason for the person’s behavior. You never really know the suffering they’re feeling, but if they’re letting go of a dear friendship, the least you can say is they’re not thinking clearly. Some other suffering is taking hold, and it’s your friend’s loss. Don’t make it a terrible loss for yourself too by creating a drama.

    This is of course easier said than done, but if you stay conscious and draw on your compassion, you can do it.

    Recently, a dear friend of ten years ghosted me. She and I had been through it all: moving countries, marriages, deaths, international travel—all the major life milestones.

    A little over two years ago, she became more and more distant and less responsive. Not surprisingly, this coincided with her becoming much more active on social media and followed a period of tragedy in her life. I reached out repeatedly for about a year, but my efforts eventually led to total silence, and I let go. I haven’t heard from her in a year and a half.

    The moment I knew it was time to let go was when I was tempted to write her something passive-aggressive. At that point I realized I was experiencing the relationship with negativity, which would inevitably come through in my communication with her.

    I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, but more futile efforts would have hurt even more and put a possible future reconciliation at risk. I also needed to have the compassion to understand that she had recently gone through a tragic time, and undoubtedly that had an impact on her thinking, feelings, and behavior. I hope she’s alright and remain open to the possibility that one day she might come knocking on my virtual door.

    But the truth was clear—it was time to let go.

  • Why We Close Ourselves Off to Friendships and How to Open Up

    Why We Close Ourselves Off to Friendships and How to Open Up

    “If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” ~Louise Hay

    Picking the flimsy gold lock on my groovy denim-covered childhood diary, I’m instantly transported back to my ten-year-old life.

    Each page duly describes what I what I ate for dinner that day as well as what my two best friends and I got up to. It was 1976 and we were obsessed with Charlie’s Angels, cruising around “undercover” on our bikes, solving fresh crimes around the neighborhood.

    Every couple of weeks I’d report the latest drama amongst the three of us. Either my two friends had inexplicably turned against me, or one of them had coerced me into siding with them in a never-ending series of turmoil.

    By the time we were teenagers, we’d drifted apart and I’d started struggling to form female friendships that weren’t fraught with gossip or backstabbing

    When I got to university I’d firmly made up my mind that girls weren’t to be trusted and I only wanted guy friends. I made an exception for one girlfriend who felt the same, and we went on to be roommates, priding ourselves on our fun circle of male-only friends.

    It’s fascinating to reflect on how belief systems are formed. The more I told myself this story of females being intrinsically bad news, the more I avoided getting close to any. As I grew into an adult, my theory was again proven as I got sucked into more dramas and gossip.

    Once I got married, my husband became my best friend. He was never jealous of my male friends, and we enjoyed a great social life with other couples. However, after we started a family I found myself navigating fresh female waters: the mothers at the school gates!

    I immediately sensed a minefield of gossip and competitiveness. It would have been easier to drop my kids off and go, but I had their social lives to think about too.

    Thankfully, I got back into journaling around this time, and I used it as a way to get to know myself better. I explored my struggles on paper and tapped into my wiser, all-knowing self to discover that, for me, the secret to having great female friendships was to see special ones individually, never forming a group.

    I turned down all invitations for ‘Girls Nights Out’ or weekends away, as that dynamic wasn’t appealing. I now had a small handful of genuinely lovely girlfriends whose company I cherished and who shared my values of trust and openness. I made a point of seeing them one-to-one and never introduced them to each other, treasuring our meaningful conversations.

    One day I heard about a series of life coaching workshops and felt immediately drawn to sign up. I invited a dear friend to join me, but she couldn’t make it, so I invited another special friend who eagerly accepted. How fun to have a once-a-week date together to focus on our lives. But then something ‘terrible’ happened. The first friend I’d invited called back and said she’d rearranged her schedule and was excited to now be able to join me after all!

    This sent my head into a spin. I decided my only choice was go with them both.

    Although we all lived on the same street, I’d deliberately never introduced them to each other because of my flashbacks to the three-way friendship dramas of my childhood. “One-to-one friendships only” had become my rule.

    Together in the car on our way to the first workshop, I endured small talk and introductions, rather than delving into meaningful subjects as I normally did with each of them. But by the time we left the workshop venue, we were all riding on a high of inspiration, so we headed straight to a restaurant to download our insights over lunch.

    We did the same thing again every week and by the time the course ended, we’d agreed to form a monthly meet-up for the ‘soul’ purpose of working on our lives together.

    That was in 2008, and we’ve met every month since.

    Our Power Posse is based on absolute openness and deep mutual trust. Having our monthly check-in to share on how each area of our life is going helps us clarify our intentions and goals. It gives us accountability and motivation to live our best lives.

    We’ve even run retreats together, inviting other women with a growth-mindset to join us. I’d have never imagined this back when I was still telling myself the false story that females aren’t to be trusted.

    In my case, I held myself back with the limiting belief that group dynamics among women were dangerous. Perhaps you hold a different belief that prevents you from forming and maintaining friendships, for example:

    • No one really gets me.
    • I ruin all my relationships.
    • I’m too intense or too sensitive for people.
    • People always disappoint you eventually.
    • You can’t ever really trust anyone with your personal life.
    • I can’t relate to any of these people.
    • Everyone already has all the friends they want at my age.

    We form many of these beliefs out of direct experience from our past. When something painful happens, we draw a conclusion about why it’s happened in an attempt to avoid that same situation in the future. That conclusion feels like a fact, and it then forms a belief that we carry through life. This affects how we think, act, and feel—about ourselves and others.

    Limiting social beliefs are often amplified by a fear of rejection, criticism, ridicule, or betrayal. We proceed with undue caution in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt. This leads to limiting decisions. We cut ourselves off from what’s possible by painting ourselves into a box that feels safe. We miss out on opportunities that would enrich our lives.

    In order to break free from these limitations we need to act against our self-protecting instincts. It’s okay to take baby steps if you need to. Start by setting an intention. What aspects of your social life or a specific friendship make you feel unhappy or disconnected? Which limiting beliefs may be hindering you? What would you need to believe instead to welcome more people into your life?

    For example, “I can’t really trust anyone with my personal life” could turn into, “There are people out there than I can trust—I just haven’t met them yet.” This positive expectation shifts the energy around it. Now you can begin to collect new evidence to back up this belief by opening up more regularly, sharing more authentically, and increasing the likelihood of making a solid connection with someone you can trust.

    Our belief system is powerful, so it’s important to pay attention to when you might be telling yourself a limiting story. The more awareness you bring to your beliefs, the quicker you’ll make the shifts needed to let them go.

    Shedding my own limiting beliefs has opened the door for a multitude of incredible females to come into my life over the past ten years. They’ve shined a light on my own greatness, and we’ve inspired each other to reach even higher for our biggest dreams. The same can happen for you.

    What stories from your past have carried on into your present life? Are you willing to let go of any limiting beliefs that aren’t serving you so you open yourself up to new people and experiences?

  • Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture: Spend Time with People You Truly Enjoy

    Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture: Spend Time with People You Truly Enjoy

    friends in the fall

    “Even if you are on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~Will Rogers

     How is this happening again?

    Lying in bed watching The Mentalist at 8 P.M. on a Saturday night, my mind begins to wander.

    A year ago I was so happy. I spent almost every night hanging out with amazing friends and now I’m here, alone watching TV.

    As my heart sank into my stomach, I shook my head, suppressed my feelings, and pushed play to start the next episode.

    A few years earlier I moved to Santa Fe, NM, a state I had never even visited before. Excited to start a new journey, I set out to meet new people and create a life full of amazing friends.

    Although that’s exactly what happened, the first few months were extremely difficult. I spent a lot of time trying to make new friends while having zero success. After a couple months, this went from frustrating to depressing.

    Luckily, I was able to solve the problem and learned how to make new friends from scratch. It was amazing. I was having some of the best times of my life.

    Every week I had friends inviting me to birthday parties, barbecues, camping trips, river rafting excursions, and typical nights out on the town. And when I invited people to places, like my New Year’s Eve party, people showed up.

    It was a high I’ll never forget.

    After an exhilarating two years in Santa Fe, I moved back to Huntington Beach, CA, the city I was born and raised in.

    I was excited for yet another new page in my life. Huntington is a beautiful city with great weather (and waves!). My family, best friend, and other great friends live here.

    Kim, my girlfriend at the time (now my wife), and I decided to have a long-distance relationship and I chose to save some money by living with my parents.

    The next year was a disaster.

    It might not have looked terrible from the outside, but I was eating myself alive on the inside.

    Even though I had friends in the area, I was only hanging out with them about once every two months. And about just as often, Kim and I would travel to see each other.

    But that was it. The only other people I hung out with were family members. And as much as I love them, this was not healthy for me.

    I may have seemed happy, but I was faking it. I was hurting. Instead of fixing it, I kept going with the status-quo.

    This feeling was very similar to the one I had when I moved to Santa Fe. A feeling of sadness, hurt, and longing that comes from a lack of spending time with people who make you feel alive.

    But this time was different. I knew I could make friends if I wanted to and I already had friends living here. I just didn’t make the relationships a priority like I should have.

    My laziness was striking me down and I got stuck in a comfort zone of my own making.

    It was easy to say yes and go out with friends when I was living by myself in Santa Fe. But living with my parents made it a little less appealing, which was enough to prevent me from doing it. I’d think to myself:

    I’ve already showered and I’m in my comfy clothes. I can hang out here with my parents, have a couple drinks, and watch this movie, or I can get ready again and meet up with my friends. Ah, I think I’ll just stay here tonight.

    That’s literally how many of my nights played out. And it was similar for the day time too. I’d decline an invite to go surfing because I already showered or because I was about to go to breakfast with my parents, something I easily could have skipped.

    When we finally moved Kim out here to Huntington, I thought my problem would be fixed. Instead, it was more of the same. Mexican food with my parents, cooking chicken piccata with Kim, staying home watching Prison Break, and trail running by myself in the wetlands.

    As much as I love hanging out with Kim and my family, I need that outside energy with friends who share some of my deepest interests and passions. So finally, after way too long, I made this realization:

    I need to spend more time with people who make me feel truly alive.

    My parents and Kim do fill a big part of that need. But I need other friends to fill the rest.

    I started making changes to my life that helped me meet new people and spend more time with existing and past friends.

    I joined a music production class. Kim and I played on a beach volleyball team with her coworkers and a separate flag football team with strangers. I also joined a soccer team.

    I started hanging out with my friends more. I’d text my buddy during the week and say, “Hey, wanna grab sushi Friday night?” I’d send another text to my surfing friends and say, “Surf’s supposed to be good Saturday. Who’s down?”

    On top of that, I’ve been reaching out to people I lost touch with. I recently hit up a friend who I hadn’t talked to in years and said, “Long time no see. Miss you dude. Hope all is awesome. You still running?”

    That text conversation ended with my wife and I scheduling a San Diego day trip and a twelve-mile running adventure for my buddy and me.

    I’ve even been getting together with friends I haven’t hung out with since high school!

    Ever since I put more focus and effort into spending time with my good friends, while still maintaining healthy relationships within my family, my life has improved drastically. I’m happier and more enjoyable to be around. Even better, I’m back to being my old, goofy self again.

    What steps can you take to make sure you don’t fall into the same trap I did?

    If you’re not careful, the same thing can happen to you. In the moment, it’s easy to stay home and watch Netflix because that’s easier and more comfortable. However, in the long-term that can be detrimental.

    Here are three steps you can take to get you on the right track:

    First, determine whether you have the right people in your life to keep you happy. Do you feel like you can be yourself around them? Do you feel free and alive when you hang out with them?

    Second, figure out if they are willing and able to spend enough time with you. Invite them to hang out and see if you can fill the free time you set aside for hanging out with friends.

    If you haven’t spoken to the person for a while, try pinging them first. Shoot them a text, a Facebook message, or even just comment on one of their posts. The main things you want to get across are that you miss them, you hope all is well, you’re curious how they’re doing, and you were thinking about them and wanted to say, “Hi.”

    If you’ve been in touch with them lately, just shoot them a message and say, “Hey, let’s get together soon. I was thinking of hiking El Morro this weekend. Interested?”

    It’s good to invite them to do something specific that you know they would enjoy. If you just ask to hang out, it might be hard for them to imagine what you would do together, which can make them less likely to accept. And if they do want to hang out but can’t or don’t want to do the original activity you proposed, they’ll likely respond with a different idea, still giving you a chance to hang out.

    Third, if your friends don’t have the time or you’d rather hang out with different people, it’s time to consider meeting new people. Join a photography class, sign up for a kickball team, find a book club, or attend a young professional’s social mixer.

    Go out into the world and meet new people. If you can find people while doing activities you already enjoy, even better.

    Once you understand how important your friendships are, you’ve cleared the first hurdle.

    From there, it’s on you to stay proactive to create and nourish the relationships that are so vital to your well-being.

    It might take a little more effort to pick up the phone, text your friend and schedule a hangout, or get outside and join that soccer team, but when you look back on your life you’ll be thankful you did.

  • How Expectations Can Drive People Away and How to Let Go of Control

    How Expectations Can Drive People Away and How to Let Go of Control

    “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ~Friedrich Salomon Perls

    About five years ago, I had a falling out with a close friend. I was irritated because she didn’t do the things I thought she should and she didn’t give as much as I did. I felt I had been very generous with her, and I expected her to do the same. I felt she owed me.

    My anger became unmanageable and started seeping into pretty much every interaction we had. She began cancelling dinner plans and camping trips. She wouldn’t call me back after days of me leaving a message. It happened out of nowhere, and of course everything was her fault.

    Except that it didn’t. And it wasn’t.

    Not too long ago, I was a bit of a control freak. I didn’t know it, of course, and I would have described myself as open-minded and easy going. In reality, I was tormented by my own expectations.

    Since I was a child, I had an image in my head about who I was supposed to be. What my family was supposed to look like. What house I was supposed to live in. What career success was supposed to mean. That’s a lot of supposing! I had always assumed these expectations were my future.

    I am an artist by trade, and in my art studio, I have many tools. Paintbrushes, sanders, stencil cutters, and paper punches fill shelves up to the ceiling. However, I tell people that the most important tools I use are flexibility of mind and a practice of not having expectations as to the outcome. This allows new and amazing techniques to be discovered and yields paintings that continuously surprise and delight me. I find these tools are useful outside of the art studio as well.

    As time went on and distance grew between me and my friend, I began to feel enraged by her apparent apathy toward me and everything that I “had done for her.”

    I thought to myself, “I would never treat anyone that way. How dare she do that to me?” and “After all I’ve given her, she should want to give back!” Every thought I had praised me for all the good deeds I had done and blamed her for ruining our friendship. I was the victim and she was the wrong doer.

    One day, I sat down to enlighten her about how she had negatively impacted our relationship. Her reaction was horrifying to me. She said she was going to take a step back from our friendship.

    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, I was telling her how she could singlehandedly improve things. What was wrong with her that she didn’t understand that? We stopped speaking and I didn’t see her for a long time.

    Then something life changing happened—sobriety. In the first year after I quit drinking, I learned a lot about myself and my need to control just about everything in order to meet my expectations.

    I learned how my expectations of others (unexpressed, by the way, because “I shouldn’t have to say it!”) and the anger that followed when people didn’t act the way I thought they should, actually drove people away.

    The entire time our friendship was breaking down, I thought that if she would just do the things I wanted her to do, not only would our friendship be fixed, but everyone involved would be better off. I knew better than she did. My way of living was better than hers. She, of course, ran away from me like I was on fire.

    My need to control others was unfounded, unrealistic, and unattainable. It was a hard thing to admit that my way wasn’t better than her way and, in fact, people weren’t abandoning me. I was driving them to leave. I saw that other relationships in my life were also going down this path. I had to change.

    One day after surfing, I went to sit on a bench overlooking the water. One of the “old guys” we surfed with, who lived across the street, came and talked with me as the sun was setting over the ocean and I was lamenting about the stresses in my life. He said one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me: “I don’t do stress. Stress is optional.”

    WTF? How on earth does one not get stressed? Teach me, Oh Wise One. I thought deeply about this and about my issues with expectations and control. I needed control in order to meet my own expectations. When those expectations were not met, anxiety, anger and depression followed. Where does stress fit in?

    The stress comes from trying to control actions that I think can bring my expectations to fruition. Have you ever seen the YouTube video of the zoo keeper trying to take a photo of all the baby pandas together? He expected a cute shot. All he got is a video of him trying to put baby pandas in a line, as one by one they continuously wandered off.

    I know that’s kind of a cut and dry example, and life isn’t always cut and dry. However, the primary reason that I would get so pissed when my expectations were not met is rather simple: “My way is superior to everyone else’s way. How can people be so stupid and disrespectful?”

    I don’t want to be an angry person. I don’t want to be unhappy with the people in my life. At some point, I realized that all of the control I was attempting to put on others was really me trying to make others meet my own expectations. That doesn’t work. Like ever. And it creates a huge amount of stress and frustration akin to trying keep baby pandas in line.

    The real questions are: Who do I think I am? Why do I think I can control anything? What does it really matter if people are late, or my flight is cancelled, or my hat got lost when it flew off the top of the car.

    Do these things affect my life? Sure, they can. Is it worth having an explosive hissy fit and making myself and everyone around me miserable? Uh, that would be a no. (Embarrassingly, the loss of that damn hat came close to ruining our evening.)

    Advice from an Artist—Three Ways to Let Go:

    1. Have zero expectations about how anything is going to turn out in the end.

    It’s easier said than done, but if I went into the art studio expecting a certain painting to be created, I would be disappointed all the time. It’s so much easier to have an open mind and go with the flow.

    This is also true when it comes to other people. By accepting the fact that people are not predictable, I am not attached to outcomes about how they “should” be.

     2. Stop trying to control everything.

    My passion is creating, but I can’t always get in the studio to paint. And guess what? I don’t pitch a fit. I simply do what needs to be done to continue on.

    For whatever reason, this is easy for me to apply to my business, and harder to apply to situations that involve people. I have to peel my fingers from the white-knuckle grip they have on how people should be and be okay with the possibility of “my way” not being an option. Perhaps somebody else has an awesome way I’ve never even thought of.

    3. Be flexible and don’t be attached to outcomes.

    I choose to open my mind to all the possibilities. In the studio, experimentation and the ability to adjust comes very easily. In life, not so much. Last minute changes in dinner plans aren’t going to kill me. When someone is “inconveniencing” me by wanting to meet at 8:00 instead of 6:30 I don’t get pissed anymore. I go for a hike because now I have time to.

    Does that sound too simple? I don’t think it is.

    My old friend and I have begun to repair our friendship. She moved away and I miss her dearly. We have talked about the past, but not in great detail. I try to show her that my thinking has changed and I don’t want anything from her but her friendship. It’s a hard thing to repair when you live far away but it’s mending little by little.

    I no longer expect her or anyone to think like me. When I start feeling superior, I have to remember that I’m no better and no worse than any other person on the planet. I hope she forgives her wayward friend. At the time, I really thought that I was doing her a favor by showing her a better way to live. It was hard to realize that my ego was running the show.

    When I’m working on a painting and I make a mark that I didn’t intend to, I don’t look at it as a “mistake.” I look at it as an opportunity to go down a road I may not have seen had it not been for that out of place mark. This is how I strive to live my life now. When a monkey wrench is thrown in, I put it in my back pocket figuring that a wrench may come in handy at some point.

    And if it doesn’t, that’s okay. Just as with my art, I choose to live open-minded to all experiences. Also, just like my paintings, life isn’t only made up of straight lines. There are twists, turns, and interruptions. The question I must ask myself is, do I want to put up a fight whenever something unexpected happens, or go with the flow and gracefully see where this new road leads?

    We can’t control other people and situations. But we can choose to set expectations aside and not put so much emphasis on how things are going to end up. After all, it truly is about the journey. And the destination? Well, sometimes the most beautiful views are the ones that we stumble upon unexpectedly, while on the way to where we’re “supposed” to be.

  • Are You Really Listening? 4 Ways to Understand and Connect with People

    Are You Really Listening? 4 Ways to Understand and Connect with People

    “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” ~Ralph G. Nichols

    My partner and I were in our first few months of a long-distance relationship. This was a new stage for us and it meant altering our communication practices. Instead of sharing meals and museum exhibits, we had weekly emails and Skype chats.

    Every week, I would pour my heart into long, detailed emails to him. I would describe everything that I had done and thought over the past few days.

    On Skype I would do the same. Excited to tell him about my life, I would recount all of my recent experiences.

    On one such Skype call, my partner paused the conversation with a long and frustrated silence.

    “What?” I asked.

    He said, “You just told me all about you, but you didn’t respond to anything I said.”

    His reaction surprised me. Weren’t we taking turns talking about our lives? Wasn’t that how a long-distance call was supposed to go?

    Around the same time, I received a letter from a friend who lived across the country. We had been writing to each other for several years. I had recently sent her a letter telling her about my new job and my vacation plans.

    She wrote back in exasperation, “You didn’t respond to anything I said in my last letter.”

    Now I was shocked and a bit panicked. My first instinct was to be defensive. Didn’t my partner and my friend want to know about my life? Didn’t they care about me?

    A troubling realization soon set in. If two different people were upset with me for the same reason, there was a good chance that I was the source of the problem and that I would have to take ownership of it.

    I had always thought that conversations between people in any relationship meant taking turns talking about yourself. I believed that was how you found out information about each other’s lives. Wasn’t knowing about each other the framework of a relationship?

    After thinking for a while, I realized that this approach had never been very successful for me. I had always struggled with feeling disconnected in my relationships. My bonds with others felt flimsy, as if they could crumble at any moment.

    Despite being surrounded by people I called friends, I felt chronically detached and lonely. I often wondered, were relationships this shallow for everyone? Was I doing something wrong that kept me from tapping into true connection?

    The moment that I realized my partner and my friend had both given me the same feedback—that I was not responding to anything they said—set me on the path to answering these questions. No, relationships did not have to be shallow. Yes, I was doing something wrong.

    I was being a poor listener. My lack of listening skills was holding me back from truly connecting with the people I cared about most. I did not know how to listen receptively and responsively in conversation.

    This realization was both terrifying and freeing.

    Conversation is the workspace to create, build, and expand connection. Listening is the glue that fuses that connection. If we take turns talking without truly listening, the connection is brittle.

    Fortunately, excellent listening can be learned. With dedication, I was able to dramatically improve my listening skills. As a result, I have built deeply fulfilling relationships that nourish my heart and soul.

    Here are four power moves that I use to increase the quality of my listening and build stronger bonds with the people I care about.

    1. I bring mindful attention to asking, “How are you?”

    The way in which we choose to ask “How are you?” has the power to set a tone of either detachment or connection for the rest of a conversation.

    I used to treat “How are you?” as if it were interchangeable with “Hello,” flattening it into a greeting instead of a question. I expected a perfunctory response and so that was what I received in return. This approach to “How are you?” communicated that I was more eager to talk about myself than to listen to the other person and thus set the stage for disconnection.

    Now I treat “How are you?” as an invitation to connect by saying the words slowly, breathing into the phrase, and maintaining physical stillness. I transition my full presence to listening and bring the precious gift of my attention to the conversation. Attentiveness shows that I care and I want to learn more about that person.

    2. I communicate interest by asking follow-up questions.

    When I ask “How are you?” I may get the response “Good, I just got back from work.”

    In the past, I would have responded “Great!” and moved on. Now I know that this common exchange is an important opportunity to ask follow-up questions.

    Follow-up questions are linked to the speaker’s previous statement so they demonstrate the listener’s level of interest and attention. My favorite follow-up questions are open-ended and begin with “what” or “how” because they create the most space for the other person to expand their thinking.

    Some examples that would apply to the situation above include “What are you currently working on?”, “How do you like your colleagues?”, and “What do you enjoy most about your work?”

    Asking follow-up questions shows that I value my conversation partner’s ideas and experience. Communicating that someone’s words are valuable increases their self-worth. When I foster a relationship with someone that mutually feeds our senses of self-worth, we both find ourselves wanting to spend more time together.

    3. I deepen the conversation with “Tell me more,” and “What do you mean by that?”

    When we talk, we learn more about ourselves. We can explore our desires, motivations, and fears. When we support others to talk more about themselves, we help them uncover useful information about who they are.

    By telling my friend, sister, or partner to “tell me more,” or by asking, “What do you mean by that?” I’m inviting them to learn more about themselves. I’m opening space for them to expand their thinking and thereby take up more space in our relationship and the world.

    Invitations to take up more space are among the greatest gifts we can give in relationships.

    4. I share the conversation space with “What do you think?”

    Asking, “What do you think?” is my favorite technique to manage myself during conversations in which I am sharing opinions, theories, and ideas.

    I am a passionate person and when I am inspired, I have a lot to say! However, unless I am giving a speech, I have a responsibility to my listener to maintain a shared speaking space and I honor this by ending my opinions with “What do you think?”

    There is a distribution of power inherent in any exchange involving speaking and listening. If one person chronically dominates the speaking space without the other’s consent, there exists a violation of boundaries. Asking, “What do you think?” helps to maintain equality and respect in conversations and, consequently, in relationships.

    —

    These days, I employ these listening power moves regularly and continue to reap the rewards. I recently used them in a conversation with a former colleague. When she reached out to me via text message to ask a simple question, I took it as an opportunity to deepen our friendship.

    She texted, “Have you renewed your professional license?”

    My younger self might have responded with “yes” or “no” and left it at that, resulting in a shallow interaction. Because I wanted a richer relationship with this person, I used the listening power moves to connect with her. I brought my mindful attention to the interaction and responded with an open-ended follow-up question.

    “No,” I texted back, “I have other career ideas right now. What is your thinking about your career?”

    We switched to email and she shared her latest career goals with me. I responded to her ideas and then she asked me about my career goals. Over the course of our emails, we expressed and explored our thinking about who we were professionally and personally, made plans to spend time together, and ended up going on a road trip.

    Feeling connected means feeling seen, heard, and valued for who we are. Our choices around how we speak and listen have the power to generate connectedness. When we bring a mindful presence and generous spirit to our listening, we open the doors to rich and fulfilling relationships.

  • True Connection Happens When We Release Cynicism and Judgment

    True Connection Happens When We Release Cynicism and Judgment

    Cartoon teamwork holding hands / happy cooperation

    “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” ~Bill Nye

    It’s cool to be a little cynical, right? We’ve all seen the movies; we know an air of ennui and a well-cultivated sneer is all a person needs to get by.

    When I was in my early twenties I used to archly describe myself as an “optimistic cynic.” To me, it sounded cool. I was playing in bands, and I’d decided this was how I wanted to show up to the world.

    Back then I responded to everything, whether good or bad, exciting or not, through a filter of sarcasm. (And for those who don’t know me, I’m talking British sarcasm here too. The strongest kind.)

    Thankfully, though, after years of deep work on myself, I eventually realized that really, in being so cynical, I was just hiding behind a façade, a front. The cynicism was a barrier to protect myself, and ultimately, it halted me making real connections with others, and myself.

    I think I first realized this while at university. There was a guy who lived on my floor who was just a really good person.

    Andy was happy, friendly, well-liked by everyone. The source of good emotions wherever he went.

    At the time, of course, I dismissed his demeanor as an act to be liked, which, as I write this now, I realize was me projecting my own issues on him.

    But even then a part of me knew Andy was doing something right. When he’d invite me to things (and I of course turned him down with a sarcastic aside) I felt a little silly, a little humbled by his great outlook and energy, which contrasted so greatly with my self-defeating ‘cool.’

    You see, deep down I knew I wanted to do all the things he was doing. I wanted to live my honest truth like he was, but for whatever reason I couldn’t bring myself to let go and just be myself. Andy held a mirror up to my sneer, and I didn’t like what I saw.

    I’m glad to say I’m not like that anymore. But it’s still in me on occasion, and I think in all of us if we aren’t careful. It seems more and more, cynicism is becoming the default setting for our collective consciousness. It’s the way to be now in this post-modern world.

    Don’t trust people. Don’t show your feelings. Don’t give a damn, frankly.

    We live in very uncertain times, so it’s understandable, then, that we’ve learned to question people’s motives. But where this once still bordered on liberal curiosity, it is fast turning to simple mistrust, disconnection, and in many cases, actual fear of others.

    It’s a sad situation, and something I feel we all need to be aware of. More so, we need to actively fight against this cynicism and learn to connect with each other again.

    A study at Harvard that was conducted over a staggering seventy-five years has proven beyond any doubt that that when it comes to being happier in every way, it’s all about making real connections:

    “The more areas in your life you can make connection the better…The study’s most important finding is that the only thing that matters in life is relationships…Happiness is love. Full stop.”

    But before we can make powerful connections with others, there’s someone else we need to connect with—ourselves.

    When we are disconnected from ourselves, we lose our power and our confidence in our abilities; thus, our ability to trust ourselves diminishes. And if we can’t trust ourselves, how can we trust others?

    So, we need to take the time to discover our own wants and desires and to connect fully with our core values. When we have this self-knowledge a lot of other things quickly fall into place.

    You can practice this in small ways too. Take time throughout the day to engage in a tech-free walk in nature and get your peripatetic system working. You’ll be surprised how quickly you connect with your truth when you’re completely alone with no distractions of any kind.

    Meditation, too, is a great way of just being with yourself fully. You’ll often find you have great insights once you actively create some silence for a short period and calibrate yourself. In this way, we can quickly become a person who is so focused on their path that cynicism never even gets a look in.

    When we connect with the vision we have for ourselves, we gain clarity and can then relax, become more comfortable, and begin to create real connections with the world outside.

    When you take the time to do this, you make peace with yourself, and it is from this position of power that you can create powerful moments with other people and become the source of good energy wherever you go.

    You can start this today: Practice actively connecting with people on a deep, powerful level. Look into their eyes just that extra second longer; give a hug that has real emotion behind it, a handshake that lasts a little longer than normal, or a comment that hits just right.

    With every person you talk to from now on, make a connection. Create a moment. Turn off the rest of the world and just, warmly, be with them.

    Do this right and it’ll feel like you’ve made time stand still. You’ll soon realize how great you not only make others feel, but how great you feel yourself as your connection and empathy for the world grows.

    Because flip back to the “cynical optimist” version of me you met at the start, and you’d see someone who regularly reacted badly to others, who got annoyed easily.

    I’m sure we all have had those times when other people have riled us—the man on the street walking too slowly in front of us or too close behind us, the rude checkout girl who can’t raise a smile, the work colleague who makes bad jokes or talks too much.

    We know that getting annoyed only ultimately harms ourselves. If something annoys you, that’s on you. And while we might think we’re displaying dominance and superiority by getting annoyed, really, all we’re doing is giving away our power and becoming disconnected to others and our true, better selves.

    Researchers have dubbed this fundamental attribution error, which states that we tend to give too much weight to someone’s personality or disposition in explaining their behavior in a given situation.

    In other words, we all too often take one single thing that someone does and use it to make a judgment on their entire persona. I’m sure you can agree that this does not help at all in creating honest connections with our fellow humans.

    We need to combat this bias whenever we can. A great technique I found, that immediately helps us feel more present and connected with others, is to consciously reframe the event.

    When you feel yourself getting a little antsy, rather than stewing on it and becoming disconnected and wound up, simply change the story.

    That man walking too fast behind you? He’s late for his new job and is a little worried about what his new boss will say.

    The sulky checkout assistant? They’ve just split up with their partner and feel heartbroken.

    If someone annoys you, tell yourself a story about why they are doing what they’re doing, and reframe it in a way that you can relate to.

    In this way we can all learn to be a little more empathetic, a little more connected, a little nicer even.

    And like I say, living this way really is a win/win situation all round; as you grow more connected with yourself and your environment, your own power and confidence will grow as a result. So create moments, reframe the stories you tell yourself about others, and show up in the world as a source of great emotions.

    That’s something we can all connect with.

  • What to Do When You’re Having Trouble Making New Friends

    What to Do When You’re Having Trouble Making New Friends

    “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ~Albert Einstein

    I’m sitting on the couch by myself watching Dexter reruns on Netflix. But I can hardly focus on the show. I’m freaking out because I still haven’t made any friends, even though I moved here over a month ago.

    I keep thinking to myself: “Will all my Saturdays look like this?” “Will I actually be able to make new friends and build that social circle I was so excited to have?”

    Let me rewind just a bit.

    It’s a hot and sunny summer day in Southern California.

    After hours of Tetris-like packing, my Toyota Corolla is packed to the brim with everything I consider important. My guitar amp has clothes stuffed in the back of it. Even my snowboard is upside down, forming to the shape of the roof.

    I should be exhausted from packing, but I’m not. I’m beaming. Smiling from ear to ear, I can’t wait to start a new chapter in my life.

    With a new promotion in hand, I am given the task of opening a new office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have never even been to New Mexico before, but I am ecstatic to meet new people and create new life experiences. So I hop in my car and make the fifteen-hour drive to begin my new adventure.

    I’ve arrived in New Mexico, and I am high on life in the high desert of Santa Fe.

    Life is great. I’m loving the delicious, authentic New Mexican food and the warm monsoons with crazy lightning. I’m spending my time getting to know the wonderful city of Santa Fe.

    More than a month goes by and, just as monsoon season is ending, I’m all settled in and enjoying my job. However, the excitement of making new friends and living the dream is starting to disappear. Actually, it’s starting to turn into fear.

    I’ve never felt so lonely in my life.

    Day after day, anxiety slowly grows deep inside my body. When will I start to make new friends? Will I ever even make any friends here?

    The fear of loneliness is eating me alive. Especially because I didn’t think that this would be a problem at all. But it’s making it hard for me to focus on anything but my inability to make friends.

    I know that if I want to meet new people and make friends that it is up to me. I need to take action and be proactive. The only problem is that I don’t really know how.

    But I try anyway.

    I muster up the motivation to go to a public pub crawl on a Saturday night and tell myself that I am going to turn things around and move toward my social goals. When I finally realize at the end of the night that I only spoke to one person the entire time, it only deepens the pain and stress.

    As bad as it seemed and felt, some good things were taking root even though I didn’t know it at the time. I had been on a self-help kick for quite some time and was constantly reading and doing what I could to improve my life.

    By some stroke of luck and beautiful timing, I got my hands on the book Yes Man by Danny Wallace. In it, recently single Danny was falling into isolation and loneliness until he decided to say yes to everything, and in the book he recounts the events that unfolded.

    In short, he met tons of new people, did a bunch of crazy things, and had one hell of an adventure.

    I read the entire book in one day—quite a feat for me. I may not have known it at the time, but this was a pivotal moment in my life. It fundamentally changed my beliefs and the way I look at life.

    I was missing opportunities left and right.

    My problem wasn’t an unwillingness to do new things; my problem was how picky I was being about the things I chose to do. I would turn down going to music in the Santa Fe Plaza because, “eh, that music doesn’t seem to interest me.” I would turn down an invite to hang out with someone because, “he didn’t seem that cool.”

    But then, after reading Yes Man and deciding that I need to be way more open to new experiences and new people, I decided to be much less picky.

    I hung out with a forty-year-old Texan I met through email and went to a strange and interesting event called Zozobra. I went to a college football game in Albuquerque (definitely not my wheelhouse) and to the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Festival. I also played darts with some people in the back of a cigar club.

    On a Monday evening around 8:00 PM, rather than calling it a night and turning down an offer to go to a BBQ at a friend of a friend’s house, I went. But it wasn’t easy. I still had all those thoughts running through my head: “it’s late,” “you’re tired,” “you have work tomorrow,” “just go next time,” yada yada yada.

    This time, though, I decided to say yes. Even with the knowledge that I had to find my way around the ridiculous streets of Santa Fe, which don’t seem to make any sense whatsoever.

    When I arrive, the friend that invited me meets me out front and shows me in. He introduces me to the hostess who was throwing the BBQ. Fortunately, I’m welcomed with open arms.

    I’m offered dinner, but go straight to dessert (5:00PM is much closer to my dinner time). I sit down at the table and start to talk with a group of six people. I get to know them and they get to know me.

    They seemed cool, although I didn’t think they were anything special. I got a couple numbers at the end of the night and went home.

    The seeds are sown.

    Over the next month, I slowly started to hang out with these new people. One of them invited me to go bowling with his friends. Another invited me to get drinks with some people.

    The momentum kept building and eventually I met a bunch of new people and was doing new things regularly. Before I knew it, I had a core group of five really good friends, and was talking to and hanging out with many others. Things were finally starting to turn around.

    Even though I didn’t think they were anything special right when I first met them, they ended up being some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. Truly great friends—the type that bring soup to your house during their lunch break when you’re sick.

    Had I continued to judge people before getting to know them, I would never have made the friends I did. Coming from Southern California, I had a much different style and culture than the people I met. I could have easily just asked, “are these really people I want to become friends with?”

    Or, after meeting everyone at the BBQ, I could have shrugged them off and not hung out with them the following times.

    Well, deciding to say yes was the best decision of my life. It’s been almost four years since I left Santa Fe and moved back to So Cal, and I’m still good friends with those people. I’ll even see many of them at my wedding in September.

    This whole process taught me so much. Particularly, that it’s the person on the inside that is much more important than what you see on the outside. The person that you get to know over time, not in the first few minutes you meet them.

    And I’m not saying that just to be sweet and nice. People that I would have typically judged as “not my type” ended up being some of the coolest people I have ever met. Those are things you don’t realize the first time you meet someone.

    What Saying Yes Looks Like

    When people are inviting you to do things with them, you want to be reactively saying yes. Otherwise, you will need to be proactively saying yes by finding your own opportunities to meet people.

    Proactively say yes: Be proactive and find new things to do, while doing your best to meet new people when you are doing them. This can be joining a book club, an adult-league soccer team, or a weekly board game meet up. It can be volunteering or seeing a band at a local bar.

    It can also mean finding people online and emailing them, or going to the disc-golf course and pairing up with others. The goal is to find new experiences where you can meet new people, and then say yes to yourself by going!

    Reactively say yes: When people invite you to do different things with them, say yes. Although you might not be sure if you really like the person yet, or you don’t think the event or activity is something you’d have a lot of fun doing, do it anyway. And do it with the intent of getting to know the people you go with and meeting new people while you’re there.

    Being open to new experiences and new people changed my life dramatically for the better. If you are having trouble making new friends, wherever you are, you might want to consider saying yes more often.

  • 3 Ways to Build Stronger, Deeper Friendships

    3 Ways to Build Stronger, Deeper Friendships

    Friends

    “No friendship is an accident.” –O. Henry, Heart of the West

    Recently I was telling a friend how grateful I was that she had initiated a get-together.

    “No one ever reaches out to me,” I complained. “I feel like I am the one driving all of my relationships.”

    “Well,” she responded, “don’t think too highly of me. I almost never reach out…to anyone.”

    I mulled this over on my way home that evening. I have often felt like the driving force behind many of my relationships. But I have also felt on many occasions that I’m just as bad at keeping in touch as my friends.

    The truth is, many of us are terrible at relationships. We leave our social connections up to chance, only spending time with the people we happen to see during the course of our week.

    Sometimes we invite people to spend time with us, but then once they get there we divert half of our attention talking to friends on our phone. Some of us are good at having actual conversations, but not very deep ones—we stick to topics like the weather, the results of the recent sports game in the city, or what’s trending on social media.

    We have come to prize friendships of “convenience” above friendships of substance.

    It’s become more important to us that we make our next meeting or social engagement, respond to the most recent tweet, or check out what’s trending on Facebook than to take the real, raw time it requires to build solid, edifying relationships.

    However you look at it, there is a lot of room for growth when it comes to building friendships and community in our day and age. What are some ways you can foster caring and supportive relationships today in a digital, easily distracted world?

    1. Initiate and reciprocate.

    As much as we all want to be invited by others, you have to remember that they are craving to feel included just as much as you are. You could wait for someone else to ask you to do something, but you may be waiting forever.

    Swallow your pride and just take the first step. Invite them over for dinner, grab coffee in the morning, check out your local museum, go to a concert together or a walk in the park—the possibilities are endless.

    Not all relationships that you initiate will pan out, but being willing to take that first step can go a long way toward creating the foundation of a lasting friendship.

    Of course, this won’t be the only step. Equally as important as initiating is reciprocating when someone else reaches out to you. Initiating with someone once is not going to get you very far if you don’t follow up with more invitations, or they don’t reciprocate in kind.

    I have countless friendships that have burned out because I became frustrated with always being the one to suggest outings. Don’t be that friend. If someone has made the effort to reach out to you, give them the courtesy of doing the same for them.

    2. Be present.

    If we want to develop deep relationships, we’ve got to put down our phones. Or tablets, or computers, or whatever else is distracting us from really connecting with the people sitting right in front of us.

    Consciously focus on listening to what people are saying. Respond accordingly. Ask questions that show you really care about them. If they tell you about something they’re struggling with or excited about, bring it up the next time you talk to them.

    People will be much more willing to invest in you if they feel you truly care about them and what’s going on in their lives, and you can only make them feel you care about them if you really do care. Put the distractions away and commit to being present with your friend for the time you are together.

    I think about this principle often when I contrast my relationships with my brother and my husband.

    My brother is addicted to his phone. He is always on it—updating his social media accounts, responding to texts, or doing research for work.

    When I have asked him to put it down and focus on me, he usually gets annoyed with me. This has caused enormous tension and friction between us, because I feel unimportant and he feels like I’m trying to control him.(Granted, as siblings there is plenty of other baggage between us to cause friction, but the phone is definitely a big part of it.)

    My husband, on the other hand, makes a very conscious, intentional effort to not even have his phone within arm’s reach when he is talking with other people.

    I consistently hear people remark on how loved and important he makes them feel, and personally I have never felt like I was playing second fiddle when I’m around him. It makes me feel so much more comfortable around and close to him.

    I cannot overestimate how important it is to a good relationship to make people feel valued when you’re with them.

    3. Open up and be real.

    Sometimes people need to be coaxed out of their shells by hearing someone else share before they’re willing to do the same. Don’t assume that if you start telling them about yourself they will judge you or remain taciturn.

    Give them the benefit of the doubt and just be willing to open up. Tell them about your life. Ask about theirs.

    After I first got married, I sunk into depression—I know, not exactly the “happily ever after” that I was hoping for. I felt so lost, so alone. Everyone around me was living their happy little perfect lives, and here I was floundering hopelessly all by myself.

    When I finally mustered up the courage to talk to my friends about my challenges, however, I realized that no one actually has a perfect life. Many of them were struggling with some of the very same things that I was, and by being real and honest with them I found succor, solidarity, and hope during a very dark period of my life.

    Be vulnerable enough to tell people what you hope for and need. Your friends want to help you, but they’re not mind readers. Giving them a little insight into your life can go a very long way.

    This list seems so simple! And yet, it is so rarely actually executed. I know so many people, myself included, who have pined for deeper friendships for years and yet never actually taken the time to invest in them. True friendships take work. With a little effort, together we can build better and more supportive communities.

    What can you do today to start deepening a relationship that you care about?

  • 6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    Best Friends

    “Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” ~Muhammad Ali

    Doesn’t it hurt?

    You develop a friendship with someone who appeared to be decent but turned out to be a huge problem in your life.

    I’m not talking about those occasional slip-ups like keeping you waiting at the coffee shop until 4:10 when the rendezvous was scheduled for 4:00.

    I mean those things that completely slash the fabric of your friendship—stuff that truly hurts, like harsh words that prey on your weaknesses and sensitivities, or complete betrayal of your trust and abuse of your goodwill.

    We’re all vulnerable to being hurt by those closest to us, and I’m no exception.

    Over the years, I’ve made friends with several people who turned out to be destructive to my well-being.

    Some had spoken words to me that cut like blades. Others had coldly accused me of things I wouldn’t even dream of doing, just to save their own hide.

    But despite the pain and anguish those experiences put me through, they were telling moments in my life because they forced me to rethink my understanding of the true meaning of friendship.

    We often befriend someone because we see commonalities in them. They have shared interests, a common background, or a similar sense of humor. But while all those things are important, they’re not enough to build a deep-rooted, long-lasting friendship on, at least not by themselves.

    I had lots in common with my friends, and they always cracked me up, so why did they end up hurting me? Something was obviously missing, and after some deep reflection, I found out what it was.

    For a true friendship to form, it has to be mutually built on the essentials—strong pillars that burrow deep beyond the superficial stuff.

    Here are the six signs you have a strong friendship that will stand the test of time.

     1. You stick with each other through the highs and lows.

    You don’t desert each other when things get tough or suspiciously start spending less time together after a promotion at work.

    Your relationship doesn’t fluctuate based on each other’s bank balance, the kind of people you hang out with, or any other trivial variables.

    Your connection to one another stems from one creed—you are friends because you want to be.

    2. You keep each other in the loop.

    You have trust and confidence in each other, and you’ll come to each other directly if any problems arise between you instead of talking behind each other’s backs about it.

    You try your best to avoid getting a third party involved if you do have problems because you cherish how your friendship is like a coin—it’s two-sided and in no need of a third to be complete.

    You’re close enough to confide your problems in each other and come to a sensible solution between yourselves.

    By doing this, you both show that you are actively eradicating any potential threats to your friendship’s survival and that you genuinely care about preserving it.

    3. You view each other through a positive lens.

    You both realize that you’re human and make mistakes, so you give each other the benefit of the doubt.

    You forgive and pardon the petty stuff and don’t reignite the flames of bad memories.

    One day, my friend came over with a gift to encourage me in my studies.

    Now, I’m kind of quirky. I only do well in my studies if I stay focused through my own motivations, and I see outside encouragement as a distraction.

    I know my friend meant well, but at that moment, I rejected his gift with some snappy comment without explaining my position. I regretted it almost instantly.

    Thankfully, he gave me the benefit of the doubt and hasn’t mentioned that little blooper to this day. (Let’s hope he doesn’t mention it anytime in the near future!) Now that’s a true friend.

    4. You respect each other’s boundaries.

    You both acknowledge that you come from different backgrounds and have different upbringings, so you understand that differences of opinion are inevitable.

    You also handle those differences of opinion and other sensitivities tastefully and respectfully.

    You don’t impose your mindsets on each other, take a swipe at each other’s opinions, or become irritated if you differ on something because you both know that respecting and being respected are critical factors in maintaining a good friendship.

    You also value and treat each other as people with freedom of choice and don’t expect each other to bend out of character to entertain quirks and caprices.

    5. You share each other’s shortcomings as a gift.

    You don’t always have a hey-it’s-all-good attitude. You won’t hesitate to advise each other about a particular shortcoming because you deeply care for one another and don’t want to see each other hurt.

    Oscar Wilde once said, ”True friends stab you in the front,” and how true that was for me a few years back when I was developing a strong friendship with someone from a different culture.

    We were watching a bunch of boisterous kids wrestling, and I jokingly said, “They’re like animals!”

    I didn’t think much of it, but he immediately brought to my attention that saying something like that in his culture is very offensive and that it’s like belittling the children and their parents to a sub-human level.

    I really appreciated his sincere concern for me because if he hadn’t corrected my mistake there and then, I probably would have hurt someone with my goofy jokes!

    6. You want for each other what you want for yourself.

    You are both perfectly aware that envy is a massive threat to your friendship and that it can wreak unpredictable havoc because it’s like a festering pot itching to erupt and spew out its nasty contents.

    So you are genuinely happy for each other’s success and aren’t consumed by jealousy when one surpasses the other in any way, like with career, money, or popularity.

    When one of you comes to know of the other’s success, you react positively with hand-on-heart sincerity instead of continuously repeating the phrase, “It should have been me.”

    You are like one mind, and you see each other’s success as your success.

    Build Your Pillars of Deep-Rooted Friendship

    Friendship is truly an invaluable treasure, but only if it’s built on the right pillars. Otherwise, you risk your friends disappointing you when you most need them.

    If you’re looking to deepen and cement your friendship with someone, use these six pillars as your guidelines. Make sure they’re concretely intact, both on your side and theirs, and you’ll begin to relish the sweet fruits of true friendship.

    Or perhaps past friends have put you through painful experiences, and, like me, you don’t want to repeat that mistake.

    So put on your discernment hat and use these six pillars as your screening device. If you see someone constantly doing the opposite of these pillars, they’ll probably hurt you sooner or later.

    You deserve to be in good company, and you don’t deserve to be hurt by the people closest to you.

    So spare yourself the headache of being betrayed by someone you held close, and enjoy the value of true friendship instead.

    Best friends image via Shutterstock

  • 5 Ways to Create Amazing Friendships

    5 Ways to Create Amazing Friendships

    Friends

    “To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile.” ~Unknown

    Studies show that perhaps the most important component of psychological well-being is not family, material possessions, or career successes, but rather our friendships.

    For someone like me, that is terrifying news.

    I have few friends. There are several reasons for that: I’ve moved often throughout my life, I’m an introvert, and I was always deeply afraid of rejection. But the root cause was that I never learned how to be a friend.

    Books and movies became my source of information about friendship and, as a result, I had wildly unrealistic expectations. People constantly disappointed me; I was hurt by and fought with every significant friend in my life.

    My inability to create and maintain authentic relationships brought me great pain. I wrote myself off as a loser, inherently flawed, and doomed to be friendless. Luckily, I realized I could teach myself to be a better friend and build meaningful connections.

    Now, I actively seek out new friendships, evaluate my current ones, and fully invest in continuing those that have all the elements of an amazing friendship. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

    It is never too late to learn to be an amazing friend.

    Here’s how:

    1. Make conscious choices.

    I never actively chose my friends; they were based on proximity and convenience. Most of those friendships didn’t last because I hadn’t chosen wisely, or at all.

    Now, I’m selective about who I choose to be friends with. This doesn’t mean that I think I’m better than others. It simply means that I understand how much energy and effort it takes to be an amazing friend.

    It’s possible to choose anyone, no matter their religious, political, or social beliefs. I’ve learned that what matters is to choose people who lovingly challenge and provoke you, who consistently comfort and cheer you, and who wholeheartedly embrace your gift of friendship—as you do theirs.

    It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t maintain the friendships you already have, even if they began by accident.

    I met my best friend in seventh-grade PE class. We are radically different people. While I didn’t consciously choose to be her friend, I do choose to continue investing in our friendship because we are mutually committed to having an amazing friendship and actively practice the other elements on this list.

    2. Learn to listen.

    What is the value of a friend? For most of us it is to have someone with whom we can share our feelings, hopes, pains, and fears—without judgment or ridicule. Even though our desire is to be heard, we never learn how to truly listen to the intimate expressions of one another.

    I always loved when people would tell me their stories, and I always responded by giving advice. People often said I should be a therapist, which only intensified my tendency to listen by offering opinions and solutions. I now understand that I wasn’t really listening to people in a way that facilitates amazing friendships.

    An important coach taught me that a true friend understands that each one of us has the answers within us. If I am listening to you in order to come up with an answer to your problem, I’m focused on my need to fix and save and not yours to explore and share.

    This doesn’t mean we can’t share our insights or give feedback, but it does mean that we need to learn to listen to and for the other—not to validate our own opinions, but to encourage our cherished friend to explore their own truths.

    I struggle to be this kind of listener, and I often worry that the other person will think I don’t care if I don’t respond immediately. I’ve decided to be honest with my friends about how I’m trying to learn to listen and ask that they be patient with my learning process, which requires the next item on the list.

    3. Be vulnerable.

    Do you tell your friends how much they mean to you, and why? Do you share your struggles and fears? Do you apologize if you hurt someone’s feelings, even if that wasn’t your intention?

    All of the above statements are necessary for amazing friendships, and they’re only possible if you allow yourself to be vulnerable.

    I’ve found that by choosing wisely and really listening and being listened to, I have more courage to be vulnerable.

    I have a former coworker whom I really like. Close while we worked together, we’ve since grown apart. I’m not sure why, but I think it is because I didn’t know how to be a consistently good friend.

    At first, I got defensive. I was reaching out, and she wasn’t responding. Then I got sad, and eventually I decided to be vulnerable.

    I wrote her a letter and apologized for not being an amazing friend and told her how much I value her in my life. I followed up with a visit and emails. It wasn’t a cure for our friendship, but it was worth it. She deserved the acknowledgement, and I could let go with love.

    The friendships I haven’t been able to maintain make me all the more grateful for the ones that I have. And all the more committed to being an amazing friend in the present by letting the friends in my life know how much I care about them.

    4. Be accountable.

    What is your first reaction when your friend hurts or disappoints you—to blame them or to look at yourself? I’ve learned that to be an amazing friend, I have to look inward before I point outward.

    I have one friend from high school. One. It became the most important friendship of my twenties. No matter how bad I felt about myself as a friend, I consoled myself with the fact that I had maintained her friendship.

    That said, I often didn’t feel recognized or valued. We didn’t have the standards of listening I stated above, and I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable with my hurt.

    Eventually, I lashed out, and she ended the friendship. When going through a personal crisis years later, she sought me out. I was so relieved to be forgiven that we never addressed what had happened, and after a few years I began to experience the same patterns of resentment.

    I began to tell myself that she was selfish and didn’t care about me. The more righteous I felt, the more I wanted to end the friendship. But thankfully, in the years that we hadn’t been in contact, I had learned a lot.

    Being an amazing friend requires looking inward, so that is what I did. I never felt valued in my friendship with her because I never valued myself as a friend. My need to be recognized is about me, not her.

    That’s not to say that the problems in our friendship are my fault, or her fault. It’s not a question of fault. It simply means that I have needs and triggers that are about me, not her.

    If the friendship doesn’t continue, it won’t be because I labeled her a bad friend and blamed her. It’ll be because we don’t have the other elements of an amazing friendship. Because if we did, I’d never give up.

    5. Don’t give up.

    If you’ve chosen your friend wisely and you both put in the effort to listen without fixing, have been vulnerable, and have also been accountable, then you assuredly have an awesome friendship. Yet, this doesn’t mean there aren’t fights or disappointments.

    One of the most important friends in my life is a woman I met when I first moved to Brazil. She is loving and funny and equally critical and sarcastic. I’ve felt hurt by her at times, but we always talk it out, no matter how awkward—because we have an amazing friendship with all the elements on this list.

    If there is a moment that you feel betrayed, hurt, or disconnected—don’t give up. Feel your pain, share it, and work through the discomfort. It is easier to walk away in the short term, but the creation and maintenance of amazing friendships has invaluable benefit for the rest of your life.

    —

    Friendships are one of the greatest investments we can make for our long-term happiness and are often totally overlooked.

    If, like me, you have felt despondent about your ability to be a friend or questioned if it even matters, I have good news. I’m proof that anyone can learn to be an amazing friend and that they really are worthwhile.

    Friends image via Shutterstock

  • When Someone Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them

    When Someone Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them

    Quarreling Couple

    “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

    I remember first hearing these words in my early twenties. I heard them. I just didn’t follow them. Hence, I brought myself a whole lot of painful lessons and needless suffering because I always wanted to give people a second chance, and a third, and a fourth … You get the picture.

    I was the girl who always saw the “potential” in people. The person they “could” be, with a little love and nurturing from yours truly. I considered myself to be one of the most loving, loyal, and big-hearted people out there. And besides, there were very few things I truly wanted that I went after and didn’t get.

    I suffered many disappointments and even more heartbreaks because of this, both in friendships and romantic relationships.

    I expected people to change just because I thought they should be or feel a certain way. But at that point in my spiritual journey, I hadn’t yet learned that everyone is on their own path, and sometimes their soul just isn’t in alignment with yours.

    When I fell for some guy and had it made up in my mind that he was “it,” I made a lot of excuses for his behavior, which was never in alignment with what I was looking for. Well-meaning friends would warn me in the beginning: “He doesn’t sound like a good match for you. His behavior seems a little sketchy.” Did I listen?

    No. My ego was way too big. Sure, I saw the behavior. I even saw the red flags. But I thought I was “different.” I was so special that I felt I could change that person… just by being wonderful, amazing me.

    NOTE TO SELF: When people show you who they are, believe them the first time!

    I married someone after seeing all the red flags in the very beginning. Behavior that didn’t add up to what I was being told, behavior in past relationships that was not filled with integrity. But there was so much about him that was good and pure, and the love and passion we had for each other was real and intense.

    I truly believed that people could change. And they can. But more importantly I believed I was different, and that behavior would never exist again now that he was with me.

    It should be no surprise that the marriage ended and was the most devastating and painful loss of my life. But that was the moment I started to live by Maya Angelou’s mantra.

    The dating world after divorce is a lot of things—exciting, fun, scary, sometimes horrible, but most of all, a test. How much have you learned from your previous relationships? And what are you going to do differently this time around?

    For me, I learned a lot, but I have blind spots. And comfort zones I fall into. I keep gravitating toward men that feel “like home,” except that home never made me feel good or secure in it and it was definitely a place I shouldn’t consider settling in long term.

    Some warning signs I’ve finally learned to look for and walk away from:

    • Lack of commitment to anything especially in relationships
    • Not a great communicator
    • Not being emotive with feelings
    • History of cheating in past relationships
    • Always looking for the “next best thing”

    These are my red flags. Someone else’s may be completely different. But they are things I know just won’t work for me and will eventually lead to heartbreak.

    What I tell friends when I see them falling into the same trap I often do is to ask themselves some key questions and to be rigorously honest:

    • Is this person someone who embodies all the things that are important to you, or are you convincing yourself that you can change them? You can never change someone. Walk away.
    • Are you attracting the same type of person you always do (the one who never works out for you and always leads to heartbreak)? If so, walk away.
    • Does this person have all of the things that are on your “Essentials” List? Those are the things that are your “must haves” and are non-negotiable. For me, those are trustworthy, spiritual, a great communicator, and someone who is affectionate, loving, and expressive with their emotions. If this person doesn’t have your essentials, walk away.

    The best advice I got just this week was from a friend who knows my journey well. He said, “You know what. Just recognize that you are finally learning what your heart truly wants and moving closer to that every day. You’re walking away from people who aren’t in alignment with your core values anymore.”

    So yes, I’m learning. And I still have a ways to go. But I trust that the right one, the one who steals my heart for good, will show me how amazing he is for me…. the first time.

    Quarreling couple image via Shutterstock

  • How to Mend a Broken Friendship (Even if You’re Not on Speaking Terms)

    How to Mend a Broken Friendship (Even if You’re Not on Speaking Terms)

    Two Friends

    “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” ~Mother Teresa

    I kept thinking about how many years had passed by. Did I really waste four years by not contacting my best friend?

    You see, I had a falling out with my close cousin. Growing up together since childhood, we became best friends—more like brothers through the years.

    That was until we had a huge disagreement. We didn’t speak for what seemed like forever.

    Admittedly, I was the one to blame. Though at that time, I didn’t see it that way.

    When someone means a lot to you and then disappears, it leaves this huge void in your life—and possibly all because you couldn’t admit any wrongdoing. It’s something you can’t sweep under the rug so easily.

    During that time, I wondered what he was up to. Should I try to contact him? It had been so long, I didn’t know if I should even try any longer.

    Sometimes we take a sole stand, even if it’s against close friends. Maybe we won’t budge because we know we’re right (or refuse to admit we’re wrong). And if we can’t make sense of it all, maybe we wonder if we should let it be.

    After four long years, our paths crossed once again. I heard he wanted to get in touch with me. I felt the same and was eager to finally meet up and talk in person.

    It just so happened he also wondered how I was and what I was up to. After our talk, it’s like we never lost a beat. We took some time to bring ourselves up to speed, but we ultimately fixed our friendship.

    Reflecting on my experiences taught me some valuable lessons about how to fix friendships. These may work for you too, if you apply them wholeheartedly:

    1. Let the dust settle first.

    If the argument was recent, allow some time for the psychological wounds to heal. If you do anything now, you may cause more harm than good.

    Tempers flared, and hurtful things were said. Let both of you gain your senses first and reflect on what happened.

    If you get back into the mix too soon before you’ve both had a chance to cool off, you risk experiencing a repeat episode of the same argument.

    Time is your ally, so wait a while.

    2. Purge your frustrations.

    Frustrations can and will arise from time to time, so you’ll need an outlet to release stress and keep them from accumulating. Otherwise, they may undermine your good intentions.

    Sometimes you’ll feel the need to vent and validate your hurt feelings, and that’s okay. It’s not healthy to hold your feelings in and pretend you’re okay, so vent away.

    But at the same time, don’t badmouth your friend to anyone who’ll listen. Instead. Limit your diatribe to just one person you can confide in and trust.

    It’s actually about working through your feelings. Talking out loud about your frustrations not only can make you feel better but can also give you more focus and perspective in the rebuilding process.

    3. Give your ego a break.

    An ego may have good and bad parts, but one thing’s for certain:

    The ego is a projection of how we want people to see us. Sometimes, we go out of our way to protect this projection, but this costs us, because we often don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

    When attempting reconciliation, both your egos are just additional obstacles both of you have to bore through to make meaningful communication between your pure selves.

    Remove any defensiveness you’re harboring and open your heart, exposing your vulnerability.

    Face your fear of unpredictability even if you don’t know if your friend will accept or reject you.

    Keep in mind that your friend needs to vent as well; you must mentally prepare yourself to listen to whatever opinions are thrown your way.

    Lastly, be mindful not to criticize, judge, or complain. These will definitely close the doors to communication. Be sure to keep an open mind.

    Your goal, by withdrawing your ego, is to get your friend to withdraw their ego as well and open up, thus removing barriers in order to reconnect.

    4. Don’t be afraid to reach out first.

    Get over that initial hump. It’s not as difficult as it appears.

    Want to email them? Don’t be afraid to push that send button. That button won’t bite you back.

    Afraid they won’t reply to you? You haven’t spoken to them for a while anyway, so what’s to fear?

    Be fearless, take the leap, and go for it. Go ahead and find a way to contact them. Believe me, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, because your current situation can’t get any worse.

    5. End the blame game once and for all.

    Still figuring out who’s to blame? That means you’re still dwelling in the past.

    Blaming something on anyone brings back up your fighting stance. Definitely counterproductive in fixing any relationship.

    Accept the situation for what it is even if it doesn’t make any sense at the moment.

    No one’s perfect in this world, and the last thing you want to do is stir the proverbial pot when trying to fix your friendship.

    Find a way to climb on top of that and gain the advantage of seeing over your obstacles.

    6. Visualize forgiveness before you utter a single word.

    Whatever wrongdoings your friend has committed against you, picture yourself forgiving them, and envision those misdeeds dissolving into nothingness. Let this mindset envelope your soul right before you speak.

    It’s like a golfer visualizing the ball moving through the green into the hole. He has his predetermined path planned in his head leading to his goal. All this visualization before he’s even putted the ball.

    By foreseeing your goal, you’ve already set the right tone from the get-go.

    Whatever the outcome, good or bad, you want your friend to know your intentions originated from peace, not hate.

    7. Apologize for your part in what happened.

    Saying sorry not only eases their pain but also shows that you’re giving a peace offering to the other side.

    Even if you don’t feel you’re at fault, please know you still had some part to play in the fight.

    Say sorry for anything incidental. For example, you took so long to contact them, or you weren’t able to hear their side of it.

    8. Avoid asking “Why?”

    Why is a tiny three-letter word that can cause more damage than good. When asking “Why?” you’re pretty much pinning them in a corner and making them feel trapped.

    It’s like saying, “Explain yourself; you’re guilty!” They’ll get defensive, shut down, or stay silent.

    You can change the question around so that it shows you care rather than appear demanding. Instead of asking, “Why did you act like that?” say, “Did I do anything that made you feel like you had to defend yourself?”

    Asking it this way seems less confrontational and more inquisitive.

    9. Avoid trying to force reciprocity.

    If they’re the perpetrator, don’t feel entitled to an apology, and don’t fish for feedback.

    Expecting something brings your ego back into play. It may cause unnecessary tension and create false expectations that can hinder any improvement.

    Also, it’s possible they may never come around and may never be sorry at all. This is about unconditional love by giving only from your point of view, so it’s best to not expect anything in return.

    If they truly wish to make it work, they’ll come around to explain their reasoning and let you know they’re sorry.

    Doing it this way allows them to learn and grow themselves.

    10. Be prepared to move on.

    This is all about creating peace. However, if after all that you’ve done it does not come to fruition, don’t despair. Know in your heart that you’ve taken the initiative and freed yourself from guilt.

    Why? Because you did everything you could possibly do. Now the ball is in their court.

    Don’t burn any bridges and keep that door open to friendship, but use your best judgment. If you’re treated horribly or abused, after all of your best intentions, then it would be in your best interests to close that door.

    Make That Friendship Even Stronger Than Before

    The positive thing coming out of breaking and fixing a friendship is that both of you know each of your boundaries once you have crossed them.

    It’s like playing with fire and getting burned.

    You now know what not to cross, but at the same time, you’ll have a closer connection from having experienced it. A deeper understanding you couldn’t get any other way.

    Your fixed relationship is sort of like an irreplaceable, cracked heirloom vase carefully glued back together. It may not look the same as it did before, but you can still value it for what it is and fully embrace it for what it represents.

    One thing that I know for sure: if you value this friendship, the time you lose with them can never, ever be replaced. Life is short, and the clock is ticking.

    Get the ball rolling. Make a conscious choice now. Remember, you have nothing to lose and only a friend to gain.

    Friends image via Shutterstock

  • How to Show Your Friends You Appreciate Them

    How to Show Your Friends You Appreciate Them

    “Life without friendship is like the sky without the sun.” ~Unknown

    You love your friends. They’ve been with you through good times and bad. They are the rare breed of humans that accept your weirdness, accept your authentic self, and even love you for it.

    You wholeheartedly appreciate them. When you’re with them, you get an overwhelming sense of thankfulness that you have this wonderful human being in your life.

    Sometimes, however, you get a sense that you wish you could let that person know just how much they truly mean to you.

    Offering to buy a cup of coffee, giving a sincere compliment, and praising them to others just doesn’t feel like it’s doing them justice.

    Trust me, I’ve been there.

    I’ve felt like the luckiest man on Earth for many years because of the people I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by.

    Some time ago, however, I had the same feeling we all get on occasion—a desire to do more. To appreciate them in a way that will make them truly feel appreciated.

    As a student of happiness, I’ve also known for years the positive impact my friendships have had on my health and mental well-being.

    It’s no surprise that the director of one of the longest studies ever done on human happiness, the Harvard Grant Study, George Vaillant, concluded:

    “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

    The research has confirmed many times over what we’ve all known intuitively for years: our relationships are the biggest contributors to our own long-term happiness.

    For this reason alone, our friends are worthy of more than a simple thank you. Use the following six powerful and simple ways to show your friends you truly appreciate them.

    1. Prioritize them.

    To show your friends you love them, show them that their well-being is a higher priority to you than other things in your life.

    For example, a friend in distress who is in the middle of a big life decision calls you, in tears, and asks for your help. She calls, however, right as you’re about to leave for dinner.

    You must ask yourself which one is truly more important. A true friend deserves to have your attention in this scenario. You don’t have to mention you sacrificed a night out to help them. In time, they may come to learn of the sacrifice you made, and it’ll continue to deepen your relationship.

    2. Communicate like a real human being.

    One of the most concerning sights I’ve seen in the past few years is a group of friends at a restaurant all talking … to people who are not at the restaurant … on their phones, via text.

    If you are physically spending time with a friend, the least they deserve is your very existence. Being lost in your phone or other technologies brings no joy to a meeting, and you might as well not be there at all.

    When I first noticed this pattern emerging in groups, I began to encourage my friends to play a game that I read about online:

    Everyone at the table must put their phones in the middle of the table. The first person to give into the urge to check their phone must then pay the bill for the meal.

    People never want to spend more than necessary, and this game works like a charm.

    3. Believe in your friends and stay by their sides.

    We all have one or two friends with massive goals. As a friend, you can be the one who believes in them, even when most others won’t.

    You can be the one encouraging them to persist in the face of defeat, to reiterate how much of a truly golden heart they have and why they deserve success in whatever venture they may be pursuing.

    For example, I have some friends who are extraordinary artists. Over the years, their journeys of making their passions their careers have been difficult, seeing as we still live in a culture than incorrectly undervalues the importance of art in society.

    I decided a long time ago to always give them a small psychological nudge every time I see them, just to ensure their optimism is maintained.

    I would remark upon their talent, ask them how business was going, and give any advice I was capable of giving, without being intrusive.

    You never know how much resistance and rejection friends are receiving in their desire to live a meaningful and impactful life, and they often highly regard the opinions of friends.

    You can be that friend who never gives up on them.

    Objectivity, of course, is still necessary. It would not be wise, for example, to continue encouraging a friend who is on a clear path to suffering.

    In this instance, you can still be by their side when they decide the doors must close.

    4. Personalize gifts.

    We’re sometimes tempted to get the nicest and newest shiny object when gifting to friends.

    But remember that personalized gifts have always, and will always, be more welcomed than any new object on the marketplace.

    Personalizing gifts shows your friend that you remember the unique things about them and that you value and notice their wonderful wackiness.

    Receiving a gift like this, on every occasion, will open the floodgates of appreciation.

    I once brought a friend a portable smartphone charger for his birthday. This particular friend was notorious for never having sufficient battery left on his phone to make or receive phone calls.

    He greeted the gift with much laughter and gratitude, and it was also the most required and necessary thing he needed at the time.

    A gift like this is simple, inexpensive, and easy to purchase, but most importantly, it’s thoughtful, and that’s what counts.

    5. Ask if your friends need help before they ask you.

    I’m not suggesting that you nag your friends with dozens emails a day with the subject line LET ME CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

    That would be more suited for an article entitled “How to Lose Your Friends in 24 Hours or Less.”

    What does work is being proactive in your desire to be a better friend.

    Whenever you think your friends may be in need of some assistance or guidance, you can casually ask them if they would like a hand, before they realize they might need it.

    This is a wonderful way to show your friends they are in your thoughts outside of the time you see each other in person.

    6. Avoid the trap of required reciprocity.

    This is one of the biggest traps in friendships.

    The belief states the following: If I’m doing this great thing for you, you are required to do something equally great for me.

    It’s a dangerous way of thinking.

    Instead, do great things for your friends simply because they are great.

    Expect nothing in return, and you’ll be surprised what actually comes back to you.

    Yet you may be thinking, what about the ones who will just take advantage of my good nature?

    Well, let them. You’d rather find out they behave this way now rather than later, right?

    When you notice this tendency in another, be strong enough to leave that relationship respectfully and rapidly.

    Going the Extra Mile

    We’ve discussed several ways you can show your friends you love them so they will feel truly appreciated.

    The theme among them all is the importance of putting in that extra effort to value the people who have stuck by you over the years.

    Your friends deserve your time, presence, and companionship, and you are perfectly suited to be the shoulder they may need to lean on in times of distress and despair.

    So enjoy the wonder of relationships in all their emotional color and spiritual zest.

    You are special in your own right, and no one else can provide the love that you do, in your own unique way.

  • A Simple Way to Really See Each Other and Be Seen

    A Simple Way to Really See Each Other and Be Seen

    Kids at a Table

    “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron

    Growing up, my family ate dinner together nearly every night. It was a given. My mom also created a tradition called “go around the table,” in which everyone in my family would take turns sharing the details of our day.

    I often think back on this memory with awe at the impact this simple yet profound activity has had on my life.

    While I do not yet have a family, I have introduced “go around the table” to friends at dinner parties and colleagues at work events, and have experienced the benefits of this practice in the classroom, support groups, and spiritual groups.

    Sitting around a table with others and sharing is an experience that allows you to see and be seen, and if you have not done it lately, I suspect it could change your life.

    With the guidelines below, you can introduce this activity to your family, colleagues, or any other trusted group that seeks to nurture and improve communication, confidence, leadership skills, and community.

    1. The table is for sharing, not discussing.

    In my family, going around the table meant sharing about the events of our day. Sometimes this meant also sharing how these events made us feel, but we never used this time to plan a family vacation, talk about chores, or discuss “business” of any kind. This is especially important if your table exists in the workplace.

     2. Talk about your day (or week, depending on how often your table meets).

    You will find yourself wanting to pose specific questions or otherwise shape the way your table shares, but it’s important to keep it very simple.

    The focus of the activity is for each person at the table to tell his or her story in this moment in time. Why? Mostly because my mom said so, but also because having an audience to witness our stories as we tell them is extremely validating and empowering. It also gives us the power to own our stories.

    “Go around the table” also begs us to learn the art of storytelling—as a kid, my siblings and I quickly learned how to engage each other as we went around the table.

    When it was my turn to share, I always began, “I woke up,” and everyone would kind of grumble but also smile. I was funny (and a total hack). I was also learning that I like to make people laugh and humor is a good way to get my message across.

    As you share, you will find what type of communication works best for you.

    3. Just listen.

    When it’s not your turn to talk, you don’t talk. Period. When it is your turn to talk, you do not respond to another person’s story; you simply tell your story.

    Once you learn how to not interrupt others with your speech, you can begin to learn how to not interrupt others with your thoughts. When someone else is speaking, try not to plan what you are going to say. Just listen.

    Learning to really listen to what others have to say makes us better family members, friends, employees, managers, and people.

    4. No one is in charge.

    You will need someone to facilitate the sharing, but this does not make them the boss. The facilitator simply calls on someone to share first, and then rejoins the group as you “go around the table.”

    The table is a group of peers offering compassionate listening to each other. Avoid viewing one another through hierarchical dichotomies like teacher/student, counselor/patient, healer/wounded, or even parent/child. These relationships have purpose in other settings, but in this exercise, everyone is equal.

    If people begin to speak out of turn or abuse the sharing time in any way, each member of the group is equally responsible for maintaining decorum.

    When there are very few rules, you may be surprised at how steadfastly your table members adhere to them, even if they are very small children.

    5. Allow yourself to be heard.

    Talking out loud in a group setting is really scary. It is not something that comes easily or naturally to most people, and cultivating this ability to be heard is one of the best ways to live in a more awakened state.

    When you are talking, and people are listening, you are yanked into the present moment.

    When you learn to share in this way, you will have terrifying yet beautiful moments when you notice that everyone is listening to you. Breathe and continue your story in this moment, and eventually you may enjoy it. This is true for introverts and extroverts alike.

    Learning to be heard will grow your confidence and give you power.

    6. Be vulnerable.

    Sometimes you will come to the table carrying a heavy burden. One benefit of this practice is that talking about your fears, anxieties, or challenges will lighten your load.

    Be vulnerable and share and you will find peace as you allow yourself to be supported by the others at your table.

    7. If you don’t want to share, don’t.

    You may come to the table feeling something that can’t be articulated. When it’s your turn to talk, you can always pass.

    Don’t ever feel pressured to talk about something that you don’t feel ready to talk about and don’t make something up just so you have something to say. This activity demands authenticity or it doesn’t work.

    Additionally, the more you put into the exercise, the more you get out, so even if you decide not to share, don’t check out. Be present and listen to what others say.

    8. The table is free.

    There are a lot of groups out there that offer this type of experience to members, and most of them are wonderful, healing places. If you decide to join a new group or meet-up, do your research and trust your intuition.

    Everyone at your table should feel free to come and go as they please. If someone at your table wants you to offer something that does not feel right to you, whether financially, sexually, emotionally, energetically, or otherwise, walk away and find a new table.

    If you feel scared to leave or do not know how, find someone outside of the group to talk to. You should never be asked to give more than you are willing or able to give, and you should never be made to feel guilty for walking away from the group for any reason. This is true even if the others at your table are your family.

    My mom is a really incredible woman who taught her children compassion from a young age and above all else. Going around the table is an exercise in compassion, and my hope in sharing this practice is that her wisdom will continue to affect positive growth in others.

    Happy kids cartoon via Shutterstock

  • 5 Questions to Ask Yourself If You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    5 Questions to Ask Yourself If You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    Toxic Relationship

    “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” ~Henry Ford

    A few days ago, a close friend called me and asked for advice on whether he should end a toxic relationship with his ex-girlfriend. He still loved her as a human being, but he felt that she was using him for her own personal needs, such as a ride from the airport, and did not truly care about his well-being.

    I thought back to my most recent relationship challenge.

    A while back, I moved in with a group of close friends, after breaking up with my ex-boyfriend a few months prior.

    We shared a large number of friends, so I attempted to maintain a friendship with him for the sake of our social group. Time and time again, I felt uncomfortable around him because of his constant references to our past relationship and inappropriate touching.

    I explained my feelings of unease to my roommates and asked them not to invite him over. I understood if they wanted to continue their friendships with him, but I didn’t feel safe being near him.

    My best friend also held a close friendship with my ex-boyfriend, and didn’t understand my negative feelings toward him, yet agreed to these terms. The same week, I walked into our place to find my ex-boyfriend hanging out with my best friend, three separate times.

    Again, I brought up my concerns. She eventually stopped inviting him over but soon after began bringing around his new girlfriend, with whom she had cultivated a friendship. Again, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy in my own living space.

    I felt hurt. I felt confused. I felt alone.

    This was my best friend, who told me that I was one of the most important people in her life, that she loved me, that she would be there for me when I needed her. At this point in our friendship, these statements no longer seemed to be true.

    I had lost sight of the friend that I thought I knew, and it was time to reevaluate our relationship.

    Reflecting on this experience, I asked my friend a few questions to help him solve his dilemma.

    1. Does this relationship make you feel good about yourself?

    After my best friend starting bringing around my ex-boyfriend, my primary feelings toward her were negative. For weeks I couldn’t fall asleep because I was so angry at her betrayal, and these feelings only worsened as time went on. These were early signs that perhaps I should not continue the relationship.

    When you think about this person, is the first thing that comes to mind positive or negative? Does this person contribute positively to your life, or do they drain you of energy?

    If you can’t seem to get past the negative emotions when you think about this person, it may be time to move on.

     2. How would you like to be treated by your friends, family, and significant other?

    The fundamental issue in my relationship was that I felt my best friend was not respecting my feelings and need for a private space by bringing over my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend.

    Friends, family, and significant others should all support and uplift you, without being controlling.

    They should want the absolute best for you, even if your ideas of the “best” differ. They should respect your personal boundaries and feelings, even if they do not entirely understand or agree with them. There should be equal give and take in your relationship.

    If you do not feel supported and respected by this person, it may be time to move on.

     3. Is there a change that you can make to improve the relationship?

    I brought up my feelings to my best friend several times and we agreed to a compromise so that I could feel comfortable in my own living space. However, she continued inviting my ex’s new girlfriend over.

    Her behaviors did not align with what I needed to feel supported, and I soon realized that there was no way to change her behaviors if she didn’t wish to do so.

    Have you tried to express your negative feelings to this person? Did they value your input and respect your feelings? Do they want to work with you to create a solution?

    If this person invalidated your feelings or refused to acknowledge a problem, it may be time to move on.

     4. What advice would you give to a good friend who was going through a similar situation?

    If my younger sister came to me with this same problem, I would be infuriated that someone she considered a close friend would treat her like this. From an outside view, it is clear that this friend does not have her best interests at heart, otherwise she would understand her feelings and keep the compromise that she agreed to.

    If you are still unsure about whether to keep your relationship, think of how you might advise a sibling or close friend in a similar situation. Taking a step away from your relationship and viewing it from a third party perspective can help shed new light. A pros and cons list can also help you understand your feelings in a rational way.

     5. What does your future look like without this person in it?

    Ultimately, I chose to end my relationship with my best friend because I knew that my life would be less stressful and more positive without her in it. She has since moved out, and we no longer speak.

    I was afraid that I would lose friends if I chose to distance myself from her, but my life has only improved thus far.

    I have kept my existing friends in addition to making new friends. Looking toward the future, this experience has inspired me to more closely reflect on the ways in which I can better support and nurture those who are closest to me.

    You may be afraid of what your life will be like without this person. This fear is holding you back from seeing that you can gain more than you will lose by letting this person go.

    Look around and notice that you have many other people who are able to properly support you, with your best friend of all being yourself. No matter how many friendships come or go, you will never be truly alone because you will always be there looking out for yourself.

    See through eyes unclouded by fear, and you will discover that the sky ahead is far brighter than anything you leave behind.

    Toxic relationship image via Shutterstock