Air, Food, Water, Friendships

Life support instructions for being truly seen, understood, and loved by other humans

Do we need to discuss this or does everyone have plans in place for when they are suddenly without air, food, water, or friends?

Many people this week feel the direct impact of Hurricane Helene while millions elsewhere see the news coverage and must wonder, “Do they have food, water, and friends they can count on—and are they still breathing?”

I’ve been thinking about friendship a lot for the past two years. It’s time to grab all readers by the lapels (or bra straps), look into your eyes, and ask: How long do you think you can live without air, food, water, and friendships?

Dive deep into friendships with Paula.

Paula Prober, psychotherapist and author of multiple books, blogs, and newsletters on Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Adults and Youth writes from deep experience that comes from decades of observations and living. She writes from a scientific place and with mindfulness. We quote Paula often because she makes us think, she has a sense of humor, and she’s never boring.

You’ll be glad you took 10 minutes to read her blog about friendship and a conversation between Trevor Noah and Simon Sinek. Click on the video within the article to hear two big thinkers take on a topic begging for attention.

It’s a kick in the heart and head when you hear these two take on friendship. Sinek is the author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009), a best-selling book that started a movement, and Trevor Noah is a writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and host of The Daily Show, winner of 26 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Sinek’s current fascination and obsession is with friendship. He unpacks it for us in clear language. He points out there’s an entire industry to help us be better leaders. There’s an entire industry to make us better parents. Another industry helps us with nutrition and physical health. There is barely anything on how to be a friend.

That got your attention! Did your fingers fly on the keyboard searching for “how to be a friend”? Immediately, you see why Sinek sells millions of books and why Noah has millions of viewers—by golly, they are right! Here’s the rub. It’s a problem when we have a lot of science on why friendships are critical to live and even thrive and there is no guidance or training on what it takes to be a friend.

Credit Tuturgires from Pixabay

This is more critical to your life than a slogan.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1841. He went on to provide some general traits of friends but never got down to the intentions, strategies, and daily actions, plus monthly friendship wellness checks that it takes to be a friend. This is going to take more than a slogan or words that tell us we have finally arrived at being a friend or keeping a friend when Emerson writes, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than a true friendship.”

Prober challenges us with “I wonder if friendships might actually be a basic necessity for everyone. Kind of like air, food, and water. Being truly seen, understood, and loved by other humans. By friends.”

Many people, especially as they get older, lament the lack of friends in their lives. As you age, you lose friends to death or disability, and even in younger years, friends can be transitory and may not stay around. Some people seem to have more friends than they can find time for, while others feel lonely and isolated more often than not.

Considerable research has come out in the past 20 years about friendship as one of the most important parts of a person’s health, well-being, and happiness.

Credit Cheryl Holt from Pixabay

What do we mean by good friend? What do we mean by an intimate friend?

For this discussion and the rest of your life, let’s get clear on exactly what we mean by a friend and never mix it up with thousands or millions of other humans who are acquaintances, touchpoints, followers, subscribers, influencers, classmates, colleagues, teammates, social media connections, neighbors, networking contacts, gym buddies, mentors, customers, and clients. Not even family members qualify automatically as friends, although we might want that.

Friends provide emotional and social support as well as protection, practical support, and economic aid. A friend is an individual with whom you have a bond of emotional closeness and reciprocity—giving and taking seem equal and neither of you is keeping score. We mean a relationship based on transformation instead of transaction.

Adjectives don’t matter. Good friend, intimate friend, romantic friend, or close friend is all the same. Friends are mostly human although the science backs up dogs as having everything it takes to qualify as a friend, except for the communication in words part.

When it comes to friends, it’s critical to know the difference between transformation and transaction.

Transformation means growth, change, flexibility, and personal development. Transformational relationships mean being with you or consistently in touch with in-person communication or phone connections. The whole point of the relationship is growth and support through the thousands of transitions and transformations that define your life.

Transaction means specific exchange or need, limited purpose, and about what each person can get from the other. There’s no emotional investment or commitment in transactional relationships. Transactional relationships are many in every life and there is no intention or expectation beyond the transaction. This is quid pro quo and the bond is superficial.

Start noticing the nature of interactions with most other humans throughout the day. Most are transactions. Some transactions involve money and other transactions involve emotions. You need a smile and someone smiles at you. You need groceries and someone checks you out and helps you put the bags in your car. You go to the vet, the cleaners, the drive-through for coffee. It’s a transaction and nothing more. You open your email and it’s filled with pitches for you to buy something or do something to address your needs. All of that and much more is transactional.

What about when someone calls to collaborate with you or invites you to join a meeting? That’s still transactional. You have something they want and your long-term mental health and physical safety are not important. Transactions go both ways and you can think of many ways you used people to satisfy what you called goals. Maybe you needed more customers, more members, more ticket sales, or more donations.

Credit Rebecca Scholz from Pixabay

Where are the guidance and strategies for finding and keeping close friendships?

My authority for providing guidance comes from an awareness as a child and then through college and early stages of career building, that the title of friend was specific, sacred, intentional, and took as much energy and work as other titles I valued, such as sister, journalist, president, award-winner, and founder. Early on I understood the weight and responsibility of being a friend was the price to pay to have intimate, trusting, reliable, healthy relationships.

When you see wealth as the number of friends you have instead of the amount of money or property you own, life makes more sense. Do you know how to calculate your net worth when it comes to things? More importantly, do you know how to calculate your net worth of relationships and friends?

As soon as you understand how to calculate your relationships net worth, then you eliminate the psychological barriers that prevent you from reaching out. The concern about someone rejecting you, or the belief the other person should be the one to make the first move toward you can hold you back from investing in a friendship.

In order to be a friend and to recognize a friend entering your life, you have to know yourself. It starts with having love and respect for yourself and that makes you friend-worthy and able to “put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.” People struggling with love and respect for themselves are candidates for another, large industry ready to diagnose, assist, and support conditions like depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

In your business life especially, you may have a contact list or network of thousands; still, nobody in that group is the friend who will let you into their home at 2 a.m., no questions and no judgment, make sure you are not bleeding, provide a place to sleep safely, and then have a conversation after sunrise about what’s going on and what you need.

What about relationships based entirely on feeling good? These are like college buddies who were funny, adventurous, and entertaining. These are infatuation and energizing instances that feel amazing and cool off quickly because they lack the depths of commitment and unconditional love.

The point is never to confuse friendship with transactions.

Friendship takes work and brings out the best in you

In our world, physical communities are smaller and more transient. We have more expansive online social networks but fewer people there for us, immediately. Adults who had success in finding a making friends often struggle in maintaining these friendships while managing other responsibilities.

Friendships sustain us through heartbreaks, difficulties, happiness, and life’s hardships. We must nurture these friends as much as we take care of ourselves.

Let’s get very clear about AI and bots. Those are transactional. None of them are your friends and no AI app will come to your funeral, go with you to the hospital, be your plus one at the wedding, or take care of your dog if you must rush to the airport for an emergency meeting.

Here’s my short list of traits I’ve noticed about people who I’d like to know as friend.

Communication Traits of a Friend

Being a friend means being curious and interested. It means practicing active and reflective listening skills. It means asking more questions about the other person rather than wanting to talk about yourself all of the time. It means being the one to call when you think the other person should be the one to do it.

How do you find friends? How do you know someone is worthy of your time and gifts—and you have something special that aligns with their values and aspirations? Listen for the Story. Instead of asking “What do you do?” I always greeted people with “Do you have a story?”

Everyone has a story to tell, and by allowing an open space for someone to tell their story, you may find that you enjoy their company. Not everyone will be a friend or needs to be your friend. Sometimes people are content with just one or two very close and reliable friends.

A friend is a good listener. Do not interrupt when the other person speaks and remain tuned in. There is equal back and forth. They validate your concerns and worries.

They are there for you when you need them the most and vice versa. Do not make plans and then cancel because “they will understand” because one too many of those moves you back into the transaction level with everyone who is not a friend.

A friend motivates you when you need encouragement and you do the same for them. A friend knows when you are stressed and how to help without asking. A friend empathizes with your situation and sees things, first, from your perspective before offering any insights from their experience.

They are transparent and try to never take anything too personally when either of you has a tough day. A friend forgives you and constructively addresses concerns with you so that they do not bruise your friendship. They tell you when you need deodorant or a breath mint.

Equality Traits of a Friend

A friend gives you space and doing so is a non-issue. A friend helps you with goals and challenges such as exercising more or not blowing your budget. They have your back. A friend respects boundaries and they are reliable and present when you need them the most.

Emotional Intimacy Traits of a Friend

A friend does not judge. You can be real with them and tell them anything, including your secrets. They will not betray your trust. You can be your authentic self—the natural state of you, with them all the time. A friend remembers your hopes, fears, and dreams.

Here’s the Longer List of Resources.

Let me remind you to start with Paul Prober and her website which is loaded with articles, papers, books, and the best starting places to find guidance around the “so what does this have to do with me?” issues.

Another recent resource is You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult, Lane Moore (2023). She is the author of  How to Be Alone, a searingly intimate yet wildly funny exploration of the frustrating, messy, and, at times, deeply joyful experience of learning to make meaningful friendships as an adult. It includes how to make friends, how to keep people at a distance so you don’t get hurt, learning your friend’s attachment style, how to identify and ask for what you need, and what to do if you are in love with your friend. This includes insights on animals as your friend.

Are you ready to find out your relationships net worth?

When I work with clients on relationship-building skills and increasing the quality of their lives and purposes at work, we start with these three exercises. Try them on your own and let me know in the comments or privately through email, how easy or difficult this is for you.

1. First, make a list of 50 people you now call friend or may have a past relationship as friend. Include in the list the people you want to go further and deeper with as friend—some still in your transactional list now. Follow the traits described in this article to help you identify friends. Include their mobile number and email along with their name. If you don’t have that level of contact with them, they are transactional.
2. List the top three qualities you value the most in your current friendships.
3. Step back and look at your list of 50, then list three traits of friendship that you need to work on—because that’s exactly the kind of friend you want to find and keep.

The only way you can mess up is by giving up.

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Do you feel like you’re on the edge of something amazing, but you just can’t figure out what it is? That’s where I come in. My name is Georgia Patrick. I work with curious, intense, understanding professionals—real and retired, to tap into their full potential and get extremely clear on their gift (their value) to individuals actively seeking such wisdom. It starts with an email. Maybe, later, a short call to make sure you are understood.