You've Got a Friend In Me
4 Dec 2019 · 37 min
In this episode of the Elevate Polk Podcast, host Chrissanne Long and co‑host Rob Arturi explore what friendship means in the age of social media. They begin by comparing Facebook friend counts, revealing how Chrissanne’s 5,000‑friend limit forces her to prune connections while Rob keeps a modest 800‑900. The conversation moves to the ambiguity of the word “friend” on platforms, the duality between online personas and offline selves, and the emotional toll of curating a polished image. They cite a study showing that 2 out of 5 Americans struggle to make new friends and note that the average American hasn’t made a new friend in five years. The hosts discuss how political polarization, echo chambers, and the “fake‑it‑till‑you‑make‑it” mindset hinder authentic connections. Strategies for building real relationships are offered: showing up in person, “inviting yourself” to events, and embracing discomfort. They also touch on professional boundaries (separate business vs personal accounts), the value of authenticity in business, and the importance of civic engagement and volunteering. Throughout, the tone is conversational, reflective, and occasionally humorous, emphasizing that genuine friendship requires vulnerability, presence, and a willingness to step outside comfort zones.
Chapters
You've got a friend in me. This is the Elevate Polk Podcast, and I'm your host Chrissanne Long. And with me as always is Rob Arturi. What are we talking about today?
Well, today we're going to talk about Friends.
Ooh, Friends?
Yes.
Like the TV show Friends?
No, no. Although that was a pretty good show. How many Facebook friends do you have, roughly?
Roughly?
Roughly.
Oh, this is a scary conversation. I currently have just short of the minimum or the maximum allowed on Facebook. So I had to go through and delete like 20 or 30 to make room on my friends list because I max out at 5,000.
5,000?
Yes.
Wow.
How many do you have?
I have 800, 900, I think.
Wow, you're very selective in who you're friends with.
So inadequate, you know?
No.
Well, part of my problem was Facebook used to be my go-to for political discussion.
You would rant a lot.
I would, in the hopes of some sort of proactive, thoughtful, heady discussion. What I normally got was ad hominem and memes. So I don't blame people for—
Hitting the unfriend button?
Maybe. I didn't get a lot of that, but I'm pretty sure that I am muted by many, many people.
Well, that was good that Facebook offered that opportunity along the way.
Yes.
To just turn somebody off but not be unfriended.
Yeah, but I feel a little inadequate now with my 9-year-old.
Let me tell you about my philosophy that got this 5,000 friends situation to be a thing. So when a person sends me a friend request, I look at the profile and I make sure that they're like a human being and that they're not in like a faraway land. But then I also have this internal discussion and it's kind of weird, but they might not have anything to prove, you know, they might not have anything in common with me. There might not be anything that they can quote unquote, do for me. But I feel like there's a reason that they asked me to be their friend and I don't want to tell them no. So if there's a legitimate reason why I might say, you know, no, I'm just going to let this person hang out in the friend request room, I could— I can do that. I've done that a lot. But in the grand scheme of things, there's just like a little feeling of guilt. Like, I want— I want to be friends with everybody. I know that you can't and I know that's silly, but that's just kind of what goes on in my head.
Well, You're also an outgoing person. So I think that actually kind of transcends into your real life persona as well. So I guess that's not really that surprising.
Right.
But what's interesting about that is at a day and age when some people have 5,000 friends and others have 900 or so, In general, people are lonely and depressed. And I saw this study, which is what I wanted to talk about this week, was there was a study of about 2,000 Americans that was done by Evite. And what they concluded was that about 2 out of every 5 Americans admit they have trouble making friends. Which is interesting considering that we now have friends suggested to us on social media. Hey, you know so-and-so, maybe they know so-and-so. And the culmination of all of this, and there was some other numbers and facts, basically was that the average American has not made a new friend in 5 years. Now, that doesn't mean they're Facebook friends, but actual legitimate friends, which kind of got me thinking about this. We all know deep down that Facebook friends or social media friends aren't actually friends.
I actually had a— I don't know if I wrote a blog post or if I did a rant or whatever, but I really wish Facebook had chosen another word for friends. Followers, connected, just make up a word. But it got really complicated for a lot of people because there's there's so much wrapped around the word friend that we now have this duality, right? Definition of friend that we never had before. It's like, oh, we're friends on Facebook. What does that mean?
Right.
Probably not a whole lot.
Right.
So when you say that now, you have to make a distinction. You have to say I'm a friend or I'm just a friend on Facebook.
Yeah, that is true. We have to qualify the word now. That might be— might be part of the problem. Yeah. I think there's another layer to this, and it's that we are, it's funny that you use the word duality because that's kind of what I think of. We've become like two people, right? A lot of people are. I tend to be the same person online as I would be in person. I don't know if that makes me a confrontational person in real life or—
No, it just means you're an authentic person.
I would say so. You are who you are. At least I try. I try to be, but I think that a lot of people become a different person. They become less inhibited. Maybe they become more aggressive. Maybe it's not that negative. Maybe they just become more outgoing online. When they're sitting at home with their cat.
They feel comfortable. Sure, sure. I had a conversation. I don't know if I should say his name, so I won't. I'll tell him, that I talked about him, but I won't name him. How's that? Somebody who has a lot of thoughts on social media but has a very visceral fear of public speaking or speaking openly in it. And I'm wondering if you might be a guest on our podcast because this is a little safer of an environment. It is. You probably do exactly what I did when you told me we were going to do this, which was say, absolutely not. But overcoming fear is a good thing. But You know, I think I had a, I did a presentation about who you are online and who you are offline. And a lot of the conversations initially starting out in business and people and Facebook becoming a tool that businesses were using, a lot of people were creating two Facebook accounts, right? They were like, I'm going to use this for business and I'm going to use this for personal. And I would lecture, you know, in my workshops and things like that, like, not lecturing, trying to be bossy, but lecturing, saying, what message are you sending to the people you put on this friends list that you won't put on the other and vice versa? So you're hiding, right? Because Facebook doesn't want that to be how you use Facebook. So they make it hard. So you have this Rob Arturi personality who's friends with Chrissanne Long, and then there's this other Rob Arturi personality that's using a different email that's not friends with Chrissanne Long, but Chrissanne Long has requested or suggested this other Rob Arturi. I'm like, wait a minute, I thought I was friends with Rob. Now I'm confused. Oh, he has two profiles. Oh, he's not really my friend. And you just get into this whole game that you have to play. So it makes it a lot easier if you just have one account, and then on top of that, it makes it much easier if you're just the person that you are, both online and your online persona. Your real life persona and your online persona.
Right, and I think the reason some of those people do that, I think they do it to kind of insulate themselves. So like I knew one woman who was a teacher. She had like, you know, such-and-such account teacher, right? And then her own personal, and I get it.
Yeah, and you've got to be protecting yourself, and you've got students who are gonna want to be your friend, and then if your students are on social media, I mean, you have to— there are some really good reasons why, but if it's just to say, hey, I only want to promote my my business to the people who are friends with me on my business account? That's just lame.
Well, that, and look at it the other way, which is if I'm friends with your business account persona, but not your personal persona, does that mean that you just want to have a connection with me in a way that benefits you in a business sense?
Yeah, exactly.
There's no friendship, there's no personal connection. With me, it's only what can you do for my business? So there is a difference between people like a teacher because social media, at least I know at my kids' school, they use it, they have closed groups for classes and things and they use it for communication because parents are on Facebook. So it works, it works really well. So I understand why they're using it and they want to have that separation. But I don't think that works as well for business.
No.
You know, I think it's because of those things we were just talking about. I think it's problematic.
Right. Well, and I used the word authentic earlier, and I think authenticity— I'm a big Simon Sinek fan. He just came out with a new book. I don't know if everybody knows that, but it's called The Infinite Game. And so there's this two— there's the duality of the game that you're playing. Is it an infinite game or a finite game? Maybe we talk about that in another episode.
Sure.
But one of the quotes from his first book, Start With Why, was, you know, authenticity is being who you are, and you can't have someone help you be who you are. You have to just allow yourself to be who you are. And I think there's a lot of people are afraid, afraid of judgment, afraid of not being liked, afraid of not being invited to the table because they might be, you know, they might just be like the crazy cat lady. And if the crazy cat lady isn't, you know, somebody that everybody wants to be friends with, then maybe she doesn't want anybody to know how many cats she has. But If that's who she is, then it should be okay.
Well, the number one video podcast out there is Joe Rogan's podcast. He has a massive amount of views on every one of his episodes, but he does a 3-hour long-form interview with some noteworthy person. He had Edward Snowden on recently. Oh, wow. Yeah, there was like 10 million views in 2 days. It was obscene. It's because, and here's a guy who was never an interviewer, and if you watch the genesis of that podcast, where they started, they started with the app Periscope.
Oh yeah.
That's how it all began. So it was very humble from the beginning.
So there's hope for us.
There is. There is.
We're starting ahead of that.
Way to set the bar, Chrissanne. Really not going to sleep at night now. But, but But the idea is that when you watch that, when you listen to them talking and they're talking for a long period of time, you get that sense of authenticity. So you realize the person, you get to hear everything, you get to get the context from it. I find I watch interviews on TV that are in 5 minutes, they're so compressed, people get cut off by the host asking a couple questions and you have no idea what this is. But when you can really dive deep and people just talk, unedited, and that authenticity matters. And people are starving for that because we live in a world where, I mean, let's face it, the most scripted garbage out there is reality TV. I mean, there's no truth in it.
But it's reality.
Right, right. It's engineered reality. But I think that that's what makes podcasts like this and just all of those connections that we have out there in cyberspace, whether you're listening to podcasts or you're talking to people online, that degree of authenticity matters. And it's what I think, it's the reason why when you talk about a friend on Facebook, they're not authentically your friend. They occupy a different type of relationship. So you're right, they probably should have used a different term for that connection.
So you said that 2 out of 5 people have trouble making friends.
Right.
And when we're talking about friends today, we're talking about like legit real friends.
Right, right.
And, you know, I will tell you, before I had a social media persona, I would have been one of those people that says I have trouble making friends. I don't know why. I just— I am an outgoing person, but I'm not— I worry what people think. So sometimes it's hard for me to step out there in the public persona side of things, like the non-online. And I just have a voice that I like to write. Writing, I can edit, I can script, I can plan what I want to say, I can make myself look good, you know, whatever. I can— I'm so smart, look at all these big words that I'm using. And that's a— that's kind of a place for me to protect myself.
Right.
And when I started to know that I needed to not just depend on my social media persona to build my business, I knew I had to be me, right? And I'm goofy. I am goofy and I own it and it's okay. And I thought, what the heck do I know about business when I started my business? And if I was going to be able to make anything out of it, it was not going to be by pretending. It was going to be by being who I am. And I'm going to probably say I've lost some business by being who I am, but I don't have to work hard at trying to be someone that I'm not or keeping up. It's a great point, you know, of the pretense of something that I sold hold to someone that isn't really truly me, right? You get what you get. This is who I am. This is how I am. And if that's not a good fit for you, for us to do business together, then good, because now we know that. But instead of me pretending to be very, you know, all suits and ties and, you know, I, I don't own a suit. I mean, not the— there are women's suits, right? Women wear suits. I don't own one, and I could never wear one. And if I had to wear pantyhose, that would just absolutely be a deal killer.
Would be for me too.
I would hate to see that. I think, you know, the idea of making—
don't worry, you never will.
The idea of making friends in today's world is daunting. I mean, you feel like you have to display some happy, happy, joy, joy, reality, unreality. And then you really are— you're buried in laundry or you're dealing with some stressful situation or you lost a client. But keep that smile on.
'Come on, everything's gonna be okay.' So I wanna stop you there, 'cause that is a fascinating point. I see these memes all the time when they talk about you're friends with somebody on Facebook, but when you see them out and about somewhere, at like a store, you go down the other aisle so that you don't have to actually stop and talk to them.
I think that's a thing.
It is a thing.
That's definitely not me. I'm the person that's waiting to make eye contact with you so I could go over and say, 'Hi,' and give you a hug.
Right. You are now one of the other, you're one of the 3 and not the 2, but that I think is a big deal, but I think I figured out why. I think that even though, so like for me, Facebook has been a great way to stay connected with friends that I have all over the place, that I know that if I saw them tomorrow, they would have some idea of what my life is like now, and it does close that distance a bit. However, The way that a lot of people live online is they, they display the best version of themselves. So it's one thing you say, all right, so when I'm writing a blog about ideas that I have, I want to make sure that I'm— my grammar is correct and that it sounds good and it's kind of thought out and put together, right? Well, people do the same thing, but with themselves, right? They want to show the world a vision of success, togetherness, appearance. I mean, all those filters. I mean, it's—
I don't know.
I don't get it.
I don't have time for filters.
Yeah, I don't either.
They're cool. They're fun, but I don't have time.
Yeah. But I think— so what happens is we create this public persona. And then now when we're actually in public and you see people, you realize, well, you almost feel like you're Like you're lying. Yeah, right.
Like, that's not really who you are, right?
Because it isn't. Because it isn't. Because that goes back to the authenticity you talked about. Because that's not really you. That's the version of you that you want to be, maybe, or that certainly you want other people to think that you are.
Right. Well, and then there's also the concept of fake it till you make it. So you kind of have to pretend that things are better than they are so that maybe they can be, you know, it's like it's hope. It's looking forward toward a better day. So it's It's not a black and white, you know, "You're fake." It's, you know, you're really just having to wrestle with, "Can I be myself? Will people like me as myself? Or are there aspects of my personality that I don't like, and therefore, they're not resolved within me? So therefore, I have to try and show a different version of myself because there's something inside of me that I don't like." And that's a way big, deeper conversation that we can't tackle.
Right.
But I think my goal, whenever I am sharing anything with my friends or the people that I'm connected to— and when I say my friends, I mean my connections, because I don't really have these conversations with my friends. I just do like friend things with friends.
Right.
But when I'm trying to inspire others to just allow who they are to come through, those are my favorite people. Those are the people that I want to be friends with. Are the people who I can tell are being authentic and that there isn't this extra layer that we're going to have to get through once we feel comfortable with each other. It's like, okay, put on this, you know, suit and start, you know, doing all of the businessy things. And then once we can trust each other a little bit, then you can show me who you really are and maybe I won't like you. And we just wasted all that time getting to know each other and now there's no friendship there because you faked it to a point where that's not really who you are.
Yeah, it is a very dynamic issue because there's all those components. But I think that one of the things— so if I, from a business perspective, I get it, fake it till you make it. But from a personal perspective, there's a lot to be said for the journey that you go through. Yeah. And sharing that with people. So I went to high school with a girl I went to high school with had breast cancer at a young age. And I didn't know it. We're friends on Facebook, but I haven't really been friends with her since high school, but great person. And I think a year after she went through all of the stuff, she came out about it and started talking about it. About what she went through and everything. And the outpouring of support and inspiration. And I have another one of my college fraternity brothers that broke his leg just in a weird way. And turned out he had a very obscure type of cancer that was the reason that he broke his leg. And he documented his entire struggle on Facebook. And it was inspiring. Because this is somebody who's— this is not perfect. This is not the best version of me. This is the me that is potentially going to die from this incurable cancer that the best he can hope for is just to live with it. But his attitude, his positivity and all of this, it was really uplifting. And I wonder if people really think about that. I know that he does. But how many people think about sometimes, and I'm not one to overshare personal stuff on social media, but with things like that, how many people out there who are struggling with something, maybe not nearly as bad as a rare form of cancer, but just, I don't know, something personally challenging. And then you look to somebody like that and you say, man, this is, here's a guy who's really struggling and look at his attitude.
And that's to me what attracts me to Facebook versus other platforms. The very thing that I love about it is probably what's— but what so many people hate about it is that it's raw and it's real as in as much as you share what is real and what is, what is true in your life. But it's also a turnoff for a lot of people, people that don't want to know what's going on in your life or feel like they need that window to your soul.
Right. Or to see what you have for dinner.
Well, and, you know, I don't even think people share that that much anymore. That's true. Pictures and the There's a place for that. You know, you go into the food group, you know.
No, that went to Instagram. That's what it is.
That's true.
That's what it is. Because I've noticed that people don't take pictures of their—
Not as much.
And the gym selfies have declined substantially.
Yeah.
It's a much better landscape for me because I don't do the Instagram thing.
Right. And I mean, I have an Instagram account and I have a Twitter account and I have a LinkedIn account. But what I really like is that authentic opportunity to know people on a level that I don't have time to spend time with them to learn about.
Sure.
So if you're willing to share who you are with, with a community, then I now have a little bit of an idea of, is this a person that I want in my network or is this just a person, you know, and everybody has a place and everyone is decent. You know, God put everyone on this earth for a reason, but not everyone is supposed to be my friend, you know? So it's just kind of that opportunity to, to know more about you and what's going on in your world. And then also be able to bump into you at Publix and go, oh my gosh, I saw that, you know, Junior lost his tooth. What did the tooth fairy bring? And have a connection to that person that I wouldn't have if it weren't for that.
Tooth fairy's getting expensive these days. Yeah.
How much does a tooth go for these days?
When I was a kid, if it was a decent tooth, it was a dollar. Now people are like giving $5 and $10. What? Yeah, well, I think it started—
I think I got a quarter. Like, that was it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But people don't carry cash. So like—
It's turning into like gift cards?
Well, no, like what do I have in my wallet? I got a $20 bill. I don't have a whole cash register full of ones and fives. Can I make change?
So you have one of those unbreakable piggy banks? You can't just get into the piggy bank and grab some dollar bills?
Well, now what we do is, I think the myth of the tooth fairy, that whole, the allure of this Crazy body part collecting fairy breaking in your house in the middle of the night stealing your tooth. Yeah, it's hysterical. If you really break it down, it is kind of creepy. But I don't think it's really perpetuated the way that other things have. Even the littlest ones really aren't crazy, the whole tooth fairy thing.
But they like the Elf on the Shelf.
Yes.
Yeah.
There you go.
So it's evolved into different things. Yeah.
All of the other traditional institutions are still intact. I think the tooth fairy is slowly being phased out, thankfully. Okay.
If one's gotta go, that's probably the best one.
If I had to pick one, yes.
It's good for your pocketbook.
Yes. That and just the, how do you explain? 'Cause you know, I have one kid that asks a million questions.
The curious kid that says, "Well, how did he get in here?" Right.
Right. And we're in Florida. So like when I was a kid up, up north, you know, Santa comes down the chimney, right? How many chimneys you see around Lakeland? You know, there's some. But so, yeah, it's, it's a challenge.
But so I want to say, too, on this topic that it's not a perfect world. So I'm sharing like, I like Facebook. I appreciate the opportunity that we have to connect in these ways. I love people. I mean, I'm just— I genuinely love people. But I do feel sometimes that I'm insulated by what I can and can't share by my own internal judgments. So if I see somebody sharing something and I say, ooh, you know, that's a little bit too much, you know, don't overshare, right? Um, and then I have a day where I'm like, God, I really just really want to get this out, but I don't want to be judged because I know if I share this, that's just going to be oversharing. And so it's, it's while it's— because it's going back to this whole idea of people having a hard time making friends, um, I think it's just really hard to sometimes have that internal struggle and not have a place to share. Like, there are things I just, I want to be able to tell Craig, but he's gonna— his face is gonna glaze over. He's not going to want to hear it. So that's stuff that you share with a true friend, and you talk about it, and you, you do that. But sometimes it's just the, the idea of, of isolating ourselves is what we're doing. No one is isolating us. We are isolating ourselves if we so decide that this is an isolation tank, you know, Facebook or a social channel.
Well, if more of our connections and our quote friends are on Facebook and we have our own internal editorial board, which is what you're describing, to say, well, maybe I don't want to put that out there. Yeah, well, that essentially means that's tantamount to saying, well, I'm not going to tell anybody about what's bothering me.
Right. And then we feel isolated.
Right. So it does make sense where the idea that we can have all this interaction online and yet be more lonely and isolated than ever. I mean, I don't think you and I fall into that category, but I think there's a lot of people that do. And it is unfortunate, but it's one thing that when I was in law enforcement, Cops don't tend to have a lot of non-cop friends because, well, two reasons. Number one—
Because you're a cop.
Well, right. So, you don't know the people that you're associating with.
You have a suit on.
Right. A very uncomfortable suit at that, I will tell you. I much preferred a shirt and tie and slacks in my investigative days than that. That green pickle suit as it's referred. But people also judge you. "Oh, you're a cop. Oh, well, are you going to arrest me?" I mean, just, you know, you don't want to do that. Some people in that job define themselves by that. I wasn't one of those. It's what I did. It wasn't who I was. But when you're trying to go out and actually make friends and you're in business, let's say, obviously you don't have those same restrictions and those same concerns, but it's still difficult. Because nowadays the way that we congregate is so different.
Yeah, that's true.
Right. So church for a lot of people is great because it's a, it's a neutral environment to associate with like-minded people. Right, right. But where else do you go from that, especially if you're a small business owner? Because bridge meetings, right, right. But that brings me to kind of my, my tie-in with all of this was How do you get outside of that? Well, when I read this, I thought about it and I said, well, have I made any real new friends in the past 5 years?
Me?
Right? Yes. Right? But I went back further and thinking, well, how'd that come about? And some of the most interesting people that I've come across that I've become friends with were the result of my injecting myself into the local politics and all of that and realizing that I was kind of opening up the door to all these different people and new people. And it was great, you know, not everybody I got along with, not everybody I agreed with. But you start to expand your peripheral vision a bit. You know, online allows us to kind of curate our friends a bit too based upon interests. I mean, maybe Facebook does some of that.
That's the danger, that if you're relying 100% on that, you're going to end up with a homogenous view of the world.
Right. And that, so we end up in these weird echo chambers where everybody surround ourselves with people who are, when I say like-minded, I'm thinking similar interests.
Right. Baseline. There's some foundational commonalities that we can share.
Right.
But I don't agree on everything.
Right. And personally, I enjoy those conversations with people that I don't necessarily agree with on something.
I love it when I can have a healthy debate on a topic that a person isn't personally offended by being disagreed with, because then it can just be healthy. It's like, well, did you think about this? Or what did you read that? Or what about this thing? And you can really truly talk about things comfortably without feeling like if I say that, I might hurt his feelings or he's going to, you know, And that's what's so dangerous of the political arena that we're in, in this volatile world.
I look at it from another side, which is I think that the danger that we have today in politics, because you're right. So for me in politics, that's literally my favorite thing. That's my goal. But I think that not just the idea that we have these polarizing way of doing things, but the fact that we can't have that discussion. The fact that we can't sit down and hash out, okay, so we have different political views. We can't discuss that without throwing things or screaming at each other or cussing.
Civility has died.
That's more dangerous to politics than I think anybody in the White House, whatever party you are. The fact that we can't have those conversations as people and we can't come back to something else.
Right. All right. So we're getting political again.
We're not talking politics, but it's that same— because I think that Politics is one of the reasons people have trouble making friends. Yeah, because that's, that's a big one nowadays, right? Um, that alienates people.
But we have to be— so two things you said that I want to go back to. One, you said you injected yourself, and I like that idea. Um, you know I'm a big Seth Godin fan. Um, he uses the term pick yourself, and I kind of adapted that for my own purposes, and it's invite yourself. And so it's awkward to go to an event or a thing when you don't really have a friend on the other side waiting for you.
It is.
Um, and so I have gotten comfortable going to places that I haven't been quote unquote invited to, um, because the event is public, right? Nobody invited me to this Facebook event, but they put it out there because they want people to come. And what if I go and find new people that I've never met before? So I do that, and it's a— it's— you've got to be receptive to the idea of being uncomfortable in order to find people people who might not fit into your echo chamber world of friend to be able to find deeper friends or more valuable relationships beyond the scope of what you expect. So I always, I'm always, I never have an expectation, but I'm always surprised at what I, what I do. And there have been times when Craig, um, I don't want to go to a thing and Craig's like, okay, well, we put it on the calendar, so we're going. And those are the times when I don't want to do it, but I do it anyway. I have the most valuable experience that I just— I was supposed to be there, you know, it was supposed to happen. So it's being receptive to, to going outside of the comfort zone, I think, is what I'm trying to say of, of life, to be able to say these are friends that I couldn't have had if it hadn't been for this step that I took, whether that was a social media step or a live in-person step.
Well, if I can put a capstone on all of this, to what you just said, whether it's starting your own business or making friends or what have you, I think the common thread in any positive change in life is the need to be willing to be uncomfortable for at least a brief period. And I think that things like Facebook, which are, which are great. They, they do a ton of good, and there's so many positive things that you can bring into it. But one of the things that it's allowed us to do is to insulate ourselves from that discomfort. And, you know, we become a little bit soft, a little bit weak, and then you become comfortable. Yes, you become comfortable and then complacent, and then it's easy to withdraw because now everything looks like it's easy to get into the water once you've been in. But we keep pulling ourselves out of it. So, if we can do anything with this podcast, at least get people to engage civically or just organizationally in the community, and everybody's so damn busy, but you have to make at least some time, right?
Well, and getting involved in— my mantra is showing up, you know, just show up. When you show up, and like I said, I, I— the things that are the most meaningful to me are the ones when it was almost accidental, or I didn't want to be there, or whatever, but I did it and I showed up. And the lesson is, you know, showing up has so much value. Getting engaged, getting involved, being civically— being a volunteer for, for any nonprofit, right? Because there's no one in organization that doesn't want you there. So showing up is a step that says, hey, I'm inviting myself to this conversation and I care enough to be here. And the reciprocation that comes from that is usually much greater than you expect, because what's not reciprocated online is that it's meh, it's social media. But when you show up in real life, that's when the real magic happens.
And I think that it's, if anything, when the best teacher of what's— the best way to learn about yourself, at least for me, is through others. Not that they're going to tell you about yourself or tell you who to be or what have you, but you learn things about yourself by interacting with other people.
Well, yeah, you have illustrated that for me by putting me on this show because I never would have thought anything I had to say was worth putting on a podcast. But you held up a mirror and convinced me that that was not true. And hopefully we'll have people listening and then they'll like what we're saying. And, you know, this will be a thing. But if not, at least we're having fun, right? And we're building our friendship.
That's true. We'd be having these conversations anyway, right? That's how this started.
I just think is we don't have a beer. We were— we kind of talked about that. That.
Well, I, I do have room in the mini fridge, so—
Okay, next time.
Yes, we'll plan.
All right, well, that's all the time we have. Thank you for listening, and make sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to leave us a review. And if you have something you want to hear about on an upcoming weekly episode, reach out to us on Facebook at Elevate Polk.