Simon Sinek argues that friendship is a skill most adults never develop, despite its importance for mental health and resilience. There are leadership coaches everywhere but virtually no friendship coaches. He says strong friendships require intentional work: showing up when it's hard, staying loyal through conflict, and choosing people who help you become your best self.
Chapters
We have to learn to be friends. There's an entire industry to help people be better leaders. I'm a part of it. And there's precious little about how to be a friend. And if you think about it, you know, you'll struggle to be a leader if you don't have a friend. You'll struggle to find love if you don't have a friend, because when things go sideways at work or in your relationship, like you have to call someone for advice. And that should be a friend. It should include a friend at the very minimum. And then you look at the state of the world, you know, with rising levels of anxiety and depression, in extreme cases suicide, even the obsession with longevity. Friendship literally fixes all those things. Friendship is the ultimate biohack. But very few of us are actually very good at being friends, right? Like if I ask everybody, are you a good friend? Most people say yes. And let's peel the onion one layer. Would you cancel on a friend because you have a meeting? Would you cancel on a meeting because a friend needs you? Oh, but my friends will understand, right? We're pretty shitty friends, right? Like if you have a really bad row with your loved one, divorce is not the first reaction. You'll go for couples counseling and you'll try and work through it. And it might end up as a breakup, but you really try to make it through the relationship and you seek counsel. Right? If you have a problem with a colleague or a boss or somebody who you're responsible for at work, you don't immediately quit or get fired. That's not what happens. There's a coach and there's a conversation and you work through tension. The number of friendships that I've seen, friendships that have, you know, over a decade and they consider themselves good best friends, one bad fight, One violation of trust, friendship's gone. Why are there no friendship therapists? Right? Why are there no friendship coaches? Why is nobody there to help us manage through friendship? There's assumptions that we make that, you know, I can't rely that I'll always have my job because I'm not in total control of it. I can't rely that I'll always have my relationship. I have to bring my A-game because that's the deal and everybody knows it because the industry taught me that. But I think we just don't think of friends that way. And also there's a range of friends, right? You have friends that are just fun. You're not gonna go to them with your problems, and that's fine. They're just fun. But I think when you start having deep, meaningful relationships, and that's what's lacking. I'm not talking about the silly fun ones. I'm talking about the deep, meaningful relationships. And then I've even started asking myself, and like, Who am I spending time with? You know, I have a limited amount of time in a day. I have a limited time in a lifetime. Am I spending my time with people who teach me something, who inspire me, who celebrate me, who make me feel like I'm the best version of myself, who give me a space to be my broken and best version of myself? Like, am I spending time with those friends? Or am I spending time with friends because it's a warm body and I get to watch a movie with them because I'm too afraid to be alone? You know? And I started questioning the people that I was— some of the people I was spending time with. And I realized I didn't— I needed to work on those skills.
