How To Create Extraordinary Friendships

So in this deep dive, we're going to talk about friendships. Friendships is the second category of experiences, and it's one of those things that just brings us so much happiness in our lives when we do it right. So we're first going to look at some of the rules of the culturescape around friendship. Then we're going to have you actually do a deep dive in designing your vision for your end goals on friendship. And then I'm going to share a couple of additional learning resources and, and ideas and books that you can explore if you really, really want to go deep into the area of cultivating the most amazing friendships possible for your life. So, first off, friendships are important. Jim Rom, the famous speaker, is credited with this quote. You are the sum of the five people closest to you. I love that because I found it generally to be true. We take on so many beliefs and ideas from our closest friends that our friends help create us. Studies are even showing that for teenagers, their friends at school have a greater impact on who they turn out to be than their parents, which for me is frankly kind of scary. But it is amazing how much friends influence us. So you want to make sure that your friendships are healthy, that your friendships are with people who are helping you grow. So what are your beliefs about friendships? Remember, in the Code of the Extraordinary Mind, I talk about how we tend to take on, through our past experiences and programming, beliefs about the world and our beliefs become true for us. So as you do this exercise, you also want to pay attention to the beliefs you might have about friendships. For example, beliefs such as, Are friendships a lot of hard work? Do friends inevitably screw you over? Do friends require equal give and take? Are your friends holding you back? You might have these beliefs. You want to be aware of them. It is not the purpose of this chapter to help you hone those beliefs. It is merely the idea to remind you that your beliefs of friendships are going to influence how you do this exercise. Now, I would like to share with you two beliefs on friendship that shifted for me. These beliefs helped me overcome rules on friendships that I realized were holding me back. The first rule on friendship is that you need to always stick with the same friends, that you need to be friendly and stay friends with people who may be holding you back in life, but you need to stay with them because, well, you were friends since elementary school or since high school or since college. My new belief is that your friends need to grow with you. And if you're growing ahead of your friends and your friends aren't growing, then maybe it's time to respectfully start spending less time with them and start spending time with friends who are helping you grow. Because one of the worst things you can do for yourself is to stick around with people who are pulling you down. Stick around with people who don't have the same big visions or the same ideas of how they want to make a dent in the universe with you. Because these friends inevitably hold us back. Now, it doesn't mean that you abandon old friends, but it means that you up level. I consistently, for example, move networking groups. So when I was starting out as an entrepreneur, I joined a startup networking group. And I remember when I joined this group, a lot of entrepreneurs there had businesses that were, say, making around a million in revenue a year. I was just starting out. I wasn't at that level, far from it. It, it was intimidating. But this group gave me a new circle of friends that inspired me. It was fascinating being friendly with people who could pull me up. They saw me as a young upstart, but they helped me grow. And you know what? Eventually my business hit a million in revenue and I left that group. I joined another group where the average revenue for the entrepreneurs was 5 million. Now, again, I was nowhere near there. But by being part of this group, I got to learn, I got to grow, I got to develop myself and learn from this whole new group of people. Again, remember, you are the sum of the people closest to you. Now, When I hit 5 million in revenue, I joined yet another group. And I've been respectfully jumping networking groups, in other words, respectfully jumping up to higher and higher levels of people whom I call my friends. Because I realized just how important your closest friends are in terms of helping you grow. And today I get to hang out with some of the most incredible people in the world. And they are doing often way more than what I'm doing. People, for example, like Peter Diamandis. Yet because of their vision, because of their guidance, because of their friendship, they light a fire under my ass to up level my life too. So remember, you don't have to stick by your friends if they are holding you back. You can respectfully, up level, get new friends, but you owe it to yourself to always stick by and hang out with people who are helping you grow. And that to me is healthy friendship. Now, the second rule on friendship that I managed to discard is the idea that you cannot be friends with people at work. I built my entire company, mindvalley, based on the idea that I only want to work with people I truly enjoy. I mean we spend so much of our working days at work. Why shouldn't it be some of the most fun times of our lives and friends bring fun into it, but there's also a science behind it. According to a Gallup study, people who answer yes to the following question, I have a close friend at work are seven times more engaged at their jobs. So I found that cultivating friendships at work is actually healthy. It's not something that you want to draw a line at. It's healthy as long as you also are experienced and mature enough where you know that friendships at work don't. It don't mean that a manager cannot reprimand someone who say, isn't doing well because they are friends or it doesn't mean that you cannot tell someone that they need to do better at a particular task. So when you have a healthy level of self identity, when you have healthy work practices, a healthy company culture, friendships at work are an incredible thing to pursue. Now with those ideas, we've looked at some of the beliefs of the culturescape and friendship. I've shared with you some of my new models that have helped me improve my ideas of friendship. And let's go on to your vision once again. I'm going to set a timer for three minutes and I'm going to ask you to think about your vision for your friends. So take out your notebook or a piece of paper and let's get started. We begin. Think about what types of friends do you want to have in your life? Who are these people? What do they look like? Some of them may be people who you've never met. Yet some may be current friends whom you want to take on your journey with you. How much time do you spend with your friends? What do you do? Do you have a weekly touch point with your friends? Maybe bowling or dinner on a particular day of the week because it brings you together and you have that much fun? Are there activities that you do with your friends where you're learning and growing and up leveling together? How do you treat your friends? What are the ideal practices that you bring into your friendship? Is it complete transparency? Is it mutual support and self respect? How much time do you spend with your friends? Do you take vacations together? Adventures together? What would a perfect weekend with your friends look like? As you're doing this, think about the future friends you want to have. Who are the people in the world whom you truly admire? Whom you would like to associate with? Who are the people whom you'd like to have as friends whom you could call up anytime when you need business advice or life advice and you know you can trust them. What are the characteristics of friendship that you want to cultivate in yourself? Is it generosity? Is it the idea of never forgetting a birthday and being able to make sure your friends are always feeling taken care of? What type of habits, practices do you do to make sure that your friendship stays solid, healthy and stay with you as you grow through life? And don't think about defining friends in any traditional way. Maybe your friend is your lover, maybe your friend are your children. I always tell my son, who's 7 years old and he's one of my closest friends in the world because we have so much fun together. Who are the five people closest to you that you know you want to have in your life because they make you grow and they push you to do better? What type of ethical or moral qualities do you want your friends to have? Loyalty, Honesty, Transparency. Being there for you when you need them. And keep in mind that this has to be both ways. So time is up. You've made your list and congratulations. You've now dived deep into designing your vision for friendships and how you want friends to come into your life, play with you, work with you, and help you grow. Now, as a couple of tips on additional resources that you can explore to help you see how you can really design your life of friendships. Well, here's what I want to recommend. Firstly, in terms of a book, this is by far the greatest book on friendships I've ever read and it's called how to Win Friends and Influence People. That book was written almost 80 years ago by Dale Carnegie and I read that book seven times before my 18th birthday. See, when I was in high school, I was a bit of an introvert. I had difficulty making friends and and so this book showed me how to network how to connect with people. I learned so much from it. I remember after years and years and years of being an awkward teenager with low self esteem, not many friends. By the time I was 19, I had learned so much from this single book that I was elected student council president and soon I was one of the most popular guys in school. But a lot of it came from the knowledge in this book. Like, like I said, I read it seven times before I turned 19. So I strongly recommend that book. Now, if you're a member of Consciousness Engineering, my online program, listen to the talk on Connecting with Influential People by Larry Benet. Larry Bonet is an amazing guy and his talk is about how to connect and network with people whom you can give value to and at the same time trust that they are gonna be incredible mentors and guides to help you grow in life. So watch that talk on consciousness engineering. And finally, in the next chapter of this program, read about Love Week. So I love what I call culture hacking. Culture hacking is how you can go into a group and you can shift the culture to make it more positive and more supportive of everyone. Love Week is one of my favorite culture hacks, which I invented and I brought into organizations. Thousands of companies now do it. But watch the video. It's about a a simple hack that you can bring into your workplace to create closer friendships amongst the people you work with. Companies have brought this into government institutions, into organized various organizations, schools, nonprofits. It's a beautiful way to create friendship amongst people who work together. It's out there. It's kind of bizarre, but it so works. So check it out and I'll see you on the next video deep dive session as part of this program.