If you could make one life-changing choice to lead a better life, what would it be? The answer doesn't lie in personal achievements or material success, but in the quality of our relationships—including our friendships. Research shows that our health, happiness, and longevity are profoundly influenced by our connections. However, maintaining and sustaining healthy friendships is often a challenge as we navigate the mid-life squeeze.

Join Daniel Sih and Matt Bain as they discuss ways to overcome the friendship recession and strengthen relationships through life's inevitable resets.

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[00:00:28] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, St. Luke's, our health partner from my home state of Tasmania. They're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to be the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:00:46] DANIEL: Welcome everyone back to the Spacemakers podcast. Now, if you could make one life changing choice to live a happier, healthier, and longer life, what would that be? It's a super important question and the research is surprising. Many of [00:01:00] us would think about our health, our fitness, or maybe earning more money, but the answer is actually to invest in meaningful, lasting friendships.

[00:01:34] DANIEL: inadvertently by simply neglecting them because we're busy. We're going to talk about how to invest in friendships and the research around friendships throughout different stages of life. And this is part of a broader big idea which we're covering in the Space Makers season two, which is how to make space for life's inevitable resets.

[00:02:13] MATT: Thanks Dan, great to be here. Yeah, so we have been thinking and talking about this for a little while and we came across this quote by an American author, Justin Whitmell Early. That I think just best encapsulates the risk presented with losing touch with friends. Yeah. And getting disconnected. And that risk, of course is loneliness.

[00:02:39] DANIEL: You read that out to me the other day. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's a ripping quote. Yeah. And it's so, the experience that I've had and the experience that so many of my colleagues who are my age have as well.

[00:03:02] DANIEL: What do people say at the end of their life that they regret? And one of the big regrets is, I wish I'd stayed more in touch with my friends. So it's the same thing, isn't it? Yes. That we, we look back at the end of our life and we realize that friendship and people who are, you know, our age, who are We've got experience with us, particularly old friends and people who know our history.

[00:03:41] DANIEL: Particularly the old ones. Yeah. Particularly the older friends. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do we zoom out and actually think about how do you actually do something now, even when you're busy, even when you feel stretched, in order to future proof the thing that, you will really actually extend your life and give you happiness as you [00:04:00] get older, which is to connect with people you care about.

[00:04:18] MATT: So again, I was thinking about this idea and trying to come up with, you know, with some idea of how to kind of best encapsulate it, like how, you know, the shift from the first part of life to the second part of life. And it made me think of a classic early 2000s movie, right? And I want to ask, have you seen this being a good friend of mine?

[00:04:35] Um, probably, but I can't remember. Okay, yeah, yeah. So again, you know, like you'd remember it if you'd seen it, right? So High Fidelity. I've listened, I've watched The Sound of Music. Does that make me cool? Yeah, close,

[00:04:56] MATT: And he looks at the camera and says that the kind of [00:05:00] almost dirty secret is, it's not. What you're like, it's what you like that brings people together. His point being people get together around common interests. That's what people actually bond over. And I think this can be slightly modified and expanded to relationships, to friendships.

[00:05:34] DANIEL: Yeah. You find people who have similar interests, similar life stages, similar worldviews probably, and therefore you connect based on what you're like.

[00:05:53] MATT: So the quality of person that you are and that you bring to friendships. So do you mean

[00:06:02] MATT: the common interest. Yeah. And not just the person you are, but I guess like the friend, the kind of friend who you are. So yeah. So again, as we've already kind of talked about and hinted at in that midlife squeeze, life is going to be probably more difficult in pretty predictable ways.

[00:06:33] DANIEL: I like it. All right. I'll have to go back to that movie.

[00:07:03] DANIEL: So the framework we talked about last week was that if you're younger, you want to say yes to as much as possible. Just swing at everything using the baseball analogy and, and basically build skills and learn stuff. But as you get older, let's say you hit our age, you're a professional, you're a leader, you've got lots of opportunities, you've got lots in your life.

[00:07:40] DANIEL: And that means to say yes to something that is a stretch, something new, a new opportunity, a new responsibility. Push yourself into a position where you're doing something you're uncomfortable with in order to grow and develop. And build your productivity muscles. So what did you say yes to? And if you're older and you're more [00:08:00] experienced, you're further along in your career and you're feeling stretched and busy for, let's say the right reasons.

[00:08:23] MATT: I did. I did. I did do something.

[00:08:42] MATT: Yeah. I found it really difficult. To be honest with you, because almost all my no's involved people. So there were, it was actually saying no to relational opportunities, which I don't find easy because you know, I, I like people and I like hanging out with people. I don't like disappointing people. And it just kind of showed to [00:09:00] me that.

[00:09:14] DANIEL: When you say people, cause we're going to talk about saying yes to people, actually yes to friendships.

[00:09:21] MATT: Yeah, so, so not saying like no to close friends, but more like saying no to work related type of stuff, you know, like network stuff, I guess, even like stuff that involves like acquaintances like that, like that kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:09:32] DANIEL: actually can get in the way of having time for your greater yes, which we're going to talk about might be friendship. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. But

[00:09:45] DANIEL: mean?

[00:10:00] DANIEL: But I felt convicted that I just have to carve out space for friends. And so I was invited to a networking thing. I was invited to kind of a social gathering. I'm not big on parties normally, but I said yes to both events and they were excellent. There were people there who I hadn't seen for ages and had some great conversations.

[00:10:26] MATT: intentional,

[00:10:28] MATT: what

[00:10:28] MATT: is about. Yeah. Good, good, good. So, um, Look, Dan, we don't want to pretend to be formulaic about friendships, right? Okay, so that's like, that's the first caveat, but we do want to say there are some real differences when it comes to approaching friendship between, again, early adulthood, 20s to 40s, and then the classic midlife squeeze, the 40s to 60s.

[00:11:02] MATT: So you've got lots of energy and vitality. So you put all that together and just a great time of life to go about trying a whole bunch of things, getting involved in a whole bunch of activities to Mike. And

[00:11:18] DANIEL: Yeah. Well, yeah.

[00:11:23] That's

[00:11:38] MATT: So, again, Great time to find that common glue with other people to build friendships. So friendship's easy in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy in that sense. But again, research seems to suggest that you want like three components to make good quality friendships. And again, we're after both quantity, but also quality friendships.

[00:12:04] DANIEL: Yeah. That

[00:12:05] DANIEL: And even if it's not geographically close in the sense of I live close to my friends, if you go to the same university, if you go to the same school, same sporting clubs, there's your proximity because you're there every week.

[00:12:18] MATT: Yeah. Well that, that's a nice segue into the second element, which is just like unplanned slash spontaneous interactions. So again, I haven't had to put you down in my calendar or diary a lot particularly, but just the way that my life is set up and your life is set up, there's a very high chance we're going to run into each other and that's kind of cool.

[00:12:49] MATT: So there has to be some degree of honesty, transparency. I have to actually feel known.

[00:13:03] MATT: don't, I don't want to be feeling like I've got to wear a mask in front of you.

[00:13:06] DANIEL: Yeah. That makes

[00:13:20] MATT: If I go about building quality friendships with a wide range of people in my twenties to thirties, it's going to stop or at least mitigate the corrosive effects of potential loneliness further on down the track in my forties to sixties.

[00:13:36] DANIEL: You and I were Gen X, and so it's important for us not to look back and think, well, just because we had that type of experience, that's what it's like when you're 20 nowadays. And the research seems to indicate that, you know, Gen Zed has a very different experience, particularly because of the move from what John Haid calls a play based childhood to a screen based childhood.

[00:14:18] DANIEL: Uh, certainly the research indicates that younger people feel lonelier and, uh, less connected than our generation did. And the more time you spend online, the less connected you feel because you're actually taking the time you would ordinarily have. With real friends in real time in real places and exchanging them for somewhat more superficial experiences Which are wide and broad but not deep so it's like an opportunity cost

[00:14:43] DANIEL: There's an opportunity cost and again There's a there's a mask like you said because you're actually using a medium to communicate Relationally and that medium changes the message and so it's quite different when I'm hanging out with you and having a coffee versus when I'm Posting a picture of myself having coffee on Instagram and [00:15:00] saying, what do you reckon?

[00:15:25] DANIEL: You might turn around and realize I never had those friendships. So let's look at some principles. If you're 20 to 30, you recognize the need to, to build broad, wide, meaningful friendships in order to have older friends when you're older. How might you go about it?

[00:15:49] MATT: So he's a good guy to listen to like when it comes to making and keeping friends. And he wrote, friendships arise when two companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste, [00:16:00] which to that moment each believed to be his own unique treasure or burden. The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, you two, I thought I was the only one.

[00:16:31] DANIEL: All right. So you watch high fidelity, you know, your real friends watch high fidelity and then you've got something to talk about.

[00:16:52] MATT: And space in my life as a 20 to 40 year old person to explore life, to find out what it is that I like. Yeah. And the [00:17:00] risk of course, particularly in that kind of 20 to 40 space is that you may be so dedicated to your career and excelling at that so well, or studying for it so much that you squeeze out.

[00:17:19] DANIEL: which means you can't share it with someone. Or counter that probably the alternative is like being so absorbed in sitting in a room with high speed internet.

[00:17:32] MATT: That's right. Because you're not exploring the world. You're not discovering what it is that you like. And if you don't know what it is that you like, again, you aren't going to have this experience of finding someone to come alongside you who likes that thing as well.

[00:18:03] MATT: Don't be like the proverbial wallflower, take the risk and say, Hey Dan, you know, have you ever seen the bear? It's a really good show. Or Hey Dan, you know, have you ever like thought about, you know, you look like you're a guy who get picked on a lot. Maybe you should start doing jujitsu. You know what I mean?

[00:18:20] MATT: is most of us are waiting to be asked and approached. Most of us really appreciate

[00:18:38] DANIEL: Yes. Yeah. Cause I, that's where I think you and I would say that building friendships is a skill and relationships is a skill and you actually have to practice it. And the more you practice in person relationships when you're young, the better you become at when you're older and the wider and broader your connections are when you're young, the more likely.

[00:19:08] DANIEL: I naturally, like, if you saw me when I was like, 18, I was, I don't know, I was geeky and I wasn't well, geeky, maybe I'm now, but I wasn't very good at friends. I wasn't very good at connecting with people. I just didn't have the social skills that would help me meet people, let's say at a party, for example.

[00:19:46] DANIEL: Are there any movies you like? I'm not going to ask you that question because we know your answer. But then, you know, to start asking maybe deeper questions as a follow up. Yeah.

[00:20:05] MATT: You know, cause that's a pretty good chance if I'm open to being asked that the person next to me.

[00:20:22] DANIEL: And so that's the question I've asked as a result of that. Uh, the other thing is to think about, you know, if, if you're heading to a, I don't know, a sports club and you've had a conversation with someone, you got along well, and you think it'd probably be good to have another conversation. Well, actually try to remember what you talked about and follow it up.

[00:20:57] MATT: Yes. Yeah.

[00:21:19] DANIEL: And I thought about that actually, because I'm definitely an introvert. I find that Um, I like people, but I'm energized by being by myself. If I go to a party, I'm exhausted, even though I get something out of it. But what I've realized as I thought about that comment is I don't think being introvert means you don't extend yourself and try to build relationships.

[00:22:01] DANIEL: And so it's important to stretch yourself to actually ask those questions, to get out and to build friendships, particularly when you're young, in order to broaden your social circles. And I remember thinking after COVID, like I used to connect with people, like I used to have 20 people around for dinner every week for years and years and years.

[00:22:35] DANIEL: And I found that it was just super hard to get back into any type of social rhythm. And I realized that actually social connection and relationship building is just like exercise. It's a muscle. It can atrophy. And so I think being an introvert, you might have to stretch yourself a little harder to actually connect with others, but it's still really important.

[00:22:58] MATT: No, I can't speak [00:23:00] as an introvert, so I don't feel qualified, you know, to be out to bed. But, but, If, if, if I've heard you correctly again, so introverts still need friends. You still value friendship a lot. And we're talking about like really quality, not quantity.

[00:23:19] DANIEL: And look, I think we have a culture which. Probably defines introversion in a slightly unhealthy way. You know, I've, I've got some great friends who are, who are Afghani in origin.

[00:23:49] DANIEL: You know, so that, I don't, I think that definition of introvert doesn't work for anyone. And the research suggests that that's not a good way of being. So I think in our Western culture, which is individualized, where you don't have [00:24:00] natural connections and tribe and community around us, we actually need to extend ourselves to spend more time with people.

[00:24:14] MATT: think it's important. Yeah. Dan C, making introversion great again. That's great. Making introversion great again. I like

[00:24:28] DANIEL: So give me a summary, Matt. If you're in your twenties and thirties, you want to build the protective function of having wide, broad, but hopefully increasingly deep friendships. Yeah. What are the key principles?

[00:24:49] MATT: That's number one. Yep. Number two, be curious, be the person who extends the invitation, you know, who initiates conversations and again, just notices people. Yeah. Yeah. Just

[00:24:59] MATT: Just ask [00:25:00] questions. Yeah. And then number three, If you happen to be an introvert, again, I can't speak on behalf of you, but I heard it from good friends who are introverts.

[00:25:22] DANIEL: right. So we've talked about twenties and thirties, early adulthood. Let's talk about the midlife. Squeeze. Recognizing that the types of things that happen in one season of life require a different form of friendship or a different type of intentionality in how to connect with friends. And I loved your quote, Loneliness is a feeling of being a person who used to have friends.

[00:25:43] MATT: Yeah, again, so great quote there by Justin Whitmore early. There's a couple of, well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, why we may be at risk of this. And the first of the, the first thing again, classic midlife squeeze. You've got pressures from perhaps ailing parents or caregivers.

[00:26:16] MATT: And of course the killer thing about a current is that often you don't know that you're in one, you're just being pulled along until it's too late. And it's even more, it's even more disconcerting and harder to pick up that you're in a current if you're in there with other people because you're both getting pulled along in the same direction at the same time.

[00:26:39] MATT: you and I are both busier than when we were younger. You and I are both probably wealthier when we're younger. You and I, without even kind of maybe acknowledging it to each other, perhaps feeling a bit more lonely than we were back then.

[00:26:56] MATT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a squeeze. Yeah. That's a squeeze. So again, no one chooses this, [00:27:00] right? Because it's the current, it just becomes a default. And that's the big point.

[00:27:09] DANIEL: Yeah. And again, when I read the book, The Five Regrets of the Dying, Bonnie Ware gives a story, an example, I can't remember the person's name, but someone at the end of their life, they're in palliative care, and they just simply said that They realized that they've lost all their old friends and it wasn't that they did it intentionally.

[00:27:44] DANIEL: If you follow the current, you'll end up. Being a person who used to have friends by friends, we don't mean work friends or deal friends as Arthur Brooks says. Yes. We're talking about real friends. People who've got history, people who care for you just because of [00:28:00] you.

[00:28:01] MATT: So yeah. So the big takeaway there is that, is that again, Just by neglect and passivity. So just by not doing anything, the people who are probably most likely to kind of neglect in our lives will be our old friends, because again, they're the ones who we can most often take for granted. We think they've been around for decades.

[00:28:42] MATT: Deal friends as opposed to real friends, which

[00:28:45] MATT: Yeah. It's such a good distinction. Right. And, and once someone points it out to you, it's like, aha, yeah, I see that.

[00:28:59] DANIEL: And I just [00:29:00] mentioned the idea of deal friend versus real friend. I didn't have to explain it. Like he immediately knew what I meant. And he liked the term because he just said, you know, at like my level, everyone I meet is a deal friend. Yeah. Like their lawyers, their, you know, stakeholders, their shareholders, like there's no one in my life who is a real friend anymore because he's got too much power and the people around him need stuff from him.

[00:29:34] Yeah.

[00:29:42] DANIEL: Friends, family, real friends who shouldn't have neglected along the way. Yeah.

[00:29:49] DANIEL: zoom out and realize, Oh, when I'm in this. I need to both look for real friends in the moment. So, you know, some of my deal friends are actually real friends. If I was to spend [00:30:00] time with them outside of work and how do I actually invest in all trends?

[00:30:18] MATT: So there's just not much you can really do about that. So it's being conscious. I've got these, these kinds of friends in my life or colleagues I need, like you said, to invest in these other real friends over here. Yeah.

[00:30:30] DANIEL: So someone who's maybe a bit older and wiser or experienced that you can go to and ask questions of. You need colleagues, you need deal friends, you need people to walk alongside with and do stuff together with and, and you need old friends, you need people probably as well younger than you that you're helping out.

[00:30:50] MATT: Yeah. So principles for the midlife squeeze. Yeah. So how do we actually go about making this happen? So at the very start, we talked about. Again earlier in life. [00:31:00] It's what you like and then at this stage of life It's who you like who you like and again, we're talking about character What type of friend are you and this is like this is really really important because at this stage in life I'm not sure if you found this but I certainly have so once you get to you know Your 40s you can have these old friends and when you're in your 20s and 30s you had so much in common So you're at the same age and stage you're both like maybe You didn't have kids.

[00:31:36] DANIEL: Yeah. I used to be a physiotherapist. All my friends were physios.

[00:31:44] MATT: Yeah. That's right. It changes. So if the cement and the glue of your friendships with those people was solely what you had in common, common interests. Then you're in like, you're in really dangerous waters.

[00:32:11] MATT: Time of life or they're surely going to encounter like we are some difficulties. So, will you be the kind of friend who attends to that?

[00:32:29] DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, that's right. But the point is it's who you are and, and the loyalty you have to that relationship. Yeah. And vice versa. Yeah. That's right. Hopefully that hopefully they'll be there for you when you're going through that. Hopefully it's,

[00:32:48] DANIEL: That makes sense. And I think it also means you have to be more intentional because if you don't have any natural crossover points, well then it does require that you are very deliberate. In chasing people up and creating patterns and [00:33:00] rhythms, which we'll talk about in a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So that you actually have touch points and connections again.

[00:33:18] Yeah.

[00:33:23] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, well, actually, no one just drifts apart, or, or probably more accurately, everyone will drift apart. Because we're all in the current. Because we're all in the current. And the point is to make those small everyday decisions to sacrifice what you want in order to walk alongside of the person you're with and change alongside of them together.

[00:33:45] MATT: know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm not sure if I've told this story, but maybe like two or three years ago. Right. Let's just an example of a real friend, you know, and again, someone who's an old friend. So, so this old friend, we haven't got a whole lot in common anymore in terms of like, we've got some common interests.

[00:34:19] MATT: So I was rushed and I was stressed and this car happened to be an automatic, right? And so I was so rushed and so stressed. I opened the door and instead of like, being a regular normal person, jumping in, shutting the door and reversing it, I decided to save time. I was going to put one foot in with the door open and leave the other foot on the ground and it was an automatic and it got stuck in drive, not reverse.

[00:34:58] MATT: I thought I'm in one of these moments [00:35:00] and I thought of this guy like right away, called him my friend and he came around and he like literally patched up the fence. So like strapped it back together for now, help me clean up everything. And then like checked in that I was okay. And then like, I think two weeks later, like insisted on taking me out for a coffee just to kind of check in and actually make sure that I was okay.

[00:35:27] DANIEL: But it's hard, isn't it? To, to think forward. Yeah. You can do it in the moment to think forward though and think, okay, who are the people that I would actually call or who are the people who might call me?

[00:35:55] DANIEL: I did the maths of how much time I would have left, right? And I see them about an hour a [00:36:00] month. And, and that's a stretch, which it shouldn't be. I used to see them every day, you know, but now I see them about an hour a month, if I average it out. Okay. So it's like, let's say 12, 15 hours a year. When I multiplied it, I'm like, well, I get like 30 days with them for the rest of my life.

[00:36:29] DANIEL: You know, it's great to have kids around, but there's nothing like having people who are your colleagues and friends and people have shared experiences with you. It's, it's different than your kids. I don't want to just spend 30 days with them until the end of my life. And so, you know, that pushes me to say, okay, how do I be more intentional?

[00:36:54] DANIEL: Being deliberate and thinking about who matters.

[00:37:01] MATT: Okay. Swimming against the current. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Swimming against the current.

[00:37:21] DANIEL: And I suppose live independently as long as they could. I had some great conversations with people and I often ask people about what they cared about, what they valued. But one conversation really stood out to me and there was this. Elderly guy. He was super intelligent. He was super wealthy and so he told me about how amazing his life had been So what he had done is he had a holiday house or a house in Switzerland He had a house in Hobart and he used to basically just rotate six months of the year and he did that for like 15 years So he always had a summer he got to experience the European summer and then he got to experience, you know Hobart which is where he's from but what was interesting is When I observed his life and the people who visited, the people [00:38:00] who would speak to, and I suppose just we tried to book a family meeting, there was no one, like, there was no one who visited, there was no one he called, and when we had a family meeting to help work out how do we, you know, help this person live independently, there was no one he could call on.

[00:38:20] Yeah, you

[00:38:38] DANIEL: Well, it

[00:38:40] DANIEL: We didn't have a home. He didn't have a home and maybe didn't make a home because he was always moving to the next thing. It makes me think of the vows that ancient monks used to have. They have a vow of poverty, of chastity, of, of, of obedience.

[00:39:21] DANIEL: You know, even the whole grey nomad thing. You know, when you retire, what should we do? Get in a caravan and travel around Australia. But that's exactly what will separate you from old friends, unless you do it with them. Right. And, and so I've really considered that. And I suppose in my life, particularly when my friend Mick died, I thought, actually, I want to take up the vow of.

[00:40:00] DANIEL: So yeah, I think that's one of the. the things that we might need to consider as you get older to stay put.

[00:40:09] DANIEL: on?

[00:40:10] DANIEL: retirement community. It's a retirement community. That's what I'm hoping. Although, you know, I'm hoping, you know, you'll be the guy who get goes out and buys me takeaway Chinese so I don't have to eat that terrible food.

[00:40:33] MATT: a feeling C. S. Lewis also wrote something about this. Is that right? You have a feeling?

[00:40:42] MATT: So I believe he said something like if I had to give a piece of advice to a young man or young person about a place to live, I think I should say sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends, sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.

[00:41:13] MATT: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. And there's probably a link between place and friendships.

[00:41:40] DANIEL: You've got to create an intentional, regular rhythm, which isn't spontaneous necessarily, but it'll actually get you connecting. I mean, you and I both have a friend, Daz Oldclass, and he once said that spontaneity, unlike its name suggests, needs to be planned. And I kind of laughed when I heard that the first time, but I actually think he's right.

[00:42:17] DANIEL: So again, it's the same thing. How do you create regular patterns with people you care about so that you don't end up,

[00:42:41] MATT: Right. So I'm not saying this is easy, but I think it makes it's wisdom, right? It's wisdom. And it's particularly. suited for this season of life

[00:42:50] MATT: well.

[00:42:52] MATT: live.

[00:42:52] MATT: Yeah. So again, like giving credit where it's due, Justin Whitmore early has a lot of good stuff to say in this particular space.

[00:43:17] MATT: So. For example, you could go high frequency. So a bit like, I think your example from before you used to see this person daily. Well, maybe you can move the daily to the weekly. So I could, maybe you can arrange to see someone on a weekly basis. Maybe that's, you know, during the evening catching up for a coffee, or maybe it can be weekly in person.

[00:43:43] DANIEL: done that with our neighbors where like we eat a meal, they eat a meal. So we'd every

[00:43:47] MATT: Every week. Yeah. Yeah. So, but weekly is pretty high frequency. It's high frequency. It's

[00:43:57] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So what you don't do is throw up, Oh, I can't see these [00:44:00] people weekly. So, you know, forget about it.

[00:44:14] MATT: Or if the weeklies is too much, then you can look at doing all those things, all those different options, coffees, in person meals, or a zoom catch up fortnightly. So again, maybe weekly is too much for fortnightly is doable or monthly, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Or monthly. Yeah. So monthly for a lot of people is probably like a sweet spot and that's still, and you know, going back to your example, maybe that only ends up.

[00:44:39] DANIEL: actually something you said to me once is if you're in the busiest time of your life and you're really, really struggling for friendships, at least maintain a minimal viable product. So if you catch up with someone once a month and it's only an hour a month, for example, then when life does slow down a little bit and there is a change that often happens like when you retire, for example, [00:45:00] well, you're not someone who turns around and says, I haven't 20 years.

[00:45:19] DANIEL: Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So monthly is a, I think monthly is an excellent rhythm. In fact, I even have a quarterly rhythm with some people, like when we had book club, we used to meet four times a year because I thought that was realistic, but we did it for seven years and I still have friendships that came out of that quarterly rhythm that mattered to me.

[00:45:39] MATT: Yeah, that's right. So any rhythm works and any rhythm is demonstrating to people that you're not neglecting them. And it's also demonstrating to yourself, which I think is super important that you're not being passive. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm not just like, again, I give up, it's all too much, life's too busy, throw my hands in the air.

[00:45:55] DANIEL: 30 seconds of silence. We've talked about a lot of stuff. We've talked about what it looks like to build [00:46:00] friendships when you're young, to build wide and broad friendships, and to be intentional, to build patterns, to stay in one place when you're older, to do sacrificial things based on who you are, not what you're like.

[00:47:13] DANIEL: So we've talked about friendship, we've talked about breaking the friendship recession and about being intentional in how we approach people in our lives because it's people ultimately that we look back at at the end of our life and think it's those relationships that made me happier, that had meaning, that actually lead to longer life.

[00:47:57] DANIEL: And where you want to head and that's what we want to [00:48:00] do. So we're going to share an activity, which we are wholly ripping off from the good life, but it was an excellent activity that you and I both found helpful and it's based on the research. So when you look at the longitudinal research, the two major, major predictors of happiness, uh, how regularly you see people frequency and the quality of those.

[00:48:35] DANIEL: Okay. So, so this is what I want you to do. You get a piece of paper and I want you to actually write down. And then the vertical axis is, is the quality quadrant. So at the top of the axis, you want to write energizing and at the bottom depleting, meaning who are the relationships that energize you, where you hang out with people, you feel bigger, you feel greater, you feel stronger, you feel more connected, you've enjoyed their company.

[00:49:17] DANIEL: Yeah, that's

[00:49:18] DANIEL: So that's the vertical axis. The horizontal axis involves infrequent to frequent. So infrequent on the left, frequent on the right. And then. Uh, fill it with people you regularly have in your life. So you might start with obviously your family, maybe close relatives, put in your closest friends, maybe old friends, maybe new friends, but people who are kind of connected to you and who you care about.

[00:49:59] MATT: so some of them with [00:50:00] potential, yeah, potential friendship.

[00:50:10] DANIEL: Yeah. So map out the lay of the land right now. So it's your current reality and being like a productivity person. Well, then we want a current state and we want a future state.

[00:50:40] DANIEL: And that can also be, you know, I see someone regularly, they de energize me, uh, I'm not going to ghost them and take them out of my life.

[00:50:47] DANIEL: But actually I am going to put in some steps to maybe see them less regularly or to give them, you know, less of my best time if I need to put healthy boundaries in place in order to create a bit more space for people who I'm [00:51:00] neglecting, who do energize.

[00:51:01] MATT: So again, like, and it sounds like a horrid term, I know, but it's also, this helps you realize the opportunity cost.

[00:51:16] DANIEL: It might not be the person itself, but a situation that you haven't dealt with, old conflict. So it might be a stimulus to say, actually, it's time to deal with this so that this person I see regularly can be energizing again. Yeah. But it's a good exercise. So. Our suggestion is to book half an hour, sometime ideally in the next week or maybe the next fortnight, put it in your calendar, and, you know, set time aside to do your current and future state, think about where you would do it, I'd think of a cafe or go to the beach or be somewhere quiet, sit on the deck of your house with a coffee, pull out, you know, just a pad.

[00:52:15] MATT: template which i reckon is a great idea

[00:52:23] MATT: yeah i'd say i think This idea goes really well with the stuff that we talked about with the happiness curve, the U shaped curve of happiness, and particularly with the midlife squeeze.

[00:52:59] MATT: It's no longer [00:53:00] just about you. What am I getting out of this friendship? It's more, what kind of friend can I be?

[00:53:20] DANIEL: You can't

[00:53:25] DANIEL: slouching, Matt. That's right. We're going to talk about how to exercise smarter. Not harder. And we're going to talk about how fitness goals change as you get older in order to stay the distance. So I'm looking forward to that episode and until next time, make space.

[00:53:44] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, St Luke's, our health partner from my home state of Tasmania. They're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to be the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:54:06] NARRATOR: Watch three free Email Ninja videos and start taking back control of your inbox today by signing up at emailninja. au. Until next time, make space.