Moment 186: Why You Have No Friends: Simon Sinek AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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Episode: Moment 186: Why You Have No Friends: Simon Sinek
Author: DOAC
Duration: 00:13:30
Episode Shownotes
In this moment, world-renowned author, entrepreneur, and optimist Simon Sinek discusses the importance of maintaining meaningful friendships throughout your life. For Simon, strong friendships are essential because they provide a support system during tough times. He also says it is important for friendships to offer companionship during moments of joy
and success. According to Simon, there are several health benefits of close relationships, highlighting that in Blue Zones - regions where people live past 80 years old - a sense of community is key. From an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies seem to be designed to foster connection. He points out that the heart is our most vital organ, and that thigh muscles helped us socialise with others in our communities. Simon highlights that friendships should be approached with intention, and that one of the best ways to nurture your friendships is by supporting others, particularly through acts of service. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//Gaez34R3kOb Apple -https://g2ul0.app.link//WupI4dX3kOb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Simon: https://simonsinek.com/
Summary
In this episode of 'The Diary Of A CEO,' Simon Sinek discusses the importance of meaningful friendships for emotional support and overall well-being. He emphasizes how true connections offer a vital support system during both good and bad times. Sinek points out the challenges of forming friendships in a digital age, sharing personal anecdotes and encouraging intentional actions to nurture relationships. He illustrates the healing power of service to others as a pathway to strengthen personal bonds and combat loneliness.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Moment 186: Why You Have No Friends: Simon Sinek ) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:03 Speaker_01
Are you a good friend? Are you a good friend to your friends? Are your friends good to you? You know, who do you, do you call people when you are stuck and down or do you make TikTok videos by yourself?
00:00:18 Speaker_01
Which, you know, and you get, I mean, literally people who are depressed make TikTok videos by themselves. I don't know how many times they reshoot that either to post it, to get the validation for their feelings.
00:00:28 Speaker_01
But to call a friend and say the same thing you're struggling with is actually more difficult.
00:00:34 Speaker_00
Why doesn't the industry exist? Because typically... And we take it for granted. Yeah, so the demand isn't there for those kinds of things.
00:00:40 Speaker_01
But that's the problem, which is, I think, the demand is there, we don't realize it, right? Like, we know that our relationships fail and our marriages fail, so there's an entire industry to help us maintain better relationships.
00:00:51 Speaker_01
Well, friendships fail. And we think we have friends, yet we still struggle and feel lonely. If you have good friendship, You will not feel lonely. You may have moments of loneliness.
00:01:01 Speaker_01
And in those periods, you will pick up the phone and say to your friend, I need you, I'm lonely. And your friends will be there. You will feel not alone, right?
00:01:10 Speaker_01
Or, and you and I have talked about this, but you will feel that someone will get in the mud with you. And I think the problem is, is we don't give intention to friendship. So think about it. And you and I are both guilty of this.
00:01:23 Speaker_01
In fact, I would argue that everybody's guilty of this, which is, We've got plans booked with a friend, let's call it a lunch. A work thing comes up, we call up the friend, I got a work thing.
00:01:34 Speaker_01
And the reason we keep bumping our friends is because they'll understand, they're our friends. So why aren't we prioritizing our friendships? Why aren't we saying to the work thing, I'm sorry, I've got a thing.
00:01:45 Speaker_01
If we had another meeting, we would say, sorry, I've got an appointment, I can't make it. So why don't we treat our friends with the same intentionality that we treat any other meeting.
00:01:56 Speaker_01
So one of the things that Will did for a friend that I thought was genius, brilliant, beautiful, Will Godera, who I'm writing the book with, Will's friend's dad died. Will texted him and said, I feel for you. I know what you're going through.
00:02:17 Speaker_01
I lost my mom at an early age. I'm sure you're being inundated with calls and texts. So I'm not gonna call you today. But what I will do is I will call you every single day at 9.45am. Do not feel obligated to pick up. I don't mind if you don't.
00:02:39 Speaker_01
But when you're ready, know that I'm calling you. And for the next, I think it was three months, eight months, something, he called every single day at 9.45 AM. And for the first week, his friend didn't pick up at all.
00:02:52 Speaker_01
And then after the first week, he picked up every day and they talked every day for months.
00:02:57 Speaker_01
Like think about the intentionality that somebody who loves and cares about you so much that they will call you every single day at 9.45, just so that you can see their name pop up on the caller ID to know that you're not alone.
00:03:09 Speaker_01
I mean, it brings me to tears just thinking about it. Like, how many of us are that good a friend? You know, I want friends like that. Here's a good question, like, what's a friend? Like, what makes a good friend?
00:03:25 Speaker_01
Like, I don't even know if we have a definition of that. You know, I've been asking people and somebody said to me, well, somebody who's there for you to support you in the hard times, that's a real friend. right?
00:03:37 Speaker_01
And I got thinking, and I talked to somebody else, she has a friend who she calls Mr. Schadenfreude, because he seems to love when things go wrong. So in hard times, he's always there.
00:03:52 Speaker_01
He's always there in hard times, he's got the gives the shoulder to lean on, he's giving advice, but in good times, he's nowhere to be seen. And so what what happens is it creates this
00:04:01 Speaker_01
horrible sort of codependent relationship that you want to keep the hard times because that wonderful human being is always there. So you never want to let go and you become codependent.
00:04:10 Speaker_01
And so you realize that there's something called a fair weathered friend who's only there in the good times, but be equally cynical and suspicious of the foul weathered friends who's only there in the hard times because somehow it makes them feel good about themselves, but they're not there for the good times.
00:04:23 Speaker_01
And so you realize what's the, what's the value of good time versus bad time. So yes, Yes, you and I have friends that in hard times, we would call them.
00:04:32 Speaker_01
But I would bet money that you have even fewer friends that you want to text out of the blue and say, I won an award. Right? Think about that.
00:04:42 Speaker_01
Like, if something goes wrong, I've got a group of friends, probably, I've probably got, you know, a dozen people I could say and say, I need your help. Things have gone horribly wrong. I need your advice. But if something amazing happens to me,
00:04:58 Speaker_01
That number probably shrinks down to four, that I'm gonna text out of the blue and go, something amazing happened today and not feel like I'm bragging, not feel like I'm trying to overwhelm them or prove them that I'm better than them, but knowing that they will be so happy for me.
00:05:12 Speaker_01
And so I've started thinking that maybe a friend isn't just the person who's there for you in the hard times, but the person you can go to in the great times. Think about that.
00:05:20 Speaker_01
I have fewer friends that I can go to when things go perfectly than I would go to when things go wrong. So are those my true friends? So this is on the journey I'm on.
00:05:30 Speaker_01
I'm trying to understand what friend means and I'm trying to understand the responsibility we have to look after those friends. You look at all the longevity studies, you know, all the blue zone work. Sure, they eat healthy. Sure, they walk a lot.
00:05:43 Speaker_01
But they also eat with each other.
00:05:46 Speaker_01
And whereas you look at some of the people who are promoting sort of longevity and all of those biohacks and how you have to exercise a certain way and eat a certain way, you'll find a lot of them are pretty unhappy people and pretty lonely people.
00:05:58 Speaker_01
I don't think they're going to live very long, right? So, here's a crazy, crazy one. Here's a crazy, crazy one. Physiologically, right, what are the most important organs to keep strong for longevity? Like, we know the data, right?
00:06:13 Speaker_01
So, I'll tell you what they are, right? Number one, heart. Obviously. That makes perfect sense, right? You've got to have a healthy heart if you want to live a long time, right? Second one, lungs. Got to have healthy lungs to live a long time.
00:06:28 Speaker_01
Cardio and all the rest of it, right? Don't smoke. Like, we know that. Makes perfect sense. Do you know what the third most important organ is? I don't know. I was going to say the brain, but... The thighs.
00:06:40 Speaker_01
Thigh muscles are the, so if you have a healthy heart, healthy lungs and healthy thighs, statistically, you're more likely to live longer. I know, I said the same thing. Thighs, do you wanna know why?
00:06:52 Speaker_01
Because historically, thighs are the most important muscle responsible for what? Motion, walking, right? Not exercise, social, going to visit your friends. Before there were cars, before there were trains, we had to walk to go visit our friends.
00:07:06 Speaker_01
And so people who are mobile, If you're more mobile, you're more likely to maintain friendships, which means you're likely to live longer.
00:07:13 Speaker_01
So the three most important organs to keep healthy historically as human beings, heart, lungs, and thighs for mobility, thighs for sociability. which I think is amazing that we never thought about.
00:07:26 Speaker_01
So all of these things that, you know, technology has interrupted, mass transportation, cars, you know, social media, all of these things, they've interrupted our ability to make friends, proper friends where you can look each other in the eye.
00:07:40 Speaker_01
You and I could do this over Zoom. They wouldn't feel the same.
00:07:46 Speaker_00
But the macro, so the remote work culture, the rise in, as you say, screens and phones, optimizing. interaction out of our lives.
00:07:56 Speaker_00
I mean, like, you know, if you think about social networking, or Uber Eats, or, I don't know, Deliveroo, you're living your life behind a screen in white walls now.
00:08:07 Speaker_00
And it's it feels like it's becoming harder and harder and harder to make friends also to find someone to make friends. In fact, just what's interesting thing is sometimes when I come off stage, I'll have
00:08:16 Speaker_00
It's always young men come up to me and they'll get right up in my personal space and I go, this is strange. And then they'll say something to me like, how do I make friends?
00:08:26 Speaker_00
And I respect them so much for saying it because I can see how difficult it is for them to utter those words. And I reflect on it.
00:08:32 Speaker_00
I was doing something at Canary Wharf and a kid in the front row, in a crowd of 500 people, they're all wearing suits because they're working in the corporate world. He's surrounded by 500 of his peers, his age, in the front row past the microphone.
00:08:43 Speaker_00
His question to me on stage is, how do I make friends? Yeah. And there's 499 people sat next to him that are his age. Yep. And he's asking in the front row, how do I make friends? Yeah. It was so moving.
00:08:57 Speaker_00
Because, you know, looking, looking down on that individual surrounded by people, I'm like, well, you know, you have the brain, the simple brain goes, we'll just turn to the person next to introduce yourself. But clearly, that was not Not the answer.
00:09:11 Speaker_00
Because if it was so simple, he would just do that. And you said something interesting as well, which I think maybe overlays with that, which is that we've kind of like lost the art or the skill of making friends. What would you have said to that kid?
00:09:23 Speaker_01
So I'll tell you by way of a story how I would answer that. So a friend of mine was struggling. Her career, it wasn't going as well as she'd wanted. And her marriage was in a bad place.
00:09:38 Speaker_01
In other words, when it rains, it pours, like she couldn't get a break, right? And she was in a really bad place. And so she knows what I do for a living. So she asked me, can you help? Can I come and talk to you and get some advice?
00:09:51 Speaker_01
And I said, of course. And so we had a standing Wednesday meeting, get together. We got together every Wednesday for 90 minutes, and she would tell me what was going on in her life. I gave her some advice. She felt amazing when she left me.
00:10:05 Speaker_01
It lasted about two days, and then she'd go back into her slump, and then we'd get together the next Wednesday. She'd feel amazing for about two days, and she'd go back into a slump, and this went on for months. This was our pattern, right?
00:10:17 Speaker_01
So I thought I was doing good work, and then I'd just rinse and repeat, right? Then I remembered my own work. And I remembered Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the final step. The 12th step is service.
00:10:28 Speaker_01
Helping somebody who's struggling with the problem you're struggling with, right? Is the way to actually help you overcome your problem. So I have struggles, I have needs, I have insecurities, and I don't have a safe outlet to talk to.
00:10:42 Speaker_01
So she's one of my closest friends in the world. I trust her implicitly. So I said to her, I need the coaching as well. Can we split our time? 45 minutes for me, 45 minutes for you. She agreed. And I knew what I was doing, right?
00:10:58 Speaker_01
There was kind of an experiment happening, which I didn't let on, which is I wanted her to help me as a way of helping herself. And so what ended up happening was, it would cease to be 45-45. We got together and for 90 minutes, we talked about me.
00:11:13 Speaker_01
And then the next Wednesday, we got together and for 90 minutes, we talked about me. And then we got together and for 90 minutes, we talked about me. And within about three or four weeks, her life was full on back on track, fully back on track.
00:11:24 Speaker_01
Because when you help someone with a thing that you are struggling with, you actually end up solving your own problems. And so what I would say to that kid is find somebody who's struggling to make a friend and help them make a friend.
00:11:37 Speaker_01
Make it an act of service, because fundamentally we dig down deep. The true skill that we've lost is service. We've overemphasized taking over giving. We've overemphasized selfish over selfless. Selfish is important.
00:11:51 Speaker_01
Taking is important, but not at the expense of giving and not at the expense of serving.