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- [00:00]
Travis Chappell
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. This episode we are picking up where we left off on the last episode, which is talking about how to be a better friend. If you've been following along in the last couple of days, we've been talking about the loneliness epidemic. We're talking about the terrible, terrible consequences that come from being lonely. Increase in all cause, mortality, less likelihood of living a long and happy and fulfilled life. There's so many bad things that come from this loneliness epidemic that we didn't even expect when we started diving deep into the research here. But now that we're into it, it's also like, you know, once you see it, you can't unsee it. So. Well, how do we go build better friends? Well, one of the best ways to do that is to first of all become a better friend yourself. So that is what we're talk about on this episode. We started off last episode talking about facilitating experiences that are right from memories so that you can build, build experiences, build memories together with other people, which is something that enriches those friendships and those relationships. But how can we be a better friend? As we continue this conversation and, and real quick on the facilitating experiences thing, people tend to just have a lot of stuff going on in their lives. So if your friend, if you find that your friend group, like most of the time, what I've found personally is that it's not a matter of people just don' spend time together. It's just a matter that it's a matter of that nobody puts anything together. So there's no like excuses to go hang out or go do anything. So if you happen to be in a friend group where that tends to be the case, then somebody needs to take charge of the friend group and just say, hey, we're planning this thing for this time and we're going here and here's what we're doing. And what I found most of the time is like whenever I've done that, everybody in my life is like thankful that I'm actually putting it together. Because they're like, this sounds awesome. We're looking forward to doing this. It just that nobody else was going to take the time to figure out all the other details. So if it's something that's important to me, I May as well be the one to do that. So be the one in your friend group that builds the experiences, because everybody's hoping somebody's going to do it. You know what I mean? Be the person who's willing to just say, you know what? Why don't we go here and do this? And then everybody goes, all right, let's do it. You know, don't. Don't feel like there has to be an occasion to celebrate. That doesn't have to be a party or a birthday or a Christmas or holiday. It doesn't have to be any of those things. It could just be, hey, next summer. And look, even if you got to plan it out three years in advance, I understand that I might be in a little bit of a different boat because a lot of my friends do similar things to what I do. We have somewhat flexible schedules. We're entrepreneurs. We have control over our calendar. We can sort of pick up and leave more frequently. But if you're in a friend group where all of you have jobs and it's a little bit more difficult, you got kids in school, then it's okay. In two summers from now, we're going to plan this epic trip to go do all this stuff together. And it might sound ridiculous because you go like, well, it's two summers from now. What if, you know, all these other things might change? Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because two summers from now, it's going to come and go. And if you don't actually put these things in your calendar and set up or facilitate these experiences, then it's just not going to happen and you're missing out on the enriching experiences that life has to offer. So facilitate experiences, ripe memories. Next, prioritize friendships like work or family. We're often encouraged to sacrifice time with friends for the sake of work or for the sake of our kids, but we rarely will cancel something for work when we have time scheduled for friendship. Isn't that interesting? Sort of just tells your friends the number that they are on your priority list. And look, I get it. Life happens, and you have to. You. You got to be responsible. You got to be an adult. You got to pro. You know, you got to protect your family, provide for your family, take care of your family. I understand all of that. And. And work is required in order to do those things. And then time with your family is also required to spend to. To. For the same reasons that it's required for your friendships. So it's not like the. The problem is, is that the problem is that this gets further and further down on the priority list, which is why it just doesn't. You just never get any time to be able to do any of those things. And I struggle big time with this one because if you have a lot of ambition, if you have a big vision for your life, if you're on a mission, then it feels like we, we get used to sacrifice. If you have a lot of ambition and big goals and dreams for your life, you just get used to sacrificing in order, in order to some of those things. But you will not sacrifice for maintaining or growing friendships. And that, I think is, I think is going to be a mistake. I think it's one of those things that we're going to look back on. Even if you achieve everything that you set out to achieve, I think that you'll look back on that with some, some feeling of regret because you can't get the time back. You can't get, you can't get the. You know when your friends went to this cruise for four days and they invited you but said no because you wanted to stay back and work, and then you made a habit of doing that over two decades, and then you're catching up with some friends in a couple decades from now after you've achieved everything that you wanted to achieve, and then your friends are talking about all these different memories and experiences and all these other times that they spent together, and you start realizing that you sacrificed all of the best and closest and meaningful relationships in your life for the sake of achieving something. And my challenge to you is just to question whether or not that is going to be a worthy decision. If your future self will thank you for making that decision, or if your future self will not thank you for that decision. Because I think probably the. I think probably the majority population potentially struggles with the opposite end where they don't.
- [05:50]
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- [06:17]
Tell Me Lies Podcast Host or Guest
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Stassi Schroeder
I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most, most unhinged thing of season three?
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Tell Me Lies Podcast Host or Guest
Steven because he's so evil.
- [06:30]
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- [06:32]
Tell Me Lies Podcast Host or Guest
You see everyone face consequences.
- [06:34]
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- [06:35]
Stassi Schroeder
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- [06:48]
Travis Chappell
no to anything, and they get this epic fear of missing out, and then all of a sudden, they're just out. They don't do anything, like, cool or interesting or different or unique. They just go to the same bar and drink with the same friends four nights a week and spend all their excess money and time drinking and. And doing nothing. That, to me, is. Is different. Okay, but I'm talking to the people who listen to this show who are typically the ambitious folks who want more out of life. And while sacrifice is required in order to be able to get more out of life, you also should be purposefully scheduling time in your calendar to make sure that you are not sacrificing your deepest friendships along the way, and especially if you're a dude. For men, this, I think, is especially true because women. Women just have higher emotional intelligence than men do and tend to stay connected to their friends more often than men stay connected to their friends. That's honestly what. This is going to sound crazy, but the one thing that I've done for my friendships with a couple of my high school buddies that we just don't get the opportunity to hang out a lot. This sounds so silly, but we play wordle. We play Wordle, like every day, the New York Times game wordle. And we just have a continuous. It's like. It's just a thing that prompts conversation on a daily basis with us. Sometimes. Sometimes we forget for a few days, but, you know, it's sort of every other day sometimes, or maybe one person doesn't do it for a week or something, but most of the time, we all do the wordle every day, and we send it into the group chat and we make fun of the person who guessed it in the most amount of guesses, and then we crown king the person who guessed it in the least amount of guesses. And it just prompts some sort of continued connection with those people in my life because I feel like guys just aren't the same way. You know, it's like you send funny memes or something like that, but that's not the same thing as some, you know, level of camaraderie. And I think women are a lot better at this in general. My. My wife and her Best friend talk constantly. And it was funny because recently my wife was surprising her best friend because she's getting married and she was doing a bachelorette trip. And so she was figuring out a bunch of different surprises to surprise with because she came out to Vegas for that. And because my wife is not the best at keeping secrets, especially from me or from her best friend. She, leading up to her coming out for this trip, she stopped talking to her as much. She was just like not on her phone as much. She wasn't texting her that much because she was afraid that she was going to give away the surprises that she had worked hard to build. And I think it was my, my daughter, my daughter or my son literally asked her like, mommy, how come you haven't been texting auntie for, for three days or whatever? It's just funny because it's just a part of what she does. They're always talking about everything. They're catching up on all the most, you know, honest details of each other's lives. You know, women are just better at this than men are in general. So I think that's probably why men are experiencing this Salinas epidemic to a more significant degree than women are because it's just more of a natural thing for women to prioritize relationships and more of a natural thing for men to prioritize achievements. So if you are in this boat, if you are a man who is sacrificing friendships for the sake of achieving, just ask yourself the question if you're, you know, is this something I'm going to be happy doing long term? Is this something that I'm going to regret in the future? Because there's plenty of statistics to suggest that male, adult male friendships for men are really, really important for your long term happiness and overall well being. And that comes from somebody who's really, really close with my spouse. My wife is probably my best friend for all intents and purposes in terms of we do everything together and we make decisions together and we watch shows together and we raise our kids together and she is the most important person in my life. And then my kids are, are, you know, two and are number two on that list. But also I have to get times with the boys. You gotta go get times with the boys and if you're a woman, you gotta go get times with the girls. You have to have all of these things in order to live a well balanced, happy, long, fulfilled life. So start prioritizing your friendships. It was a realization for me and I'm not going to beat this point into the ground too much. But I got cancer a couple years ago and for those who follow the show, you know that. And this was sort of one of those eye opening moments for me because it was right in the middle of a time that was really difficult for me and my business really difficult for me. In my podcast, I felt disconnected from a lot of people. I was struggling internally in a lot of ways. And we booked a trip to Nashville and it was just me and the boys. And I realized when I booked that trip that I had not taken just like a trip like that in, I mean, I don't even really know how long, six, seven, eight years maybe leading up to that. Meaning that I wasn't, I wasn't prioritizing my friendships. Like anytime that we would do a trip like that, it was more for business purposes or, or family vacation or memories and just going and hanging out with the boys is not that I had done in a really long time. And I realized it because when we were in Nashville, I was coming off of cancer surgery, my other friend recently divorced. And I realized how important it was to have that time because there was no agenda, there was no business being done. I didn't schedule other work meetings or any podcast interviews while I was there, which is atypical for me. There was no, there was no schedule of things that we were doing. It was just me and a few of my friends hanging out, drinking, doing dumb stuff. We brought a gaming system and played a bunch of Super Smash Brothers and cooked up some steaks and just spent time hanging out. And I came back feeling better than any event that I used to go to in order to like close deals, do business just because it was just a bunch of grown ass men hanging out and having a good time. And it, it, the, the level of refreshment that I got when I came back home from that was just like, man, this was, this was not necessarily life changing, but also I guess kind of life changing because it made me realize that I needed to prioritize this, that this was something that was actually meaningful and that mattered a lot to me. That continue working on those types of relationships, those types of friendships. Especially as we get older, you know that you, you life, life gets away from you. You hang out all the time when you're younger and then the older you get, the less you hang out. And in a lot of ways for good reasons, you know what I mean? Like that family and businesses and careers and kids and all that stuff, I like a lot of it are they're they're totally reasonable, quote unquote excuses to not prioritize those friendships. But at the end of the day, your life will just be a collection of the decisions that you make along the way. And one of the decisions that I am intentionally making for myself is to make sure that I don't leave those friendships behind in pursuit of the things that I really want to accomplish in my life. So. So, yeah, be the person that organizes the events, the experiences. If nobody else in your friend group is, try to prioritize your friendships in a similar way that you do with your work and your family. And then lastly, ask for help. We don't build trust by offering help. We build trust by asking for help. It's actually a deeper psychological driver of trust is to ask for help than it is just even to offer help. Which brings me back to the apology that I offered at the very beginning of this episode, which was to say, hey, guys, I'm sorry, because I did a really crappy job of letting you guys know that I needed some help, that I needed some. That I needed some support, you know, during this particularly tough time of my life. And I. I just felt like I'm, you know, I'm. I'm supposed to be the rock. I'm supposed to be the person who people can come to, not the person who's burdening other people with my own thoughts and feelings. You know, how dare. How dare I have thoughts and feelings and burden the people in my life with them? But the people in your life want to help you, just like you want to help them. And you are robbing them of their blessing from being there for you if you're not willing to share the things that are going negatively in your life. So now I want to get into a couple of questions that were. That were asked here if we have some time. This was. This was asked by one of. One of somebody on Instagram at. Dave Berlin, who's a friend of mine. He said, what are your favorite questions to ask to get the real. To get to the real root of connection? First of all, I think one mistake I made early on was trying to skip small talk and go straight into deep questions because I thought it was a waste. And you hear this all the time, the sort of. The rhetoric online. I hate small talk. I just want to. I just want to get it. I just want to get into it. You know, I want to have a deep dive into a conversation. But small talk is like social lubricant. It's like, you gotta. You gotta loosen up the gears before you just put it into sixth gear and put the pedal to the metal, you gotta, you gotta go through, you gotta go from neutral to first gear and then the second gear, then third gear. And small talk allows you to do that. And it helps to build the foundation of a trusting relationship is just these areas of small talk. So don't feel like it's a waste of time. You just, you gotta do it. It might feel or it might difficult sometimes, especially if you're in a conference setting or something like that and you've just talked to 50 people that you don't know. It can feel difficult to, to go through this like this. Small talk. Beginning stages work. Don't skip that part. It is very necessary. Now, assuming you're hanging out with somebody who you've already built some sort of a foundational friendship with and you've already done some small, small talk with, here's a couple of questions that I think are, are good to ask. Number one, when was the last time you changed your mind about something important? Number two, when was the last time you got something that you wanted? Number three, what is one of your core values? Number four, if you could spend time with someone from the past, present and future, who would they be? If you could trade lives with anyone for a month, who would you choose? What's something that you've done on your bucket list and what's something you want to do? Still, how would those closest to you describe you? Things like that? These are just open ended questions that allow for further discussion. That's really all the, that's all. The point is, and again, this assumes that you've already built some sort of a foundational relationship. And I'll give you a perfect example. This is a friend of mine. A friend of mine, his name is Ed. And we initially connected at a business event and we were sort of both kind of fish out of water in this particular context. And we were drawn to each other because it was brought up that he was in that he had done a bunch of stuff in sales and that I had bunch of done a bunch of stuff in sales. And so we started connecting on that and this is what I would refer to as small talk. This just sort of like the, oh, you're interested in this thing? Well, tell me about your sales war story. And he's like, tell me about your sales war story. And we exchanged a few things. We got to know each other over some period of time. But the last few times we've hung out, it's been much more Conversations around the questions that I just asked. In fact, I'm pretty sure I asked him the exact question. What was the last time you changed your mind about something? He was like, did I tell you that question? Because I asked that question a lot too. And then, you know, we talk about core values, and we talk about things that are actually meaningful and important to us, and it has turned into an actual core friendship of mine. But it didn't start by just going directly. Directly into deep questions. I. I don't. I just frankly don't think that works. Like, unless you just have that alchemistic vibe with somebody that. That allows you to go there while both parties feel comfortable going there. But it's one of my pet peeves now, where, you know, you're in some sort of a conference setting and you're doing, you know, the. The whole networking rounds and talking to people that you never talked to before. And then you talk to somebody and they are somebody who likes skipping small talk. And then they go directly into deep questions. And I'm like, But I don't. I don't know who you are. Like, I'm not. Not gonna open up the. The vault of my consciousness to somebody I just met just because you feel awkward doing small talk. It's like, I don't. I don't. I just don't know you that well. I don't feel comfortable going into all these other areas of my life without having some base layer of trust here. So don't feel like you have to skip that initial stage, spend some time there until you've built some sort of level, some layer of foundational trust there. And then you can move into some of these, Some of other questions that will allow for a deeper discussion later on. So that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. As always @travischappel on Instagram. Shoot me a DM. Let me know what we should talk about on the show next. And we'll keep going along this topic of friendships and loneliness until we've covered everything I want to cover. I got a lot to say about this, and maybe eventually we'll turn it into a book or something, because this is something that I think not enough people are talking about. So thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next episode. Peace.
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