Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is for building and maintaining great friendships. Don't
Speaker 1: keep score at any point. Some people are able to
Speaker 1: invest more time and effort in a friendship than other people,
Speaker 1: so what In most cases it will even up over time,
Speaker 1: so there's no point keeping an accounting for any shorter period.
Speaker 1: Today's tip, like another tip this week, comes from Shasta
Speaker 1: Nelson's book Frontimacy, How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong health
Speaker 1: and Happiness. Shasta was also a guest on the podcast
Speaker 1: Best of Both Worlds, which I co host with Sarah
Speaker 1: hart Unger. Shasta uses the image of a friendtimacy triangle
Speaker 1: to conceptualize the com own it's necessary for friendimacy, that
Speaker 1: is intimacy with our friends. The base of the frontimacy triangle,
Speaker 1: she asserts, is positivity, and the legs of the frontimacy
Speaker 1: triangle or consistency and vulnerability. The previous tip I shared
Speaker 1: about recognizing that friendship isn't efficient paves the way for
Speaker 1: consistency in our friendships. You have to invest your time
Speaker 1: in showing up. Today's tip about not keeping score leads
Speaker 1: to friendships that are positive. What does positivity and friendships mean?
Speaker 1: Shasta writes, we want joy not drama. We want laughter
Speaker 1: not grievance. We want affirmation not advice. Of course, negative
Speaker 1: feelings happen in any part of life, but we don't
Speaker 1: want them to define or overwhelm our friendships. Shasta cites
Speaker 1: research from marriage researcher John Gottman that people need a
Speaker 1: ratio of five positive experiences to every one negative experience
Speaker 1: for a relationship to succeed. In other words, for every
Speaker 1: negative experience, for every stressor headache or unmet expectation, as
Speaker 1: she puts it, we need at least five experiences that
Speaker 1: feel good. Shasta encourages us to nourish our friendships with positivity.
Speaker 1: She explains, every time we ask about someone in her life,
Speaker 1: or remember her birthday, leave a comment on her Facebook post,
Speaker 1: or text a photo from our time together, we increase
Speaker 1: the positivity in our relationship. In addition to adding positivity
Speaker 1: to our friendships, we want to avoid injecting negativity. One
Speaker 1: way of doing that is by not keeping score. In
Speaker 1: other words, don't keep track of who's being the better
Speaker 1: friend or giving more to the friendship. Nobody wins when
Speaker 1: we keep score. Either you lose because you're giving more
Speaker 1: than you're receiving and you choose to feel resentful, or
Speaker 1: you lose because you're giving less than your friend and
Speaker 1: you choose to feel guilty. Where is the joy or
Speaker 1: positivity in that? Shasta also notes that we and our
Speaker 1: friends may interpret our experiences entirely differently. We each may
Speaker 1: think that we are due more points. For instance, she asks,
Speaker 1: do I get points for always hosting girls night or
Speaker 1: does she get points for always driving the distance to
Speaker 1: reach me? Am I gifting her with an invitation to
Speaker 1: my special dinner party? Or is she gifting me by
Speaker 1: paying for a night of babysitting in order to come?
Speaker 1: Was the generosity in asking my friend a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about her life? Or was the generosity in her
Speaker 1: being willing to share and reveal all these stories to me?
Speaker 1: Her example show us that there's lots of giving and friendships,
Speaker 1: so it is virtually impossible and pretty much not helpful
Speaker 1: to try to determine who is investing. More So, don't
Speaker 1: do it. Take the long view in any given moment,
Speaker 1: if you feel things are uneven, just assume that they
Speaker 1: won't be in the future, or maybe they haven't been
Speaker 1: in the past. As with most things in life, we
Speaker 1: are better off assuming the best until we absolutely can't
Speaker 1: assume the best anymore. Then we can deal with it.
Speaker 1: Not all friendships last forever, but sometimes people get busy,
Speaker 1: they have family crises. When we don't keep score and
Speaker 1: we stay positive, it increases the chances that the friendship
Speaker 1: roars back when the time is right, and in that scenario,
Speaker 1: everybody wins. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod
Speaker 1: that's b E the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartMedia dot com That Before Breakfast is spelled
Speaker 1: out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look
Speaker 1: forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.