The Lazy Genius Podcast - #13: The Lazy Genius Makes a Friend

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

A few things for after you listen... Small talk is the worst, but it doesn't have to be. How to Find Your People On the first season of The Lazy Genius Podcast, Emily V. Gordon talks about making friends in a new city. My sister and I talk about how fangirling is a way to find your people and be a better mom. The Popcast's terrific episode on Best Fictional Duos Make friends here, too! The Lazy Genius Collective is a good community. Follow @thelazygenius on Instagram to interact with other like-minded people, and I'd love for us to be friends in your inbox. I send out an email once a week, and your replies are always fun to read. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With the towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. Amazon presents Laura versus fruit flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill.

But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hey, lazy geniuses. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. Here I'm going to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today's episode, The Lazy Genius Makes a Friend. Here is the pitch.

Making friends as an adult is terrifying, but it does not have to be terrifying. So in the playbook, we're going to go through the three kind of phases of adult friendship. Phase one, we're going to talk about people. People are great. People are also weird. And so are we. Phase two, saying hi. And phase three, hanging out.

So let's jump right in to phase one. Okay. So people are great. People are also weird. You are great. You're also a little weird. This is what makes us people, right? But we go in to friendships or starting friendships thinking that we have to be this perfect

person with all of our stuff together, no craziness, all the things. And when we start to have a conversation with that mom in the park or that lady at book club or the woman at church, don't you sometimes feel sort of zipped up? I'm like, I really want to be myself right now, but I'm just a little nervous that if I give her all of myself, my full self, that she's going to run away. So the way that we kind of fight that is we need to know ourselves. We need to know who we are. Okay. So I need to know what I'm afraid of when I'm talking to somebody because when that voice starts to say things like, you sound stupid, you sound stupid, stop talking. I need to know that that voice is coming from like

my deepest fear place and know that it's really not true. Although I mean, I may sound stupid when I'm talking to somebody, but that doesn't have to change how the interaction is going to go. That doesn't need to make me feel zipped up even further. I need to recognize that I have a fear of sounding stupid. And so when I might say something that does sound stupid and that voice starts talking to me, I can be like, you know what, I know you're my deepest fear voice. It's cool. I'm going to keep talking.

So if you can know what you're afraid of in a conversation, what you're afraid of people kind of like finding out about you. It's really helpful when that voice starts to tell you that you're terrible and that you are not going to be friends. This person is never going to like you. If you can recognize that that is coming from a place of fear, then you can call it for what it is. Be like, cool. Thanks for, thanks for playing. Now you can go away. I'm going to keep trying to be friends with this person. So know, know who you are, know what you're afraid of. And also know what makes you awesome because everybody is super awesome and I'm going to sound like a Hallmark card here for a second. If you watch the Great British Baking show, which if you know

anything about me, you know it's my favorite show. I'm currently watching it on Netflix. I'm just not watching anything right now except for that. I have such a long cue that I think I'm so overwhelmed by it and the Great British Baking show makes me so happy that I'm just watching that on repeat. It's fine. The second season is full of bakers who are lovely and talented and all the things, but that there's one particular baker. Her name is Ruby. So if you've watched season two, she's the one who looks like an exotic Taylor Swift with super curly hair. And she also kind of acts a little bit like Taylor Swift where there is this sort of like faux humility a little bit. We're like, I can't believe I won or I can't believe this really tastes good. And she drives me and

Ruby drives me insane because Ruby moves into every interaction basically already saying that she's the worst. Girlfriend, you're on the TV show. They would not have picked you if you did not know how to make scones. Like it drives me insane because Ruby is not embracing the fact that she is a baker. Like she's a good baker. That's why she's on the great British baking show. And so it is so important that we are not rubies when we're having interactions with people that you believe that you're like you're a good person you're a cool person you have things that you're good at you have things that make people want to spend time with you and so it may be that you need to like kind of dig a little deep if you're struggling with how you're feeling about yourself dig a little deep and figure out okay I'm a good listener or

I'm really funny or I'm good at asking questions or whatever it might be if you're struggling to know what that is about you ask the people who love you be like can you tell me why You enjoy being friends with me. And it might feel super awkward, but don't you think that one of the biggest paradoxes of being a human is that we want to hide so badly and at the same time we so desperately want to be known? And so I encourage you to know what it is about yourself that makes people want to be with you. And if you have to ask them point blank, do that. ask your best friend, ask your spouse, ask your roommate, ask your sister, whatever it is.

Like, ask those people, okay, this is going to sound super weird, but I'm trying to kind of be sure about who I am and moving into relationships. Can you tell me why you like being my friend? And it sounds a little scary, but I just want to encourage you that knowing who you are and knowing how great you are is going to help you in having a conversation with a stranger because you can be like, you know what, I'm going to be fully myself. I'm not going to be afraid of who I am. I'm going to embrace this about myself that I know is, this is what people like about me. This is how I was made. This is how I'm wired. This is how I see the world. And you

don't need to be ashamed of that. But if you have a hard time kind of narrowing in on what that is, ask some trusted people for some help in that. Okay, so now we know your fears and we know what makes you awesome. The same thing is true of the people that you're talking about. All right. So I just said that Ruby makes me crazy. But if I'm having a conversation with Ruby, it would be really tempting for me to stop at the point of, oh, she is just so negative about herself. Oh my word, I cannot handle me around her. And instead, what I want to do is go a step deeper because Ruby has a fear. There's some deep fear in there. I don't want to sound stupid. I don't know what hers is. but it's clearly driving her to open up all of her sentences being a Debbie Downer and that she

is failing and that what she has created is not up to snuff or whatever. And so when we are interacting with people, understanding that they are operating out of a deep fear as well is incredibly valuable. And it also makes us experience a lot of empathy towards others that might normally kind of get on our nerves. if we can move into a relationship or even in just a single conversation with empathy, you may not continue to be friends with the mom you met at the park. But that conversation, if you move into it with empathy and understand that she is operating

out of a place of fear, you can actually encourage her greatly by listening to her. And it's a really beautiful gift that you can give a stranger. So that's kind of our quick sort of people primer. To remember who we are, to remember what we're afraid of, what makes us great, and remember that other people are equally afraid and equally great, even if the relationship doesn't go much past that conversation. All right. So let's move into phase two.

This is where we get into specifics. Phase two is saying hi. Because every single relationship starts with pretty much saying high. Unless you're in like a romantic comedy, then it starts. with you, you know, falling off a horse and someone rescuing you. But in this context, we start with saying hi. Here is one of the most important things, I think, when you are in a situation where there are people around that you have to talk to and that small talk begins and you're like, okay, this could be a great place for me to make a friend. Like you start a new job,

you start a new church, you move into a new neighborhood. Go first. You go first. If you're an introvert, you're dying right now. If you're an extrovert, you're like, well, duh. But really, we're all a little afraid of that in the first place. But go first. You make eye contact and smile and say the word. You say hi first. You put your hand out to shake it. You are the one who goes first because if we're all equally afraid, somebody has to go first. And you might miss out on a relationship by not taking that risk because it does feel risky because someone could be like, hi, and then not respond. Or, you know, you could not get along, which sometimes happens. Here's the thing. If we want to be, because you guys are lazy geniuses, you are trying to be

a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Did you know that people's opinions of us don't really matter that much? And I think deep down, we want that to be true of ourselves. We want to move through life, not really being super concerned about how people feel about us, that we can be authentic and ourselves, and that that is enough. And so if we want to continue this movement of other people being lazy geniuses, where they just stop trying so hard and they let that go, we can be models of that. We can be examples of that. And a great way to do that is to go first, is to take the risk and to go first, to say hi, to make eye contact, to smile, whatever it is. So go first. The next thing in phase two of saying hi is,

to is your name and their name. Using names is so important and I am terrible at remembering them. Like to the point, there's a woman who I go to church with and I've just started going to a new church in the last couple of months. And I had met this woman a couple years ago. Her name is Jessica. I know her name now. But do you know how many times I've asked it? Do you know how many different locations I have asked it? Saw her in a coffee shop, saw her at church. I think I saw her at Target one time. There are just several times and I was like, I can't believe I'm about to ask you this again. What is your name? But now I know her name. And having those interactions of me awkwardly not remembering her name, it actually kind of, I think, furthered the relationship a little bit. We kind of got to skip a couple of steps because I made myself look dumb. And there's a vulnerability in that, I think. So use names. If you forget them, ask. If you forget it, ask again. And I make myself. And I'm, and there's a vulnerability in that, I think. So use names. If you forget them, ask again. And I again and again and again until you remember this person's name. I have never interacted with a person who was upset with me wanting to remember their name and actively seeking out to remember their name,

but they might have been if I didn't ask it all. And so it's worth the risk. So use names and try and remember them. And offer up your own. Offer it again, even if they don't ask. By the way, I'm Kendra. Your name is Kendra. Like even if you said it the first time, in the beginning of the conversation. Whatever is coming out of the person's mouth, when you're like, oh, I'm about to have small talk. I'm about to enter into a conversation. Basically the first 90 seconds, it's shot. It's completely shot.

So that time that you said your name and she said her name, just go ahead and repeat your name. Save her the awkwardness of having to ask. That's another way you can go first is you can just go ahead and offer up your name without her having to ask for it. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life. whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life.

You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And then another thing is asking questions. Okay. So Small Talk is the worst. It is the worst. if you're really good at it, would you please call me and follow me around so you can teach me how to do it? I just don't enjoy it very much because I don't know how to be but one way. And I feel like small talk makes me talk about things that I don't really care about and that's

really hard for me. Plus, I really, I'm a person who really likes just a small handful of deep relationships versus a ton of people that I don't really know very well. It just doesn't feel authentic to how I do relationship to talk about lipstick. I don't know. It's just really hard. Now, I talked about lipstick with my closest friends, but we also talk about really hard things.

And so I think that's where the connection of those two things come. Small talk is not necessarily talking about shallow things. It's only talking about shallow things. It's when you can have small talk with someone that you've known for years because there's never any movement into depth. And so if you can just remember, that when you're talking to someone about the small things that feel very insignificant, that doesn't mean that that small talk is all it's ever going to be. And it doesn't mean that that

conversation is valuable. You can say, you know what? These topics are actually things that I would talk about with my best friend. We also just talk about when we're feeling depressed also. And so it kind of balances it out, I guess. Everything is for grabs and authentic relationships. So maybe you can kind of trick your mind into thinking, oh, this is the beginning of possibly an authentic relationship. And I don't need to be so afraid of small talk because these details do matter in the big scheme of things. But asking questions is super important.

And I, on the blog this week is a post called How to Start a Conversation without throwing up. And so you can go read that. And there are a few questions, like sample questions. And here is, here's the big thing. and when you're asking questions of someone. If you were to Google, icebreaker questions, or how to, questions to ask a stranger or something like that,

there are questions that feel super out of left field. Like, if you could, and they're all phrased this way. If you could go on vacation anywhere, where would you go? It feels like speed dating a little bit when you're asking these questions. And it's, it just makes me uncomfortable asking those kinds of questions, but especially phrasing them that way. So here is your trick. Ready?

What you want to do is connect the context of where you are and what you're doing with a question that would help you get to know this person and what they like and what they don't like and maybe something that would open up a further conversation. So this is an example that I give in the blog post. You're at the park. You're standing, you know, kind of next to another mom and you're both just standing there silently. Like, I guess we could have a conversation right now and no one's really saying anything. This is where you go first and you say, hi. And you can start off with the magic question that all mothers ask of

other mothers. How old is your kid? How old is she? And that kind of at least starts it so you're both saying words. Here's one thing that you could do is to connect the context. So let's say this other kid is wearing a shirt with bubble guppies on it, which is a kid TV show that's the worst, but it's fine. So they're wearing a bubble guppy's t-shirt. So you could say, oh, your kid likes bubble guppies. Mine too. I feel like there's so many TV shows. There could be like a, I know, no, no, no, there's so many shows that kids watch these days. I know, no, no, no. And then you could say, like, I don't remember there being that many when I was a kid. I just pretty much watched the Care Bears. And then she may say like, oh, yeah, we watched the Smurfs. But oh, do you remember?

And then there is this connection to something that is actually like a memory, something that's a preference, something that you can start talking about television naturally without being like, what shows did you like to watch when you were a kid? where you seem like a creepy person. So if you can find ways to connect the context, and I give a couple examples of this in the blog post, but if you can think of ways to connect the context into an actual quote-unquote icebreaker question, you're going to be able to get the results of an icebreaker question without the awkwardness of it.

So there's phase one, our people primer of people are great. People are also weird. Phase two, saying hi. We're going to go first. We're going to use names. we're going to ask questions. Phase three is where it gets real. This is where we're going to hang out. Okay, you can have a relationship with, say, a mom at preschool who you see, or school pickup, who you see for five to ten minutes every single day, right? But until you guys actually hang out,

it's going to be really hard to, not to call that person your friend, but to actually have a friendship. where you share things that are deep, right? You have to actually hang out on purpose for longer than five minutes. So how do you do that? How do you transition from like talking to a mom in line or meeting somebody at the park or at a bridal shower or whatever it is to actually hanging out? Okay, first step. Don't wait for the perfect time. Okay. This is so key because we always wait for the perfect time for everything before we make a move and the perfect time is never going to come. It's just never going to come. And you might, it might take you by surprise. Like, for example, a couple of years ago, another mom and I were supposed to be in charge of a class party. We had

never really talked much before. And we got to the school at the wrong time. We both thought that we were supposed to start the party at, I don't know, 10 o'clock and we weren't supposed to start it until 1115. So we're both standing there like, okay, well, we have an hour. And one of us, I don't remember which one of us took the risk. I think it was her. Her name's Corinne. Corinne said, do you want to just go get coffee or something? And I was at first terrified because I was like, okay, you're a stranger. Oh, this is okay. I started to kind of like panic a little bit inside because my deepest fear is looking stupid and I also have a hard time with small talk and I'm like I have to go sit have coffee with a stranger for an hour is my worst nightmare but it was like you know what I've liked the couple of like

three minute conversations I've had with this woman okay it's cool it's an hour let's go do it she is one of my dearest friends and we would not have known that really if we hadn't hung out we would have kept having pleasant interactions standing against the wall waiting for our kids to come out of the classroom. But we never really would have connected on a deeper level. And now we talk about really hard things. We also talk about super easy things. But again, it's both. That's where the relationship comes alive. But in terms of hanging out, my perfect time for hanging out would have been like, well, hi, we can maybe schedule some, you know, like it would have been really, really detailed and thought through. And I would have had to like work myself up to it. Whereas just being spontaneous

it not being the perfect time, being like, all right, well, yeah, let's do this. Let's go get coffee. It was so lovely. So don't wait for the perfect time. The other thing is to take a risk. And this same story. Like, you're never going to know if this person is going to be a dear friend of yours if you don't risk actually hanging out. So you have to, you have to risk it. And the third thing is to center hanging out around a thing. Okay. So rather than just being like, would you like to hang out sometime? I've actually done that with another, another mom at another school pickup. And I was like, I would just really like you. I think it would be fun to hang out. She said, I would like that too. We've never hung out. She's delightful. And we talk every day, but we've never actually hung out

because there wasn't like something to center it around. For example, especially for someone that is new that you haven't really had a whole lot of deep conversations with perhaps. So centering it around something like maybe you both have talked about trying out a Zumba class, but you're both a little bit nervous about it. Maybe you could say standing against the wall at preschool or in the like at the bagel table at work or at church in the aisle. Be like, what do you want to try Zimbabwe class together sometimes? And then you go and do a thing together. It's a lower pressure way. It's a lower pressure way of connecting. So it could be something like an exercise class. It could be maybe you both really love this particular band and you both were thinking about going to see this band play at a local

venue. Do you want to go together? That would be fun. Like find if there's a commonality in your conversation, maybe you can hang out around that commonality. And then it's not just about conversation, which can be really, really scary. And then the final part of hanging out is you need to hold it loosely. It's okay if once is it. So when you're hanging out with somebody, don't go in with the expectations of like, this could be my best friend. Hold it loosely. Enjoy yourself. Be a good listener. Have empathy for this person. Be yourself and enjoy it. But it's okay if that's it. And if you treat it as it's okay if it's it, then it's not going to be like an awkward friendship breakup because you've talked about doing all these things together.

Just hold it loosely. It's okay if once is it. Okay, so what's our payoff of trying to make a new friend, of trying to see it as not so terrifying? You get a new friend. I mean, like, that's the best of all the payoffs. And it also shows you, even if that person doesn't end up being a really close friend, the more you practice talking to people, the more confident you're going to be in your ability to talk to people, and your ability to small talk without wanting to die. And remember, every friend does not have to become your best friend.

but every friendship does start from the same place. So just start. Okay. Let's, before we go, let's hit our lazy genius tip of the week. It's about egg salad. If you follow me, if you follow me on Instagram, you already heard me talk about this, but I'm so excited about it that I just want to make sure that everyone knows. Okay, so egg salad is great.

You boil your, but it's a lot of work, right? You boil your eggs and you peel them. That's everybody does that. But then you have to like cut them up and break them up and maybe you chop them with a knife. Maybe you mash them with a fork and they don't always mash the same. And then you scoop in mayonnaise and you season it and you have to taste it and season it again. Here is the tip that changed my life. It continues to to this day.

I just figured this out last week and I've made so many egg salad sandwiches. So you boil your eggs. Open one up and then just slice it into like rounds. Okay. then you just put mayonnaise on your bread go a little heavy if you like heavy egged heavy mayonnaise egg that makes me think of rest of development um man egg high five for a rest of element fans um put mayonnaise on both sides of your bread and then just lay the sliced eggs on top of it and then sprinkle salt pepper on it and then close it up and it's magical it's so much less work but here's the

biggest thing it doesn't fall out of your sandwich like when you're eating egg salad it you know it's like clumps of it. Like half of it is on your plate when you're done. Not when you slice it. You guys, if you're an egg salad fan, but you don't want to make it, this is magical. And some of you were like responded to me on Instagram like, yeah, I know. I've been doing that. And I'm so jealous that you have been living this beautiful egg salad life for so long and I didn't know about it. So that is our Lazy Genius tip of the week, how to make a better egg salad sandwich. And as always, you can go to the show notes for this episode, the lazy geniuscollective.com

slash lazy slash friend. I link to that post I told you about how to start a conversation without throwing up. There are a couple of other blog posts, a couple of other podcast episodes, a lazy sisters episode. Actually, one of my favorite pop cast episodes where they talk about fictional duos.

That's just a fun conversation on friendship in a completely different context. So if you want to get any, yeah, kind of extend this conversation about being a lazy genius who makes a friend. There are some good things for you to check out over there. Okay, thanks so much for listening, you guys. I'm so grateful and remember, please be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't. change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.