The Lazy Genius Podcast - #308 - The Friendship Episode, Part One with Laura Tremaine

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Friendship is one of the most highly requested topics, and for good reason. No one can survive without a friend. For the next two weeks, I have my favorite friendship expert Laura Tremaine joining us ...to talk about how we can see our friendships in a whole new way. Less pressure, more permission, and a lot more connection. Helpful Companion Links Get Laura’s new book The Life Council (out April 4) Find Laura online or on Instagram Popcast Out of Context on Instagram 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Amazon presents, Laura versus Fruitflies. 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. Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast.
Starting point is 00:00:33 I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 308, 10 ways to start small in friendship. It is part one of two because there are so many good words to say about friendship, particularly because my guest for both episodes is one of the best voices around friendship, author and podcaster Laura Tremaine. Laura has been a friend of mine for about five years and her perspective. is when I respect and love so much.
Starting point is 00:01:03 Laura is the author of Share Your Stuff. I'll go first. And her newest book, which releases tomorrow, April 4th, is the Life Council, 10 friends every woman needs. This conversation, broken into two parts, is so practical, so full of permission, and will help you feel like friendship is not this enormous problem to solve. You're going to love this book, and I hope you love this episode too. So here is the first part of my conversation with Laura Tremaine.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Pals, Laura Tremaine is here. Laura Tremaine is here. Hello, Laura. I am so excited. I am giddy over here. I really wish that people could see what a pro you are. Y'all, she's a legit neon sign that says share her stuff behind her. I feel like after six years or more, how long have I been doing this?
Starting point is 00:01:49 I don't know, a long time. I finally feel like, y'all, I'm a podcaster. Yes. You are a podcaster. You are a wonderful one. And now you're like, oh, you feel it now. Do you know, that's actually was not an intended segue, but maybe a good one because we are talking about friendship.
Starting point is 00:02:10 And I wonder if sometimes we are like waiting for some sort of cue that like, oh, she's my friend or I'm a good friend or I have friends. Like we actually have like a significant amount of time where we, we, we, we, are in friendship, but there's sometimes there's just that little something that we need to like convince us that it's true, you know? I do say in the book, there is no friendship fairy, meaning that no one is just going to magically put friends on your doorstep. But to your point, it does feel like there is a magical moment sometimes in a relationship that does feel like you have been like bopped on the head by the friendship fairy. Yeah. I think I think one of
Starting point is 00:02:57 for, so, so I said some of this in the intro, but your book is the Life Council, 10 friends, every woman needs. And one of the ones that I think is really relevant to a lot of us is the daily duty, daily duty friend. And I have this one woman who lives in the neighborhood. Our kids are in the same class, you know, and the moment that I really felt like that bop was when she texted me and said, hey, can you get my kid from school today? And also, kind of like a personal thing in there like, I'm doing this and, you know, that'd be so helpful. But it didn't feel like I was running an errand for her. It felt like she was texting a friend to help her out because she was late. And I was like, oh, I think we're friends. I think we're actually friends.
Starting point is 00:03:41 And you're right. Like sometimes there are little boobs. I write about the daily duty friend. It's actually the first friend I write about in the book because that is the friend that I craved for so long. And I feel like people craved the daily duty friend. Like you want someone that you talk to, maybe not daily, but like several times a week, someone that really knows a lot of your like mundane regular life. And I did not have that friend until I was 40. I mean, I had that friend when I was young. I think we all have daily duty friends when we're young.
Starting point is 00:04:16 I think that's where we get the idea of what friendship is is because when we make friends in elementary school, when we're children, all of our friends are. daily duty friends. They are. Because you're at school with them all day, eight hours a day. Like you share a community, you share a teacher, you know, all these things that your daily lives look so much alike. And then when you get to adulthood and that's not true anymore without naming it daily duty, you're like, where did all my regular friends go? Right. Just the mundane friends, not the ones that I like see once a year, not the ones that I text on their birthday only but like our actual daily duty friends and I just didn't have it until
Starting point is 00:04:59 I was literally 40 everyone said that I would get daily duty friends or that type of friend when I became a mom and it did not happen for me which it's probably easy for us to think when it doesn't happen for us that we're doing something wrong or we haven't had we don't have the words that that's what we're missing you know that it's somebody that we want to be with us kind of in the trenches every day and they they know what our experience is. I was thinking about college friends and not everybody has a college experience or a college friend experience, but how maybe one of the reasons why people's college friends, they cover a number of your 10 friends, like one person, like is your daily duty friend,
Starting point is 00:05:47 they're your fellow obsessive, they're like all of these different things. And so they feel so rich. They are really filling a lot of roles as one human or four humans or whatever. And then we leave that and we all move away and we're like, oh, it's not that the friendship is gone or over. But if you take away the daily duty part, if you take away these other elements, it's such a shift. And your book gives such beautiful, helpful practical language of like, oh, it's not that I don't have any friends. It's that I don't have anybody who is with me in the day to day. That's what I don't have.
Starting point is 00:06:25 And so then you can actually have, it kind of compels you to go, oh, I can look for that or I can, yeah, I can seek after that. I can pursue that with someone who this could be a daily duty friend rather than just like being sad and lonely about it and not do anything, you know? Well, the whole book is addressed to the part of us that sometimes feels sad and lonely about our friendships and sometimes feels like everyone else is doing something better or differently than we are in friendship. And that's why they're on girls' trips. And that's why, you know, they have a bestie or, you know, that's why they post all these cute pictures. And if you don't have that, you feel this lack. that's sort of what the whole book is addressing because I went through that lack.
Starting point is 00:07:19 Like I wrote the book that I needed because I went through some lonely years. And I feel like I solved those lonely years in a number of ways. One is I started sharing myself on the internet. So my first book was about. I started a blog. And then also, you know, other things like I started a book club and other things that I kind I crawled my way out of that loneliness. But if I had thought about it in a different way back then in my early 30s when I was a new mom
Starting point is 00:07:47 and felt really lonely in Los Angeles, if I had had a different framework, a different mindset around it, I think I would have felt less sorry for myself. I would have felt less lonely. I would have maybe taken those steps that I ended up taking sooner, some of the those things. I also want to say really quickly because I think this is really important that the daily duty friend can especially be affected like by where you live regionally. I really think that that kind of thing matters. A lot of these friendship types that I write about can be affected by your community. Like in Los Angeles, my friendship etiquette and like our friendship rhythms are so
Starting point is 00:08:37 different than my friendships the way I grew up in Oklahoma or we have a lakehouse close to you in South Carolina. And our friendships there, the dailiness of them are so different because when you're in a smaller community and you might run into more people daily. Yeah. Like that's part of looking around it who is in your life daily. Or it's in Los Angeles. Like I don't bump into people in the grocery store. There's 10 million people here. Even live. Like even living in the same neighborhood, we do not casually run into one another very often. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:15 That really matters when you're thinking about your friendships is to be, like, honest about what your community looks like and what is even possible in your community. You know, in Los Angeles, you also wouldn't just like knock on someone's door. Never in one magellion years would you go to a friend's house here without warning. Whereas my friends in South Carolina in our little lakehouse town where we have some great friendships, I mean, those friends will bop up no problem. They will knock on the door. They'll pull up on their boat. You know, it's just a totally. They'll pull up on their boat.
Starting point is 00:09:51 That's so good. It's a totally different culture. Right. Right. No, it's it's that is why, you know, friendship feels like this enormous thing. It is so enormous. It is so integral to who we are. You know, there are all these, there are all these studies and a lot of recent conversation around
Starting point is 00:10:12 community and connection with other people is what makes us happy. It's what makes us live longer. Like you have like lower chances of getting like heart disease and stuff. I mean, just because you have friends. So it's so important. And yet we put it all into one big old bucket. And you are like, oh, friends, they're. There are so many buckets, not just of like the kinds of friends you can have, but things like
Starting point is 00:10:42 that. Like where you live impacts this. Your life stage compared like your life stage at your age compared to the life stage of other friends of yours at your age. Like that was, that was something that was a little strange for me and Emily Freeman, Emily P. Freeman, because our kids like we're, Emily and I are about the same age. She's a couple years older than me. but our kids are much older than each other.
Starting point is 00:11:10 Like she and her husband had kids earlier in their marriage than cause and I did. And so like when I had Annie, when I had like a kid in diapers and then two like tiny little elementaries, her girls were learning how to like they were going to high school. And so it's just it's we couldn't really, we couldn't do that daily duty even though we loved each other and we lived down the street from each other because our daily duties were different. So even just kind of you just give so, you know, I love, I love permission givers and you are giving so much permission for people to kind of see their situation very compassionately, but also very pragmatically. Like, let's be realistic about this, guys. You know, like if you live in this place, like if you live on what is a lot of acres, what would that number be? I'm not good at estimating things like that. But let's just pretend. You know what I mean? Like if you live out on a lot of land. And you don't have neighbors like super close by.
Starting point is 00:12:10 That's going to be a different daily experience for you when it comes to friendship as someone who, like, is living in a college dorm or is living in a big city or is living in, you know, like a suburb where there's lots of front porches or whatever it is. So it's just, I just love that it's, it gives people language and tools on this deeply, deeply important thing. We'll be right back. It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. 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.
Starting point is 00:13:13 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. You've been doing a lot of interviews. You've been talking about this book a lot, as one does when one is putting a book into the world, You just somebody recently said. I think it was, I think it was Michael and Michael and Smith, the nester.
Starting point is 00:13:45 She's like, Sarah Bessie has said something like this too. Being an author is you write a book and then you talk about it until you die. Like that's what it is. That's kind of what it feels like. But is there one of the 10 friends as you've been talking that has just, that you see it in a different light as you've been talking it through, talking it out in these conversations? Or even just something about friendship. in general that you're seeing differently because you're talking about this topic a lot. Well, there's two chapters in the book that people are really resonating with.
Starting point is 00:14:18 And one is such a surprise to me. And I do see it differently now that you ask it that way, because I almost didn't put it in the book. One of the friends on the Life Council, which by the way, I'm setting up 10 friends that have spoken to my life that have mattered to me. Like these two archetypes that have really been important to me, but I'm constantly encouraging the reader throughout the book that like, if one of these doesn't resonate with you, like fill in your own blank for who you are assembling on your life counsel depending on what your life looks like, your belief system, all of that. You might have different seats, but I'm sort of modeling examples of what my
Starting point is 00:15:03 10 seats are. And one of them is the fellow obsessive. Now, for me, when I was like at the very beginning stages of this book and I was like brainstorming all the different types of friends, all of my own friends and thinking about what they bring into my life. And, you know, I just had a ton of sticky notes while I was planning this book. The fellow obsessive, while it really mattered to me, I didn't think was going to make the cut for the top 10 friends for this book for a few reasons. one, I did not think it was universally like relatable. And two, I was a little bit worried that it would be sort of misunderstood because the word obsessive can maybe have like a negative connotation. You know, we don't want to be overly obsessed with things.
Starting point is 00:15:49 And I was using it in a more like pop culture kind of way. Like I'm so obsessed, you know, sort of way. But there were some hesitations to putting that friend on my life counsel. And I kid you not, like, that's the friend that comes up a ton of times. I write about my life, counsel, fellow obsessive as our mutual friend, Jamie B. Golden. She is my fellow obsessive. She is so fun to do a deep dive with on whatever we're obsessed with. That's what the fellow obsessive friend is, is someone that is obsessed with the same thing you are.
Starting point is 00:16:26 Whatever that is. Whether it's a TV show, you know, your Peloton. on your workout, your, anything, a podcast, like anything that you're obsessed with that you can really just go deep with someone. That's what a fellow obsessive is. And I've been so surprised that that is the one that readers are gravitating towards. That's also a fun friend. That's not the sort of deeper one. Yeah. But then the other one, I will say that has come up in a lot of these conversations. This isn't an official seat on the Life Council. This is actually the lack of a seat on the Life Council, but it's a chapter in the book that is Tinder for me and for readers,
Starting point is 00:17:07 and that is the empty chair. So that's the seat on your life council that isn't occupied because maybe you went through a friendship breakup, maybe you went through friendship loss, or maybe because you've never had that friend, and you really want to fill that seat someday. So that's sort of a sensitive challenge. but a lot of people are, I hope, feeling like they're glad someone put words to it. Yeah, they feel seen. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:40 Yeah. I love that you're surprised by something. I think that's a lovely gift to receive as an author who's just in the thick of it, you know, to see this thing that you wrote a year ago. You know, like you wrote these words in many ways a really long time ago and to be able to to hear them through other people's words and experiences and kind of have it reflected back to you in a slightly refracted way and kind of see things differently. It's just a really lovely thing when that gets to happen.
Starting point is 00:18:11 So I'm glad that that's, I'm glad that that's happened for you. I also like that I learned this. I think I learned this from Glenn and Doyle. I don't know her personally. And we are name dropping a lot on the seven. This is true. I learned from her a long time ago, like back in blogging days when I was blogging, that sometimes as writers, we are trying to make an experience universal or a story universal, like we're trying to reach as many people as we can with whatever point we're trying to make or thing we're trying to share. And I have found exactly what she says to be true.
Starting point is 00:18:49 It's actually when you tell a really specific story that you think is unique to you and is so random and no. one will even relate. That's when people come out of the woodwork to say that happened to them too or they want that to happen to them or they, you know, it sparks a story in their own life. That's how I felt about the fellow obsessive actually. Like I was like, I think this is just only something I have. And then, you know, sharing these very specific ways that I have fellow obsessives in my life has made people be like, I have that too. I never thought to make that be someone that sits on a, you know, a metaphorical seat, like to give it that kind of reverence, just because it's my, like, friend that I met on the internet, that I've never met in real life or whatever.
Starting point is 00:19:33 But it's a huge part of my life. I talk to that person every week when our favorite show is on. So kind of elevating some of those friendships was a big point to the book, but I only did that through sharing specifics. Right. Which I think that should encourage us in two things. one as storytellers of any kind, you know, whether it's your profession or not, that there really is a lot of power in experiencing someone else's story, whether it's like
Starting point is 00:20:08 in a movie. I always think about whenever I think about a niche story and how it just becomes so weirdly universal is the movie The Big Sick that was written by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon. And it is really a story of how they met. And it is the most random, specific, you would not think it would happen to anyone else. He is, he is from Pakistan. She actually, I knew her when she was in grad school.
Starting point is 00:20:35 Like she and my husband were in counseling grad school together. And she and I worked in the writing center at our school together. Like for us, she was my very first episode of the lazy genius podcast. Emily Gordon was. She was writing the big sick when I had a conversation with her for this podcast. So she's like, she was a friend. And I mean, we're friendly now. We, you know, we just don't, our past don't really cross.
Starting point is 00:20:57 But, like, she's a lovely human. But anyway, their story, like, she was from North Carolina. He was a comedian. He was a standup. And from Pakistan. And they started dating. And then she went into a freaking coma. And he had to, like, process, like, her parents and her growing up and this woman
Starting point is 00:21:14 that he, like, hadn't known for very long, but he kind of was falling in love with. And it was so wildly specific. And yet one of the most, like, tender. relatable stories. And so I say that to say when you're engaging with a story, when you're even looking for a story to listen to or definitely want to to kind of tell, to recognize that that detail, that specificity is something that is very connective. We think it's not, but it is. And then I also want to say to just people as being people that your story matters. And you might think that like, well, what I'm sharing, you know, that goes back to the
Starting point is 00:21:52 the neon sign behind you. You know, like, that's why sharing your stuff is, is so valuable. And you might think, well, no one's going to get this. Or this is too, this is too weird. This is too specific. This is too sad. This is too niche. This is to whatever. And I just don't think that's ever a thing because that really is strangely what makes us more relatable and connected. Well, I wrote a whole book about that too. Yeah, you did. It was so good. You guys are going to love if you didn't reassure your stuff, you really, really should. And if you, and obviously you can't read the Life Council. No, you can. It's out tomorrow. It's very exciting. But it's just, it's so warmly written. It's just a, it's, you're just a very, you're very good at what you do.
Starting point is 00:22:35 You're very good at your job. Thank you, my friend. We'll be right back. Okay. Let's, let's get a little practical here. Because this is a group that loves practicality. We are, we are, we are, lazy geniuses, the people listening are lazy geniuses. And one of our least favorite slash favorite of the original 13 lazy genius principles is the principle of starting small. It's annoying because it doesn't really get us anywhere very fast. There's no, it's not flashy. You know, it's just kind of like, but it also works in so many areas. One of them being friendship. And so you have, you have brought today 10 ways to start small. in friendship. And I cannot wait for you to share those with people.
Starting point is 00:23:29 Okay. So caveat, some of these are smaller than others. Some of these are not exactly small ways to start in friendship. But they are a place to start. And, you know, I wrote the Life Council after Share Your Stuff because Share Your Stuff was meant to take your friendships to the next level. That's what the tagline on that book was. the inevitable question that came after that was, well, I don't have someone to share my stuff with. Yeah. I don't have someone to have these deep conversations with that I was hoping to inspire in that book. And that was coming up a lot, you know, in my conversations I host online and on my podcast and whatever, this sort of friendship angst was coming up. at the same time that I was also experiencing some friendship angst. I mean, it's not a totally smooth
Starting point is 00:24:25 sailing road for anybody. Relationships are long. Life is long. The pandemic wreaked havoc on our relationships because of divided belief systems, because our days were in total upheaval, like all the different ways in which the last few years have made a lot of things itchy and uncomfortable, including our friendships. And so these are ways to start small in friendship, but I also want to say that these are things I have to practice myself, like, that I have practiced or that I am still in the process of practicing. Like, I'm not a therapist. I'm not an expert. But these have really worked for me. And so I have 10 of them. Hit it. Okay. The first one we sort of covered a little bit at the beginning of our conversation.
Starting point is 00:25:10 number one is look at your own landscape. So one of the things about this book also is that I don't want people to immediately see the tagline 10 friends every woman needs and immediately feel the lack in their life. Like immediately think, I don't have 10 friends. I don't have 10 friends. I'm never going to have 10 friends. I don't even want to have 10 friends. Right. You know, all the different ways that our brain goes, oh yeah, this is not a topic.
Starting point is 00:25:40 for me. Sure, sure, sure. I don't want people to think that about the book. First of all, the 10 friends are over the course of your life. And some of them are very, very seasonal. Like, you're not always going to have a fellow obsessive. You're not always going to have a mentor. Like, some of the friends are specifically seasonal. But also, the book is not an assignment to go out and make 10 new friends. Yeah. The number one thing that people can do to change up their whole attitude around their friendships and to just really like change their whole mindset on this topic is to look at your own landscape. There are so many things that already exist in our life, so many beautiful people that we dismiss because we make a lot of assumptions. We think,
Starting point is 00:26:27 oh, she would never like me. We think, oh, she and I are not, you know, the same. We make all these different assumptions about people that already exist. And so if you are looking to deepen friendships or to, you know, have someone to grab coffee with or whatever you're looking for in your life and friendship, start where you are. Look at your own landscape. I like am challenging people to do that. Like take truly a whole week and look around at like what other mom is always at carpool the same time you are. Like who is always in your same yoga class? Who comments on the same thread in the Facebook group that you do and always has something smart and funny to say. Look at people who already exist in your life.
Starting point is 00:27:13 The whole thing about friendship is not to go out and start new like you're dating. You know, that's it's not it. We're going to look at what our lives already look like. That's number one. Start where you are is like one of my favorite phrases of the whole world. Yeah. Just like start where you are, man. It's like we make it so and especially for this community.
Starting point is 00:27:34 this is a big machine group of people. This is an all or nothing group of people in general. And we are trying to slowly work our way out of that, compassionally work our way out of that. And this is a wonderful example of that, that you're not starting from nothing. Start where you are. Look at your landscape and start where you are.
Starting point is 00:27:54 So good. Number two, this is something that I feel like a lot of us learned when we were younger, especially in like girlfriends. And shinship. Y'all, Lauren's shimmying. There's emotion to girl friendships. Now, I am older than you, but when I was in college and like a little bit after
Starting point is 00:28:16 college, there was like this whole thing about the woo girl. Like, I am the woo girl. I always have been. It's who I am. So this number two way to start small is something that a lot of us learned when we were like younger women. And then the internet turned it on its head and made it a bad thing. So the principle is, should I say principle?
Starting point is 00:28:40 Because that's your word. You can see. It's not my word. It is not my word. A lot of people love principles and use them all the time. You have a principle. Go ahead. Okay.
Starting point is 00:28:51 It is compliments are key. Like starting with a compliment like, hey, I love your bag. I love your shoes. Oh, you're reading that book. I loved that book. Oh my gosh. looks amazing today. These are little compliments that can spark a conversation. It makes us feel good to say them. It makes other people feel good to receive them. But somehow on the internet,
Starting point is 00:29:15 this got turned around that giving compliments like that, especially in an online way, like, oh, my God, you're so cute, became like inauthentic. Yeah. And it became like a whole thing of like, oh, that is so phony. That is so fake. You don't really mean that. And I just feel like that's not true. I feel like this is a way that people connect. It's not inauthentic to be like, I think you like look great today. To start with that is not inauthentic. It's just opening a door. Right. Because then the person can respond with, oh, thanks. I got it on sale or oh my gosh, I'm loving this book. Or have you read the podcast that goes along with the book? You know, I mean, it starts a conversation. It's not inauthentic. And we don't. need to hold ourselves back from like saying those things. It's it's not faky fake. I know that it can be. I understand why we like examined this, this habit that women do. I understand why it like warranted a conversation, let's say. But the women that I know in my life, the women that are listening to this podcast, I know that they're not doing this inauthentically. I know that they are
Starting point is 00:30:28 offering up a quick compliment because it sprang, you know, it came to their mind because it is a way to just connect with someone. It's another way to say hi. It's another way to say hi. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder too if, you know, I think about, I think about the scene in mean girls about the bracelet where Regina George is just like, I'm going to love everybody. It's not where you get it. And then she like makes fun of somebody else's something later with the same question. And so I think that there's part of that. There's a fear maybe that if someone complements us that they're pretending or if we compliment someone else that they're going to think that we're pretending.
Starting point is 00:31:10 You know, there's a lot of assumptions that are at work there. And but I think a couple things come to mind as you say that to expound is one, compliment them on something that you believe. like don't say I like your shoes and you don't like their shoes. Find something else. Like compliment them for real. You know, it's not that the compliment is fake,
Starting point is 00:31:34 but if you're just like saying something to say something in a, like it is going to feel authentic to you, because maybe that's not actually what you, what you think you're just, you know, just grabbing it straws. I also, not,
Starting point is 00:31:46 people don't grab straws. They grasp them, but it's fine. So the other thing makes me think, I wrote a, a blog post about this when I used to, right blog post a long time ago. But I was on a bus. I was like an adult volunteer on a youth group trip. And I was on this big bus. And I was in the back of, I was going to the bus bathroom.
Starting point is 00:32:06 And I was walking back to the front of the bus. And I passed these two girls. We're going home, mind you. The trip is over. And I'm not going to see these kids again. Like this was, I was jumping in because they ran out of people, you know. And I walked past these girls. And I heard someone say, well, Aragorn is way hotter than Legolas. And I turned around so daggum fast. I was like, hello, I'm sorry. What are you talking about? Because I love Lord of the Rings so much.
Starting point is 00:32:29 And I also agree wholeheartedly that airport is hotter than Legolas. And so I made like an actual fool of myself. Like I squatted down in front of these like 18 year olds. And I was like, hi, hello. I'm Kendra. Can I join your conversation? Because it was that fellow obsessive energy. But also it just reminds me like the complex,
Starting point is 00:32:50 even my enthusiasm of something they were talking about. is a form of a compliment. It's saying, I see you, I hear you, hello, I would love to join this conversation. And that's a risky thing. I'm not saying that you need to just like, accost people in a park or something. And also, you could. Like, you could go up to a stranger who's reading something or talking about something. I do that in bookstores all the time. I did it three days ago. I was in a bookstore and these two women were talking about a book I read that I had read. And I walked by them and they're like, it's so good. Oh, is it really good. And I was like, it's my favorite book I read this year. And I just kept walking. But sometimes
Starting point is 00:33:26 you don't have to keep walking. You can just stand there and engage with people. And it doesn't necessarily, you say this in the book all the time. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to go on vacation with that person soon. It's just a way to begin. And if it doesn't even go very far from there, you are practicing beginning. Except I'm sitting here still snagging on the fact that you were going to the bus bathroom. It's a problem. I was desperate. I was desperate. It was a long drive. I didn't pee before I left. It was a whole thing. I couldn't make it.
Starting point is 00:33:56 Like I'm pitiful when I can't pee. So I just had to tough it up. It's fine. Oh, there's so many good pull quotes from this episode already. You know the account. Do you follow a pop cast out of context? No. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:34:14 It is so fantastic. It's an Instagram account called Popcast out of context. And they take just random things and Knox and Jamie and sometimes Aaron say and just make memes out of them. in this. Because they are so weird. I'm following that immediately when we get off here. Yeah, it's really, really good. It is really good. And we'll put a link in the show notes, along with the important thing, which is a link to Laura's book, which is available tomorrow, April 4th, The Life Council, 10 Friends, Every Woman Needs. But if you were listening to this episode
Starting point is 00:34:49 on Monday the 3rd and you want to get the book, please, please be sure that you pre-order, which ordering it the day before is technically pre-ordering. And then I want you to take your order number to laura tremaine.com, click on the banner or anything having to do with the Life Council, and you will be able to enter your order number. I want you to do this so you can get the secret tapes, which are interviews with members of Laura's actual life counsel, who she writes about in the book.
Starting point is 00:35:18 I'm in one of the episodes because I'm one of Laura's business besties, along with Jamie Golden and Brie McCoy, and there are other amazing conversations, like truly eye-opening, transformative conversations about friendship, where Laura and her actual friends, they talk about things that we have all been so eager to hear. It is a fantastic bonus,
Starting point is 00:35:40 just for getting the book, which I'm pretty sure you're going to do today after listening to even just one part of Laura's conversation. So again, go to largeremaine.com. The link is in the show notes to claim those pre-order bonuses before they go away. They're so, so good. And so is Laura. And so are you. Thank you so much for being here to listen to this episode. And I can't wait for you to experience a little sparkle in the next small step you take in friendship as you wait for the rest of the list next week, which for real is so, so good. So thank you for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. 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.
Starting point is 00:36:33 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.

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