How to Make Friends As An Adult

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Automatic transcript, lightly corrected for names, with profanity masked. Some passages may contain transcription errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to Inner Circle. I'm here with Kevin Dahlstrom and I'm Mike . And the whole point of the show is to have the conversations that we would have any way behind, behind closed doors, and just share those with you guys today. That's that's actually what we were doing. We were diving into a conversation and we went, should we just hit record? So here's the setup. I'm really excited about this and it's essentially how to make friends as an adult and more specifically, how to curate your friend group, how to make time for your friend group and like how do we decide how to spend time with people? So Kevin, I'll let you kick it off from there. Yeah, I mean, everybody's heard this saying,

you know, you're the average of your five closest relationships and it's a popular saying it's a cliche because it's pretty true like we rise or fall to the standards of those around us. And you know, the name of this podcast is the Inner Circle for a reason. It's like your Inner Circle is one of the most important things in your life and you. And you should be super deliberate about curating it. And personally, it's something I struggled with for a long time is this question of how do I find true peers? How do I curate those relationships? What do I do with the rest of my relationships? You know my friends from childhood and so on. So it's a very meaty topic and maybe a good way to get into this is you were telling me a story about someone you hung out with at an event over the past, a few days

and you said to this person we should be friends. What does that mean? So, you know, number one, I think this is one of the hardest skills that I've learned as an adult or kind of post midlife about it. So I think that's a little bit of a little bit of a bit of a crisis or a little bit of a because there's a lot of cool people out there, right? But we have finite time. Everyone knows, we always say, the we should really hang out, right? , and then it's a year later and you see that person again and you're like, oh, we didn't do it. So how do you do this? the criteria has to be fair energetic exchange.

So we're both equally talented. we, we both thought deeply about topics and my sort of criteria, Kevin, if I think about all the time I think you hit on something really important that is the reason I struggled with my inner circle for so long is this idea of equal energy exchange. And an equal energy exchange does not mean the same energy.

It just means equal. In fact, one of the things. And then I had another category of of people in my life who most of whom were like friends from childhood and whatnot. Who I felt like the exchange wasn't equal.

Like I was bringing way more energy. I was always the inst I've been really really deliberate about that. In fact, you know, you and I, you just got back from a baby bathwater event. That's where you were. I had to miss it because I had COVID. You can probably hear in my voice.

It's really just the truth is joining baby bathwater is the. It's just the truth is joining baby bathwater is the most impactful thing I've done in the past 10 years in that regard because it exposed me to a lot of people who think in very different ways but also

right. We're all busy. We all have full lives. We have family. We have work commitments. We have personal stuff we want to get done. How do you fit someone into your life? I can't claim that it was intentional, like we have founder dinners a lot, and it's become unintentionally. We imagined we might have people over when we designed our house, but it's kind of become the default for where our crew hangs out. So, literally with this person, I can just add add them to the list. And let me give you a couple

things that we talked about. All right. So there are two kind of contracts that I make with my friends. And by the way, I talk a lot about when it comes to relationships, explicit versus implicit contracts, like I want to make the agreements upfront so that nobody's confused and nobody's but hurt and no one's feeling like, you know, how do we actually do this? And as long as that's cool with you, like the next time we see each other,

we're going to be all in and homies, right? But like I can't deal with, hey, man, I texted you the other day. You didn't text me back. Like that stresses me out, period. So first of all, you know, the flow has to be free and clear and cool. And like I said, we might talk a lot. We might talk a little. And if I ignore your text, it's because I'm just doing s***. And it means nothing about you. Yeah. Number two, we all travel a lot, right? So I'm going to put you on the list for invites and you are never obligated to show up, right? And if you miss 10 invites in in a row, like no harm, no foul, let me know if you still want to be on the thread, but I'm not going to hold it to you. It's like, I want to make this as easy as possible

for you to be my friend with no pressure and no obligation because what happens, Kevin, is the more successful you become. People need things from you, right? And it may not even even know they need something from you, but all of a sudden, there's all of these polls, right? You know, if you start to build a following online, the more money you have, people looking for you to invest, they might be looking for you to promote stuff. I want my friends to have a space where I can just be themselves without anybody meeting anything from them. So I'll pause there. This idea of being explicit about what the relationship does and doesn't look like is really important because I think what makes us all hesitant to have

a huge circle of friends is the obligations that come with it, right? And the expectations. And that's been a big lesson for me. There's a saying that there used to do some work in Hawaii. And one time I went for a hike and I ended up hiking alongside this older woman. She was in her 60s and was one of those like really mystical

spiritual types. And we, we just started chatting and it ended up going very, very deep, very quickly. And we ended up chatting for like a couple of hours while we were hiking up to the top of this crater, actually. And then when things, when the hike kind of came to an end, there was this natural like, oh, we just had this deep conversation. I felt like there should be some obligation like, oh, we should stay in touch with your Instagram, whatever. And she said something that kind of like knocked me onto my a**. She was like, um, no, we don't need to stay in touch. Uh, you know, we had a great relationship. It was or great chat. It was what it was. And it can just be that. And I was like, wow, she, she's actually right. Like I get not all of my relationships. I don't have to

collect every single relationship into this ever-growing circle. It's fine. If some have an expiration date and some don't, I think this is something that we get wrong. Is that we tend to prioritize length of friendship as how we rank our closest friends, right? But, but the reality is, is that, you know, I've started to shift it is like every friendship has a natural arc, right? Sometimes they burn really brightly, and then they fade away. You know, sometimes it's a slow burn over many years, the every friendship has a natural beginning, middle, and end. And we are very bad at knowing when the end is, right? But the reality is like people are always changing, right? The only constant

is that we're all changing all the time. And to imagine that I'm going to be in the same season and have the same interests, and that the friendship is still going to be nourishing the same way it was 20 years ago is wild. Like, and this doesn't mean, it doesn't mean anything about the other person, right? Like, I've lost, I've lost touch with a lot of military guys, guys that were my best friends when I was in the squadron. It doesn't mean anything about them or anything about me, right? It's just that we have this shared experience at that time. You know, being overseas, being deployed, like, we are really good friends. Now we live totally different lives, and no harm no foul, right? And the other thing is, like, I've got to make room for new people that share my current values, my current interests,

and, you know, you can't keep in touch with everybody, right? And so I can honor those childhood friends. I can honor my high school friends. I can honor my military friends. And like, you know, we still might stay in touch once a year, but like, that's not going to be my best friend at this point in my life. Yeah. I think that's a really important thing to embrace. I think that, you, you know, maybe the best takeaway so far is what you said around, like, the length friendship is not the measure of depth or of importance. And the classic example, what you mentioned is childhood friends. And like, like, that's something I struggle with for a long time is like, my best friends from childhood, you feel like that's really important, and it is, and you want to stay in touch, but at the

same time, you've grown dramatically apart. And like, you're very very different people now. And frankly, if you met today, you probably wouldn't be friends, and just recognizing that that's okay one is that I still want them to be someplace some role in my life. I want to stay in touch and all that, but also they're not going to be the guys I go on, you know, a week long retreat with, because I've evolved and grown and I have a different circle circle of closer friends now. The last piece of this, I think is learning how to set boundaries and let people go gracefully. And this is something that I've dealt with as I've become more intentional, so

number one, when I was in the oil and gas industry, I felt very lonely. Especially for people who know me now, like, there's not a lot of shared overlap and values with the good old boy Texas Club. They've got their deal. I'm more of the meditating snow porter type. Like, there's not a lot of speck of big Venn diagram overlap. And I came to baby bathwater and also totally changed my life, right? Like, I met people that thought differently that had done things that, you know it was totally mind blowing. But now I've got this group of 150 people and, like, how am I going to select an inner circle, right? And necessarily that means I let some people in and and then found,

let's, let's call it, you know, down the road six months a year, whatever it is, is like, oh, maybe we don't overlap as much as I thought we did initially, right? And this is, I think, where people get really stuck is like, Oh, no, like we hit it off. We shared some values. Maybe it was business, we were, you, you know, talking about business and kind of found out we like we don't have as much in common or even worse, like, maybe we don't share the same values. Like maybe I see people doing conducting themselves, conducting their business, the way that I would want to do, like, how do we separate? This is really tough,, right? Like setting these boundaries. But I've had to learn just because we started down the friendship road,

I don't owe you anything, right? And that one, that one is tough, like, how do you gracefully un-wine, I'm sure you had some similar experiences. Well, and yeah, and like, when you begin to set boundaries, one thing that I've , I've had to learn is that the other party may not always understand the boundaries. And that's okay too. I mean, the boundaries are for you. And, and you know, they may want more from the relationship may not be comfortable with the boundaries. But that doesn't mean mean that you shouldn't set them. One point I want to make too is I think, you know, because this issue of like, I mean, again, this is why we called the show the inner circles, you know, a lot of people think about like, gosh, I'd really like to build a bulletproof inner circle. How do I do that?

And if you think about how most people make friends, it's usually a couple things. It's like proximity, like just of people you happen to be around in your neighborhood or like the places you go. Or a lot of times it's through work because you spend so much time at work. I mean, outside of like, like your friend group and my inner circle comes from really two places. It's rock climbing,

and it's the baby bathwater group we, just, talked about. about. But the point is, you've got to be, you've got to go seek out those people. I think in a way it's like, we tend to be a little bit lazy with our friendships and like, it just happens to be the people that were around or that come into our life. And that's not the best way to curate an inner circle. Yeah. And I mean, final plug for baby bathwater. I've also done a lot of the groups. I think it's important to find one that not only is there a common interest, but it actually matches your values. And for me, the thing that makes baby bathwater unique is that yes, we're all there because we have a business. That's the common thread. Right. But almost nobody talks about business that much, right? It really is. I mean,,

the other night at dinner I was having a conversation with some really cool folks about the fundamental nature of reality and free will versus determinism. And like, that's the stuff I want to talk about. Like that's what really lights me up. And yeah, we all have businesses, but that's actually the common thread that unites us is interest in the fabric of reality. Cool subject, man. Hopefully there's a few things we said in here that will help people out. I mean, you know, I would just say that to anyone who's listening, just be deliberate about your inner circle. Like literally sit down, get out a piece of paper and write down your friend group and who you consider to be part of your inner circle and think about why and where the gaps are. And then if there are gaps, you feel like something's missing, be proactive about it.

Don't just curate from the existing set of relationships. Go find the people that you want to emulate that will challenge you to grow, that you want to be part of your inner circle. Yeah. And the last thing I would say is like, A, people ask a lot of times and clients ask me all the time. A lot of times they are lonely. And they are like how did you build such a great friend group? Number one was deeply intentional. Like I said, this is what I want. I want people that share my values as a parent, as an entrepreneur, as a thinker, as a philosopher. Like this is something I want. And I went and I built it, right? And I built it in two ways. One, by building this house and throwing parties and throwing dinner parties. Like I had to kiss a lot of frogs. Like I had to have a lot of people come through and be

like, okay, that's not quite a fit. That's not quite a fit. Like this was an of actual process. Like this didn't just, I didn't just say I want cool friends and like magically be someone is interesting and interested. Right? Like, if you're not interesting, why do you think interesting people want to hang out with you? Yeah. Final thing I'll say, which is very related is, I mentioned that rock climbing has has sort of been the source of a lot of my closest friends. And it goes way beyond obviously just the fact that we're climbers. It's really a spiritual connection that you have. But to your point, over the 27 years I've been climbing, I have climbed with,

I would guess at least, 250 different people and probably three of those I would consider to be close friends. Right? So it just takes like, there is a kissing frogs aspect to it. It's, it's very freaking hard to find people you truly connect with at a time. It's almost like a sales funnel in a way, right? It's like, you have to put a lot of people in the top of the funnel to get a few out the bottom. And the last piece is, and I think we can add it here, which is just those 247, right, weren't your best friend, they're someone's best friend. And if you're forcing this friendship, you're actually keeping them from finding their best friend. Good point. Good stuff, man.

Great. Hope you want it to be useful. All right. All right.. We'll see you guys next time. This is the Inner Circle.