Life Lesson: Why You Have No Friends: Simon Sinek

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

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Simon Sinek (0:57)

Are you a good friend? Are you a good friend to your friends? Are your friends good to you? You know, who do you, do you call people when you are stuck and down? Or do you make TikTok videos by yourself? Which, you know, and you get, I mean, literally, people who are depressed make TikTok videos by themselves. I don't know how many times they reshoot that either. To post it to get the validation for their feelings. But to call a friend and say the same thing you're struggling with is actually more difficult.

Steven Bartlett (1:27)

Why doesn't the industry exist? Because, typically...

Simon Sinek (1:29)

We take it for granted.

Steven Bartlett (1:31)

Yeah, so the demand isn't there for those kinds of things.

Simon Sinek (1:33)

But that's the problem, which is, I think, the demand is there, we don't realize it. Right? Like, we know that our relationships fail and our marriages fail, so there's an entire industry to help us maintain better relationships. Well, friendships fail. And we think we have friends, yet we still struggle and feel lonely. If you have good friendship, you will not feel lonely. You may have moments of loneliness and in those periods, you will pick up the phone and say to your friend, I need you, I'm lonely, and your friends will be there. You will feel not alone. Right? Or, and you and I have talked about this, you will feel that someone will get in the mud with you. And I think the problem is, we don't give intention to friendship. So think about it, and you and I are both guilty of this. In fact, I would argue that everybody is guilty of this, which is, we've got plans booked with a friend, let's call it a lunch. A work thing comes up, we call up the friend, I got a work thing. And the reason we keep bumping our friends is because they'll understand, they're our friends. So why aren't we prioritizing our friendships? Why aren't we saying to the work thing, I'm sorry, I've got a thing? If we had another meeting, we would say, sorry, I've got an appointment, I can't make it. So why don't we treat our friends with the same intentionality that we treat any other meeting? So one of the things that Will did for a friend that I thought was genius, brilliant, beautiful, Will Godera, who I'm writing the book with, Will's friend's dad died.

Will texted him and said, I feel for you, I know what you're going through, I lost my mom at an early age.

I'm sure you're being inundated with calls and texts, so I'm not going to call you today. But what I will do is I will call you every single day at 9:45 a.m. Do not feel obligated to pick up. I don't mind if you don't, but when you're ready, know that I'm calling you. And for the next, I think it was three months, eight months, something, he called every single day at 9:45 a.m. And for the first week, his friend didn't pick up at all. And then after the first week, he picked up every day and they talked every day for months. Like think about the intentionality that somebody who loves and cares about you so much that they will call you every single day at 9.45 just so that you can see their name pop up on the caller ID to know that you're not alone. I mean, it brings me to tears just thinking about it. Like how many of us are that good a friend? You know, I want friends like that. Here's a good question, like what's a friend? Like what makes a good friend? Like I don't even know if we have a definition of that. You know, I've been asking people and somebody said to me, well, somebody who's there for you to support you in the hard times, that's a real friend, right? And I got thinking and I talked to somebody else. She has a friend who she calls Mr. Schadenfreude because he seems to love when things go wrong. So, in hard times, he's always there. He's always there in hard times. He's got the shoulder to lean on. He's giving advice. But in good times, he's nowhere to be seen. And so, what happens is it creates this horrible sort of codependent relationship that you want to keep the hard times because that wonderful human being is always there, so you never want to let go and you become codependent. And so, you realize that there's something called a fair weathered friend who's only there in the good times, but be equally cynical and suspicious of the foul weathered friends, who's only there in the hard times because somehow it makes them feel good about themselves, but they're not there for the good times. And so, you realize what's the value of good time versus bad time. So, yes, you and I have friends that in hard times we would call them, but I would bet money that you have even fewer friends that you want to text out of the blue and say, I want an award, right? Think about that. Like, if something goes wrong, I've got a group of friends probably, I've probably got a dozen people, I could say, and say, I need your help. Things have gone horribly wrong. I need your advice. But if something amazing happens to me, that number probably shrinks down to four, that I'm gonna text out of the blue and go, something amazing happened today and not feel like I'm bragging, not feel like I'm trying to overwhelm them or prove them that I'm better than them, but knowing that they will be so happy for me. And so I've started thinking that maybe a friend isn't just the person who's there for you in the hard times, but the person you can go to in the great times. Think about that. I have fewer friends that I can go to when things go perfectly than I would go to when things go wrong. So are those my true friends? So this is on the journey I'm on. I'm trying to understand what friend means, and I'm trying to understand the responsibility we have to look after those friends. You look at all the longevity studies, all the Blue Zone work. Sure, they eat healthy. Sure, they walk a lot. But they also eat with each other. Whereas you look at some of the people who are promoting longevity and all of those biohacks and how you have to exercise a certain way and eat a certain way, you'll find a lot of them are pretty unhappy people and pretty lonely people. I don't think they're going to live very long. So here's a crazy, crazy one. Here's a crazy, crazy one. Physiologically, what are the most important organs to keep strong for longevity? We know the data, so I'll tell you what they are. Number one, heart, obviously, that makes perfect sense. You've got to have a healthy heart if you want to live a long time. Second one, lungs, got to have healthy lungs to live a long time. Cardio and all the rest of it, don't smoke. We know that makes perfect sense. Do you know what the third most important organ is?