What gets you out of bed in the morning? Is it a paycheck, a to-do list, or something bigger? As Simon Sinek puts it, "People who have a clear sense of purpose tend to live more inspired, more fulfilled, and more joyful lives." In today's episode, we'll dive deep into the power of purpose, why friendship is the ultimate biohack, and the fundamental human skills we should all be working on but probably aren't.

We're talking about what really drives us, how friendships shape our lives, and the simple but often overlooked skills that make relationships stronger. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, please share with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe.

Simon, it's been a long time since you wrote Start With Why, but it's how I first got connected with you. So I just want to ask, why is it important for someone to figure out their purpose and their why? I mean, why did you get out of bed this morning?

And why should anyone care? And that's sort of what purpose is. It's a reason to get out of bed beyond I have to, I got to make a living, or the kids are screaming downstairs. You know, it's a reason to take on the day. It's a filter for decisions we make.

And what all the science shows, I'm not unique here, for millennia past and all the way into the future, is that people who have a clear sense of purpose tend to live more inspired, more fulfilled, and more joyful lives. What percent of people do you think don't ever figure that out?

If you had to guess? The vast majority. I think most people go through life like it's a lottery. You know, like you sort of like playing the numbers, doing the thing. And hopefully, every now and then, you get a little burst of something. And it feels great. You're in flow or whatever it is.

And then you go back to sort of playing the numbers every day and hope tomorrow. Whereas I think when people start with why, when people live with a sense of purpose, cause, or belief, it's not a lottery. It's more of a jigsaw puzzle. I live in Silicon Valley. And I think there's a lot of people I know who have their why.

And they're like, "I want to change the world. I want to build a plane that goes supersonic speeds," which happened last week. How important is it that that purpose someone has is to advance humanity versus something more related to family or friends and enjoying life or hiking or something?

So a why is not making a supersonic plane. That's not a purpose, right? That's a goal. That's wonderful. But people have a clear sense of purpose. It's the reason your friends love you. It's the reason your clients like you. And the tangible things that they may do, call it your job, your career, those are the tangible things that bring your purpose to life.

So I wrote a bunch of books, right? Why? Because it brings my purpose to life. I wrote about things that manifest, that give tangibility to what I believe, which is my purpose is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. So together, each of us can change our worlds for the better.

And everything I do breathes life into that purpose. Purpose is the foundation. And so I get a huge kick out of, especially Silicon Valley, when they're like, "Simon, I know my why. I'm going to change the world," as you said, "with my pizza delivery app." I'm like, "Okay, let's go with that." Is that the reason your friends love you?

Or my other favorite one is like, "I have a why for work and I have a why for home." I'm like, "Well, in one of those two places, you're lying." Because you are you, whether you change your clothes or change your desk, you know? So you only have one why.

It's fully formed by the mid to late teens. And you are who you are. We are all products of how we were raised. The experiences we had when we were young made you who you are. And now the opportunity is, are you living to the max potential of who you are?

Are you operating at your natural best? And people who learn their why, they have an unfair advantage. I've heard you multiple times reference, you know, "It's why your friends love you." Are friends the easiest way for us to identify what that is? It's a way. I mean, I do this little thing called a friends exercise that absolutely leverages the love of your friends.

Really quickly, you know, find a friend who loves you and you love your friend. You'd be there for them till three o'clock in the morning, and they'd be there for you. Do not do this with a sibling. Do not do this with a parent. Do not do this with one of your kids.

Those relationships are too close. Best friend. You want a best friend. And you ask them the simple question, "Why are we friends?" And they're going to look at you like you're insane. Because the part of the brain that controls our feelings, like love, doesn't control language. It's very hard to put our feelings into words, which is why we speak in metaphors and analogies when we talk about our feelings.

And so they're going to hem and haw and be like, "I don't know." Well, of course they know. They just can't put it into words. And then, interestingly, you stop asking the question, "Why?" And you ask the question, "What?" Come on, "What specifically is it about me that I know you would be there for me no matter what?" And they will start to try and describe you.

"I don't know. You're loyal. You're honest. I trust you. And you play devil's advocate." Good. You get that from a lot of people. That's just the definition of a friend. What specifically is about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what? And they're going to go through a few rounds of this.

Don't help them. Don't let anybody else help them. And eventually, they will give up. And they will start describing themselves. And this is what my friend said to me. "Look, Simon, I don't know. All I know is I can sit in a room with you. I don't even have to talk to you when I feel inspired." And I got goosebumps.

I had an emotional response to what they were telling me. In other words, that's when they tapped my why. That's when they pinpointed. And so when you do this exercise with people, and I did it with multiple friends, and you can do it with multiple friends, they will say very similar, if not the exact same thing, because the thing that I admit, the thing that I give to the world, my purpose, my cause, my belief, my why is the space I fill in their lives, which is why they'll say consistent things.

And when they say that, you will well up with tears or have goosebumps or some reaction, and that's how you know you've hit it. To inspire people to do the things that inspire them. Yeah, that's the greatest compliment you can pay me is, "Simon, thank you. That was inspiring." It's the thing that makes me feel like I'm on the right path.

By asking yourself similar questions? Or would you say having a friend to talk to is probably the better way to figure it out? Because like you said, a lot of questions. None of us have objectivity about ourselves. That's the problem. We have dreams, we have aspirations, we have egos, we have insecurities.

But it's very hard for us to know how the world sees us and perceives us and needs us. We just don't know. We have a little bit of self-awareness, but we don't have total self-awareness. We definitely don't have objectivity. Some of us are too good to ourselves and some of us are too mean to ourselves.

As you're saying this, I'm thinking of little moments in my life where I get tremendous joy doing something that I don't know why. If a friend asked me for a restaurant recommendation, all I want to do is have this person be delighted in a way they've never imagined. Sometimes it just falls so hard on its face and I'm kind of let down.

I remember this one time where Uber had just launched in the Bay Area many years ago. My in-laws grew up in Wisconsin, live in Colorado. They came out and I was like, "I have all this credit from the company I worked at. I'm going to pick them up in a town car." It was like a limo.

They came home and I was like, "What do they think?" My father-in-law says, "It was so nice of you to get us a cab from the airport." And I was like, "Ugh!" Trying to create experiences to delight people and show them things they've never seen before is something I love doing.

Is that even relevant or is that just a thing I love or do I need to go deeper to figure it out? Definitely relevant. The fact that you said, "I love," that's an emotional word. Like is rational, love is emotional. Do you love your wife? I like her a lot.

Those are not the same. When somebody says, "I love doing that," yeah, it's not necessarily the answer, but it's definitely something that I pay attention to. It's definitely a flag when I'm helping somebody find their wife, for sure. You've written a lot about friendship lately. What fascinates you about friendship?

First of all, we're social animals, so we all need them. You're not going to get through this thing called life without them, at least not successfully. If you look at the world we live in right now, with rising rates of depression and anxiety, inability to cope with stress, and the worst case scenario, suicide, what you find is that friendship fixes all those things.

It's the ultimate biohack. Even the obsession with longevity. You've got everybody talking about diets and exercises and supplements, and yet nobody's talking about friends. If you look at all the blue zones and all of those things, yes, they're eating these Mediterranean diets. Yes, they walk a lot, but they also commune.

They also eat with friends. They also walk with friends. I've met so many people who've lived to old age who didn't do any of the things that the biohackers in Hollywood do, and they're in their 90s, and they're happy, and they're healthy, and they're walking around, and you hear them laugh and talk about their friends.

I think that we forget about friendship because it's a little more amorphous. You can't measure it as easily. We live in a metrics-obsessed world. You've got your sleep aids and your Fitbits and your Oura rings, and we're so metrics-obsessed, we forget that some of the harder-to-measure, more qualitative, beautiful things in life actually contribute to our health more than we realize.

It's funny because my grandparents moved to a retirement community when they were 52 and lived there for 40 years till their mid-90s. I look at the other side of the family, totally the opposite. Health wasn't as strong. Gosh, I just look at that. I'm like, "They just had more friends than I do." And they ate chocolate cake.

Yeah, they lived in Kansas. And they ate fried chicken and barbecue. Three Dr. Peppers a day. Three Dr. Peppers a day. Maybe they took some supplements that the doctor told them to take. But they went through life because one of the things that friends do is they reduce our stress, right?

The cortisol goes down. And there's data on this, right? Which is people who stress about having chocolate cake, that the cortisol, the stress releases, is worse for us than the chocolate cake. That doesn't mean you eat chocolate cake with every meal. And it means have a few bites, not a whole freaking cake.

There is a thing called moderation. But just enjoy yourself. One thing I noticed amongst at least my peers and friends and colleagues is somewhere in the mid to late 30s range, between the fact that we feel super connected because we're all online, but it's never been easier to move, and we've all had children.

It feels like a lot of people I know have a lot of friends. And I put myself in this bucket. I'll be a little vulnerable. I don't feel like I have the friends that we're talking about here, right? I have lots of people I can give a phone call to, I can have dinner with, I can go out with.

But growing up, I had three friends in the neighborhood. We'd hang out all the time. We didn't need to plan, and everything just worked. I feel like in a post-children world where we're all online and all connected, I just don't know if that happens as much. And it kind of all falls apart when you move and have kids and everyone's spread out.

Well, friendship takes work, takes effort, takes time for it to work well. And kids, like everything, take more work. And there's only X many hours in the day and X much energy you have. And so you take things away to focus on family. This is very common. I hear this all the time.

Since they had kids, not all cases, but in many cases, you'll have a partner that I hope is your friend in raising the family. It's much more difficult without that partner. And at the end of the day, friendship requires a little effort. It requires a little time. And I think for people who have kids, then the question is, how do you reorganize and find, if you live in Los Angeles, sitting in the car, sitting in traffic is a great time to connect with friends.

There are ways. One of the things I've learned, and I'm guilty of this, which is there's a friend I haven't connected with for a while. I've been so busy. I got to connect with them. And I'm like, okay, I only have like 15 minutes now. I'll wait till I have more time.

Okay, I don't have like 30 minutes now. You know, I want to talk to him for an hour. Okay, I'm going to wait. And before I know it, a month has gone by. And I didn't call him, you know? And so one of the things I've started doing is just using small amounts of time.

Like a text that says, I'm thinking of you. You can do that from the toilet, you know? Why you're thinking about them in the toilet is a different conversation. Or I'll call somebody like, hey, listen, I've got 10 minutes between meetings. I've been talking a while. Just a little kind of quick check in, right?

And it's amazing how much those things actually work. Do the kind of good relationships that you need for friendship to, you know, for a lot of the benefits you talked about, can that happen in a virtual world? Or can you have those great relationships from afar? We know the answer, which is in person is always better.

You can hug someone. You can put your hand on their shoulder when they're struggling, right? One level down for that. I think the phone is way better than a video conference, you know? I find that people are way more present on the phone, right? Because you can tell when somebody wanders off on the phone, you'd be like, dude, are you listening?

You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Or when somebody wanders off on a video, it's where they start typing. It's like this weird rudeness that you can't say anything. And most of the time you're looking at yourself anyway. You're not even looking at them, you know? And if you are looking at them, it's fake eye contact.

It's like, I'm looking at the camera. You think I'm looking at you, but I'm looking at a green dot. It's all slightly artificial, literally and figuratively. And so I find the phone is actually a fantastic way to connect with people. Yeah, I am notorious for randomly just calling people.

Walking the dog, call someone. Go for a drive, call someone. But what I find missing more and more now is that all those people that I want to call, the close friends that I would call in the exercise at the beginning, none of them live nearby. And so I've got to almost rebuild my network of friends that I could go to for a hug and have dinner with.

And I had this crazy idea that my wife didn't veto but kind of poked fun at, which is when we moved to this new neighborhood. I was like, what if we wrote a note and introduced ourselves to 100 people and put it in all their mailboxes? And this is my analytical side.

I was like, and then we can go from not just being friends with the person that lives next to us, but maybe there's an amazing family that we'd be best friends with, but they live three blocks away. How are we ever going to find them? What if we just drop all these notes and we go on like a speed dating process and we try to find these people?

Because I thought it'd be really cool if we had these great close friends, but it would take time. What's your reaction? Is that crazy idea or is that like great? Well, let's reverse it. What if you got the note? How would you react? Hey, we just moved in three blocks away.

Want to be friends? It's hard for me to imagine a world where I don't already have this idea, because if I got this note at this point, I'd be like, these are my people. They didn't think that. That's true. And your poor wife would be like, just can you go and let me know how it is?

That might be a personality thing. But at the very minimum, I think we should know our neighbors. You know, I think it's very important if you do move into a neighborhood or if somebody moves into your neighborhood, you can knock on the door and say, welcome, bring my cake.

Or you go knock on the door and be like, hey, I just moved in next door. I just wanted to introduce myself. You know, neighbors, to know your neighbors, I think is a part of it. Look, at the end of the day, this is one of the struggles with urban centers, right?

Which is we left our families and we left our friends and you said we had to rebuild. And now you live in these very densely populated, but very lonely places. And our networks are gone and we have to rebuild our networks. And the networks are loose because people are constantly moving, even within the city, you know?

Whereas if you grew up in Kansas, the people who stay, stay. And the people next door, that's it, you know? Trevor Noah talks about this quite beautifully, which is when you're forced to live with people, you actually learn to live with people. You know who people are. There's the good guy, the bad guy, but you learn to live together.

Where when you have a very itinerant sort of lifestyle like we do in city, you can up and leave whenever you want and everybody can move. And we become less tolerant of each other. And I think he's right. I like that. This episode is brought to you by Element.

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Policies issued by Western Southern Life Insurance Company, not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Is there a number of close friends you think is important to invest in? Again, it depends on the people, right? Like some people, they have their three ride or dies from junior high school till the day they die, and that's it.

Great. Some people, you know, had them and they outgrew them, and they've got a new couple of really close friends. You know, some people have a slightly larger network. I think it's more about the quality of the relationships that makes you feel seen, heard, and understood, that makes you feel safe, that makes you feel you've got people to turn to.

Whatever the number is, that number can be one. And there's a funny thing about friendship, which I, you know, we all, I hope, as many of us as possible, have a few people that we could call in hard times, right? Like the shit hits the fan, and there's a couple people I'll open up to when I'm struggling, right?

Hopefully, we have that network. And if we, I think one of the reasons that this conversation is important, I think too many don't have that network, right? I've talked to, particularly, a lot of young people. They like their friends, they have fun with their friends, but they don't really deeply trust their friends, and they would never call their friends in really hard times.

That's, I think, part of the challenge, which is why we see a younger generation, in particular, struggling with stress and suffering with depression, of anxiety at higher levels, of higher numbers. But I find it really interesting is, whatever the number of people you have that you could call in hard times, it's an even smaller number of people that you can call in really good times.

The ones you can call and brag. You'd be like, "I just won this. I just did this. I just accomplished this." And they just share in your joy without judgment or jealousy. And that number, I find so interesting that good, good news is an even smaller number of people you can call the bad news.

I'm like thinking through my friend network, and then when you said rider dies, I think my wife has a few friends she describes in that way. It actually makes me wonder, are the types of friends, are women or men, is there a difference in how they have friendships? And I think my wife, based on how you describe it, is better at being a friend.

I think women, on balance, yes, women are better. I think because they're just more comfortable being vulnerable. Men struggle to say, "I love you," to other men. "I love you," not "love ya," not "love ya, dude." "I love you." Really hard to say it, even if you mean it, right?

I'll tell you a story. So a buddy of mine, he's remarkable. He's active duty military. He's a freaking national hero, warrior. He's hardcore. He's amazing, right? And over the years, we've become super close. And we were on the phone catching up about what doesn't matter, you know? And after about an hour, we got off the phone.

And as we're about to hang up, he says, "I love you." And I remember feeling that. "I love you," he said. And I said, "I love you, too." And we hung up. And I remember what it felt like. And so I decided to do an experiment. I had two friends in particular.

I was over at one of their, one friend's house. He's an amazing guy. But if you met him, you wouldn't describe him as warm, right? He's a little distant. That's how most people would describe him. And I was getting ready to leave his house. And I turned to him.

I'm like, "Hey, I'll talk to you soon." He's like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to you soon." I'm like, "I love you." And I watched him, you know? And our friendship is even closer, even closer now. And I have another friend who is, again, super close, not very emotionally available, but amazing human being.

And I remember I did the same experiment. I was like, "Hey, I love you." He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." You know, try to like deflect, deflect. But I did it again. The next time I saw him, I was like, "I love you." And he hugged me like I was his child.

And I gave him a kiss on the cheek. And my friendships with these guys are even closer because we've taken first my one friend, but then I took the risk to express an emotion that I think a lot of men don't have the courage to express. Wow. Start there.

You mentioned being a friend in hard times. I think one thing that I struggle with, I'm such a try to solve the problems that when someone's in a hard time, I know if you ask me outside, "What should I do?" I should just sit and listen. But I just struggle so hard.

You acknowledged it as if this is not an uncommon thing. Take a listening class. There's a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak, right? You want to help. You want to be there. Good instincts, but your instinct is to fix. Again, I think this is more male than female.

Women are much better at holding space. Men want to fix in general, not as a rule. But when somebody is struggling, they don't have the mental capacity to even take in the stuff you're telling them, right? All they need is to not feel alone. And the funny thing is people can take instructions.

I called a friend. I was in a dark time. I was struggling. I called her up and was like, "Hey, could you have a minute? I just need to talk." And I started telling her how I was feeling. And she went into fix it mode. And I said to her, "I don't need you to fix anything.

I just need you to listen. I can give the instruction." And she goes, "Okay." And she can adjust. And the thing about somebody who's struggling or depressed or down or whatever it is, is they can't see the obvious. That's why they're depressed or down or anxious. You are not depressed, down or anxious in that moment, which is why you can see the obvious.

So sometimes trying to fix it and tell them will make them feel worse. You're basically calling them stupid. And so to be a good friend, you have to be good at knowing what people need in the moment. And you don't even have to be intuitive. You can ask, "Do you want me to try and offer you a solution?

Or do you want me to listen?" They'll tell you, "I need you to just listen." Just ask for instructions. And so if a friend is depressed, they're sitting in mud, get in the mud with them. Nobody wants to be in mud, the person who's depressed or the person who's helping.

It's not fun to be around depressed people, but that's what it means to be a friend. It means you get in the mud. If somebody's struggling to get out of bed, don't tell them all the reasons they should get out of bed. Go over to their house, get in bed with them, and eat ice cream with them and watch movies all day and sit in the mud with them.

And when they are ready, they will turn to you and say, "I think I'm ready to get out now." And you're like, "Good, now let me help you. Now I'll go into fix-it mode and try and pull you out of the mud." But the most important thing is when someone is going through hard times, make sure they know they're not alone.

Make them feel not alone. The fixing will happen, they will get through it, but they will struggle to get through it if they feel alone. And if all you do is go into fix-it mode, you will make them feel even more alone. I feel like as you describe this, I'm going back to basics.

You talked about longevity. It's like people are trying to diet supplement this, but they're not actually just like being with people. Are there other fundamental human skills that people just are bad at that life would be so much better if we could improve that we aren't thinking about because they're so obvious?

It's such a good question because the answer is all of it, right? Like cats don't have to work hard to be good at being a cat. They're just naturally good at being cats. But to be human takes work. Like without work, we all suck at being human. We do.

And the reason is the annoying neocortex. We're the only animal with a neocortex, this rational analytical brain that can drive us nuts and overthink and do all those things. And we think that thinking and measuring and analyzing is the solution to everything, but all it does is screw things up.

And so, yeah, we have to learn to reconnect and leverage and manage and all those human skills. Like if somebody calls them soft skills, again, I'm going to freaking punch them. They're human skills. Hard skills are the skills I need to do my job. And soft and human skills are the skills I need to be a better human being.

And I need both. Because hard and soft are opposites, but hard and human are not. And so the simple answer is yes, you have to work on all of it. You have to work on listening. You have to work on empathy. You have to work on how to give trust, not just how to receive it.

You have to learn how to show love. You have to learn how to receive love. You have to learn how to have an uncomfortable conversation. You have to learn how to give feedback. You have to learn how to receive feedback. And annoyingly, the way you like things, the way you like loving and giving love, the way you like giving feedback or receiving feedback may not work for somebody else, which means now you have to learn to be flexible with all the stuff you're learning.

It's so freaking hard. And no one is ever going to be an expert human. We're all shitty at it. Some are slightly better than others. But most people are pretty shitty at being humans. And here's even worse. You get a bad night's sleep, you suck at all of it.

So it takes energy. Oh, come on. Yeah, being human is hard work. And the humans I like the most are the ones who wake up in the morning and say, "Today, I'm going to work to be a slightly better human." I can't work on all of it at the same time.

It's like being healthy, right? We have to exercise. We have to eat right. You have to sleep right. You can't do it all well every day. You kind of like pick a couple and those that you're not focusing on and drop and you go over there. That's life too.

That's being human too. You pick up one, you drop another, but it's also a muscle. If you practice listening, you get good at it. If you stop doing it, it will atrophy. And if you know what good listening sounds like, have a fight with your wife. Tell me how well it goes, right?

And if you're a good listener, it's hard, but you'll hug each other and love each other more at the end of that fight. If you suck at it, if you suck at listening, it'll escalate and escalate. And one of you will storm out of the room. If you want to know if you're a good listener or a bad listener, just find conflict anywhere or find someone who's struggling.

And at the end, ask them, how do you feel? Do you feel heard? And they'll tell you yes or no. You'll get a kick out of this one. I was at this meeting and I was sitting next to this woman who supposedly was some fancy yoga instructor. And the entire meeting, she was on her phone underneath the table and I could see what she was doing.

I'm sitting right next to her. And it's not like she had a family member in the hospital and she was checking in or something. She was on her socials. I could see I'm just sitting next to her. And at one point, the conversation at the table while she's looking down turned to being present.

We talked about being present. Her head pops up and she says, that's why I love yoga because it helps me be present. And I thought to myself, here's what she doesn't understand. Being present is not something you do in a yoga class. I think you missed the whole point of this thing, right?

You don't know you're present until somebody else says you are. Because being present is a deeply cooperative thing. Now you can practice being present. Yes, all the benefits of meditation. So think about what meditation is, right? If you know how to meditate, you're supposed to be still. You're supposed to focus on one thing.

Could be your breath. Could be a sound. Could be a mantra. You could be look at something. It doesn't matter. You focus on one thing. And when you get distracted from that one thing, a thought pops in your head, you're supposed to label it. Push it out of your mind.

Say, I'll deal with it later. And go back to focusing on that one thing. And at some point when it works, it just kind of clicks. And you're like, all there. Now we know all the medical benefits. And much has been written, spoken already about all the magical personal benefits to meditation.

We don't talk about are the social benefits to meditation, right? Which are the reason to practice meditation is for someone else. So when you sit down with somebody and you go, I'm struggling. You're like, I'm focusing on that. And there could be a car screeching behind you. You won't even turn around.

And you have a thought of something you want to contribute to what they're saying. But you don't. You put out of your mind. You say, I'll deal with that lady right now. The only thing that matters is this. And this whole meditation practice was valuable for this one moment.

And at the end, your friend will say to you, thank you for listening. Thank you. I really appreciate you being present here. I feel so heard. Thank you. Thank you. Because you've been practicing and practicing and practicing that magical skill for the benefit of another. And I think that's one of the things we've completely neglected in our modern Western society.

We've taken all these Eastern practices and we've made them selfish. Yoga is something I do for myself. Why don't you do yoga for other people? Meditation is what I do for me. Or you could meditate for the benefit of others. And the benefits to you are just the lucky strike extra.

There's an entire section in the bookshop called self-help. And there's no section in the bookshop called help others. And I think if you look at why we're depressed and why we're anxious and why we're stressed, it's because we feel alone. And all of the incentive structures around us and our parents and our guidance counselors are constantly telling us to focus on us.

Your career, your happiness, your marriage, your partner, your money. You're this, you're that. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. We're all obsessed with me. And yet to be a happy, successful, thriving, long-living human being. It's us. It's we. Every time, every day. And we forget that we are legacy machines.

The human animal is tens of thousands of years old. And this technology hasn't changed in tens of thousands of years at all. It's a legacy machine in a modern world. And the modern world has hijacked a lot of our internal systems to our own detriment. There's nothing wrong with dopamine.

Dopamine exists for very good biological reasons. Now, the way that gaming companies and search firms and YouTubes and Instagrams and TikToks have hijacked that reward structure for their benefit, not ours. Not good. Very unhealthy. Detrimental. And all of these systems can be hijacked and faked. Right? And we can feel like we have these warm, loving relationships that aren't really there.

And so I think to do the hard work of going back to basics of the legacy machine and understanding why the machine was built the way it was, and it was that we have to cooperate and look after each other for our very survival. You put a human being by themselves in the woods, they die.

They die. That's what happens. They die. Most of the time. You put a group of people in the woods by themselves, they'll do okay. We are cooperative animals. Our very survival depends on how much we love and trust each other. Because if I trust you, I'll go to sleep at night and know that you watched it for danger for me.

And I know you'd do the same for me. I don't trust you. I can't sleep at night. Can't sleep. And these are basic things. And I think we've over, we've over indexed. I'm trying to measure everything and modernize everything and systematize everything and spreadsheet everything and app everything. There's no app for love.

There's no app for friendship. There's no app to help you listen. Hold on, honey. Let me get my app out while we're having this fight. Can you imagine holding up like a Google Translate while you're fighting with your wife? That's not going to go well. Right? This is just old fashioned shit.

And when I say old fashioned, I mean, like, really old fashioned. Well, you said human skills. My brain immediately goes to think like, oh, I need to learn how to do things. And then I'm trying to remember all the things you said. It was like listening, confrontation, conversation, feedback, empathy.

All of them involve other people. So they're human skills, but they're multi-human skills. Like you need other people to practice them and use them. And those seem to be what we've lost. It's not the skill of sharpening a knife. Correct. They're pro-social behaviors where a lot of the things we are really good at practicing, I would argue, are at worst anti-social behaviors or at minimum unsocial behavior.

Right? High performing individuals that are addicted to dopamine do really well. Not a lot of level of trust around them. You know? What's the school for human skills? The good news is there's bunches of stuff to do. I mean, like, I try and put stuff out in the world to help.

There's no one size fits all. If you want to learn listening, go read a book called How to Talk to Kids So Kids Will Listen to Listen So Kids Will Talk. It's a parenting book. Right? Turns out adults are like children. So, for example, one of the things you'll learn in this book is when your kids have feelings, you don't deny them the feelings, you affirm their feelings.

So when your kid is angry at something stupid, right? Or upset at something ridiculous, you don't have to be angry over that. That's ridiculous. You would never say that to a child. You say things like, "Wow, yeah, if that happened to me, I'd be angry too." You affirm their feelings.

And then they feel good and they feel seen and they feel heard. You know this. You're a parent. Yeah, I'm like, "This sounds like a conversation I had yesterday." Yeah, you've learned this. Not do that with an adult. Your friend's upset, don't be like, "Dude, what are you talking about?

Your life's freaking amazing. Shut up." Go like, "Dude, yeah, if I was in your shoes, I'd feel the same way." Affirm the feelings. Same thing. You don't have to agree with it. You don't have to like it. Just affirm it. What is it about our brains that make it so easy to do that?

Like with my children, that's exactly what happens. But by default, that's not what happens with other people. Is it practice? I think kids are vulnerable. And we really work hard to take care of kids so that they can grow up to be the best, most confident version of themselves.

Now, imagine if we applied that same mentality to our friends. They're vulnerable. And I'm going to do everything I can so that they will grow up to be the best, most confident version of themselves. I mean, if I had a friend that said, "My job to be Simon's friend is to see him as a vulnerable human, offer him all the care and protection as he try and muddles through life.

And I want to help him build his confidence so he can be the best version of himself." I'm going to turn to that person and be like, "Be my friend forever. Please, please, please." We treat friends as the lowest rung on the hierarchy, right? Like, would you cancel on a meeting for a friend?

Would you cancel on a friend for a meeting? "Oh, but my friends will understand." Okay. Just saying. Low on the hierarchy. If you have struggles in your marriage, what do you do? You suffer, you go through it, you talk to friends, maybe get some therapy together, get some couples therapy.

You work really hard to try and make it work. And divorce is going to be the last resort, not the first choice, but we're going to try. And it's been shit for the past six months, but we're in it. You have issues with a friend. Maybe there's a violation of trust.

What do you do? You'd be like, "Listen, I don't know if I can be in this friendship anymore. What you did, unacceptable." Really? You'll go for therapy with your wife, but you won't go for therapy with your friend that you've known longer than your wife? One violation of trust?

Spouses violate trust all the time. It's not easy. It sucks. And so I think the ability to wrestle with discomfort. But with friends, we treat them like, "I can't be friends with you anymore." Like we're indignant when they screw up. God forbid we screw up. So yeah, I think we put a pretty low standard on friendship.

We put much higher standards on work. We put much higher standards on our romantic relationships. But we tend to undervalue friendships when we don't work as hard on them. To our own detriment. Because when work fucks you and your wife says, "I want a divorce," it's only friends you got left.

You mentioned when you mess it up, what can we do better as humans when we acknowledge or realize our own faults? Say them out loud. It's accountability. Like at work, we talk about accountability, right? The best bosses are the ones who say, "I screwed up, on me, on me." The best bosses are the ones who demand accountability.

"Hey, boss, this failed because it was on me. It wasn't market conditions, it was me. And if it was market conditions, I should have been better at tracking market conditions and be prepared for them if they went sideways and had no backup plan on me." And we go, "Okay, I gotcha.

What do you need?" We can be frustrated. We can be upset. But as long as there's no negligence, we're like, "All right, this sucks. I'm here to help you." We do that all the time. So why not do that in friendship as well? Accountability. "I totally, I totally, that's on me.

Oh, my God. I should do better. I know better. I am deeply sorry. Here's what I'm doing to fix it." What do you expect at work? "Hey, boss, I missed the deadline on me. Here's what I'm implementing so it doesn't happen again." Again, we work really hard to get it right at work.

It's the same skills. "Honey, this is, or friend, this is what I'm going to do. This is where I need your help." So I ask for help, right? So for example, I said, "Listen, super absent-minded, super forgetful. Sometimes I'll say something, I'll even make a plan with you, and you won't hear from me, and you take it so personally because you think I've forgotten.

I have forgotten. Please just ask me, and I'll tell you. I just need your help on this one." So I think it's all about communication. And it's just like at work. We know all these things at work. This is why it's not such a stretch for me from writing leadership books to writing a friendship book, right?

Communication is lubrication. When there's a lot of communication at work, things run smoothly. When there's less communication, there's a lot of friction. It's the same in friendships. This episode is brought to you by Viore, which is amazing because they are one of only the few brands I wear almost every single day.

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What seems like at work, we have these metrics of like, I get a promotion, I have a salary, I have an increase. So we want to learn all these skills to achieve this outcome of some level of growth. And in friendship, there's no real like, oh, I have deeper friendships.

I've leveled up. So people kind of forget about it. But when I think about my grandparents and I think, oh, wow, the last 40 years of their life was made better by them being great at being friends, right? Like building friends, being there for people. It seems so obvious that we should focus on this, but it doesn't feel like it's been culturally obvious.

I try and talk about these things in the here and now because it's such a trope to say that nobody is on their deathbed and wishes they worked harder and spent more time at work. People always wish they spent more time with their family and friends. Like, it's such a joke, you know?

But it's like, nobody thinks the house is going to burn down when they buy insurance. Like, we're terrible long-term planners. People are terrible at saving money, right? Because nobody thinks they're going to need it until it's too late. We have to talk to people in the here and now, right?

Let's get them where they are. Are you the happiest you can be? Do you feel like you've got someone who's got your back? Do you feel like you can call someone when you're not doing well and that they have the skill set to know how to hold space? Do you ever have people to call to brag about how freaking amazing you are and they share in the joy with you and big up you and make you feel even better?

Or do you have to keep it to yourself because you're kind of embarrassed that you're going to be that guy to your friends? Just ask yourself these questions if you have any of these people in your life. If the answer is no to any of them, then maybe a little work is required.

That's okay. One of the biggest questions I get is, "I don't know how to make friends." I hear it from young people. I hear it from older people. They lean into me and they go, "I don't know how to make friends. I don't know what I'm doing." This is part of the downside of the internet and television and all this stuff.

There used to be bowling leagues. There's an old book written about it called Bowling Alone. There's no bowling leagues anymore. There's no place we go to on Thursday nights to hang out with people who have the same interests as us where we're more likely to make friends. The closest we can get is online gaming.

You know that when you buy a video game, you get one controller. It doesn't even say, "Would you like to play with a friend?" In fact, most of the games you buy, it is impossible if you had two controllers to play the game with your friends sitting next to them.

The only way to play is online. It is impossible to sit next to your friend and play a game. There's precious few numbers of games that allow it. All of the systems are telling us, "Stay away. Stay away." One of the most important things you can do as a parent, how old are your kids?

Two and four. Okay, so they're a little young, but not the four-year-olds getting up there, right? Teach them how to be friends. They're young right now, but once they start hitting those teenage years, when they start prioritizing, they start caring more about what their friends think than what they think, even when they start having play dates at 8, 9, 10, 11, right?

Kids come over, take all the phones away, call the parents. I mean, you made the play date and you say, "Hey, listen, you're bringing your kid over at four o'clock on Thursday. Just so you know, I'm going to take all the kids' phones away. If you need anything, just call me.

I'll get your kid. They're going to be at the house anyway." Teach the kids how to make friends. Teach the kids how to resolve conflict. Teach the kids how to say what they need to their friends emotionally. Teach them how to make friends. Do not take it for granted.

It should be a basic human skill. And if we were living tens of thousands of years ago, it probably would be. But all of the distractions and dopamine and devices, it interrupts this machine. And so we don't know how to make friends. We've forgotten the skill. We have to teach our children how to make friends.

And so a lot of these human skills are great at helping build a friendship. Any advice for that little middle gap there? You said there's no bowling leagues, right? Even if I had all the human skills in the world, if there's not a person to be friends with, that's tough.

Is there a modern version of that? So if someone listening is like, "I don't have a lot of friends. Where should they go to use these skills?" So the best thing you can do is an act of service. And what I mean by that is help somebody who's struggling with the same thing as you, right?

So when I wrote "Leaders Eat Last," I went and looked at Alcoholics Anonymous. Amazing organization, right? Alcoholics Anonymous has a 12-step program to help you beat your addiction. Most people will know the first step, admit you have a problem. "I don't have any friends. I don't know how to make friends." Okay, that's step one.

But the magical thing about Alcoholics Anonymous and all of those 12-step programs is they know this. They have the data, which is if you master 11 steps but not the 12th, you're probably going to succumb to the disease. But if you master the 12th step, you're more likely to beat it.

What's the 12th step? The 12th step is to help another alcoholic. Service. So don't worry about you. "I got it. You're struggling to make friends. You don't know how to make friends. I got it." Find somebody you know who's also struggling to make friends and wishes they could make friends and help them.

And the act of service of helping them solve the problem that you're struggling with will solve your problem. And I've seen people starting to do these things. For example, they'll have a salon, old school salon, right? Going to have 10 people over for dinner. I only know two or three or four.

And I'm going to ask them to invite someone who they think would enjoy the topic we're going to discuss. And sometimes it can be silly. And sometimes it can be intense. And you host a salon. And maybe you have a salon group where you each take turns. And everybody brings somebody new each time.

So there's the core group. And maybe the group grows. Whatever, you can figure it out. Have a movie night. Dinner parties. All of these things are relatively simple. Pizza night, relatively inexpensive. You can make them as simple or as complicated as you want. But find a reason. And invite the people who...

And be very clear. Be very clear why you're doing it. Like, "Look, I think we need to do better at making friends. I think we're not good at it. And so I'm going to start doing these things with the hope that we can meet new people. But more important, we can actually be better at doing it." And by the way, same with the kids.

The rule is, phones go in the bowl by the front door. I do this little thing all the time. I'm going to show you, right? So here I am sitting with you on a podcast, right? And what if I was just like holding my phone? Not using it. Not answering it.

Not texting. Nothing's buzzing. How does this make you feel? Not so great, right? And this is a totally artificial construction. And this is what happens. We go out with our friends and we hold our phones. Or we put it on the table. "Oh, let me be polite. Let me turn it upside down." Turning it upside down is not more polite.

Because here's what happens. Here's what you do when you're out for dinner. Your phone's upside down. You go like this. Remember we talked about being present? That little thought that said, "Hmm, I wonder what's going on in the world. I wonder if there's other friends who are texting me.

I wonder if something else is happening other than this conversation." Well, you know what I do? I put it in airplane mode. Because then I know nothing's coming in. So I'm not curious because I know nothing's coming in. And I put it away, out of sight, on a table, in a bag, in a jacket pocket, whatever.

I get it away. Or I hand it to my friends and say, "Can you put this in your bag, please?" And if a friend puts their phone on the table, I'll be like, "Can you take your phone off the table, please?" Nobody's ever pushed back at me. They'll be like, "No!" Now, occasionally it's gonna be like, "Look, I'm waiting for a call." That's fine.

There's always exceptions. No problem. Me too, sometimes. I'm like, "Hey, look, I'm really sorry. Just this one thing. But then I'll put it away." You know? That's okay. But I'll tell friends, "Hey, put it away. Let's be present." I feel like we started this conversation talking about your purpose and the thing that gets you out of bed.

And I'm wondering if the energy you get from knowing that, which makes it even easier to get out of bed, does that help with all of this? How much of a prerequisite to try to improve your friendship, improve your life, improve your skills, is better if you know what your being is and what your purpose is?

Great question. Um, I would venture to say yes. Because fundamentally, all purposes are acts of service. Right? Nobody has a purpose to be the richest person in the world. Like, that's not a purpose. And nobody's gonna go out of their way to help you achieve that. Right? A purpose, like we talked about with your friends, it's the thing you fill in others.

And it's the way that you get fulfillment. So I like to give inspiration. I love to feel inspired. Right? The thing I give to the world is the thing I need the most. So yeah, I think that if you have a clear sense of purpose, it gives you a reason to get out of bed and be like, this is what I want to give to people.

Whether they're my friends or whether they're strangers. I can do it for strangers through my work. I can do it for my friends through my acts of friendship. So yeah, I think having a clear sense of purpose absolutely amplifies that and gives you some clarity. Yes. And what can we do for anyone who's a parent in helping shape our children to, in any way?

Or is that just a fool's errand? So there's data on this. Which is, you know, you have two kids, you raise them pretty much the same. They grow up really differently. And so what we've learned is like, as much as parents may try, your kids don't get all their values strictly from their parents.

They get them from other places too. Right? But universally around the world, there's only two things that every single child learns exclusively from their parents. How to treat themselves and how to treat others. So teach them to love themselves and teach them to love others. Teach them to be there for their friends.

Teach them to be there for their teachers. Teach them to be there for their bosses and their colleagues. And teach them to be there for each other if you have siblings. And teach them to look after themselves. You get those things right, the kids will be fine. And what about people who have these conversations with their friends and can't figure it out and they're still struggling?

Go find the thing that resonates with you and do that. Like, you know, we're all a little different. I treat it like anything, which is if you want anything, you got to focus on it. You got to do the work, right? You want to get in shape? You got to work out every day.

You want to eat healthy? You got to like eat broccoli and reduce the amount of sugar, right? Like, it's not like any of this stuff is difficult. Everybody knows everything you have to do. We just don't do it. And so friendships on the list. You said it yourself. You know, I want to fix them.

But I know sometimes I have to listen. How did you know that? Probably because somebody yelled at you once. Can't you just damn listen? Stop fixing me. I mean, you know, because somebody told you. Or multiple people, yeah. Or multiple people, maybe everybody. Or the same person multiple times.

Or the same person every time, exactly. Yes, that's one where I didn't want to go down the path of, oh, for each of these human skills, let's walk through the lessons on how to do them. There's probably a video you've made or a post you've made or an episode you've done.

But there's one that I'll come back to, which is I feel like the constant criticism I get from my wife is like, I feel like you just don't have any EQ. Or when someone says that, I hear empathy. So I feel like that's a blind spot for me. Is there something I should be doing to get better other than just practicing listening?

Yes, I mean, so first of all, if she keeps saying it and you are now aware of it, now you can't say it's a blind spot. Now you have to say, it's something I know, but I've chosen not to work on because that's actually more accurate. So your wife has higher EQ, it sounds like, than you do?

Yeah, she's going to laugh when she hears this. Why don't you start by asking her, I want to do this. I need to do this for myself. I need to do this for you. I don't know where to start. How do you have empathy? How do you do it?

Show me, teach me, guide me. Because I want to do it and I'll be totally honest with you, I'm stuck, I do not know. And she'll say, easy, here's how you can start. I guarantee she's got a good answer. And maybe she'll say, you're a shit listener. Okay, you can take a listening class.

So like, if that's what she says, then go do that. That's a great question. There aren't enough. I only know it because I took one. I've taught them loosely before, but I really should make one. That's a good idea. You could also read a book about it. Like I said, read the book, the kid's book, How to Talk to Kids So Kids Will Listen to Listeners So Kids Will Talk.

It's a bright yellow book, you can buy it on Amazon for like a dollar. I sold more of that book probably than anyone else. But like, it's a silly little book. It's easy to read. It's got a bunch of pictures, right? Like, start there. It's something that's really basic.

So empathy is about grace. So here's a couple little tricks for empathy, right? Because we're judgmental. That's what we are. Well, most of us, right? Even the ones who aren't judgy are a little bit judgy, right? So here's what happens. Let's take a work scenario just to make it easy, right?

This is very common, right? Sitting in a meeting, somebody's name comes up and somebody goes, oh, they're so lazy. Okay, now we have passed judgment and everybody's impression of them is now tainted by one person's judgment or opinion of them. Oh, death of the party, right? So what you have to do is interrupt that.

Just requires one person to say, hold on, I'd like to interject. They may be lazy. It's true. Or they're tired. Or we have them in the wrong job. Or they've got a huge amount of stress going on. At home that we don't know about. Or they don't know, or they've got a bad boss.

They've been given bad direction. You just go down the list of all the things that could be. Lazy's on the list. But the minute you realize that there's a bunch of things on the list, it gives grace. That's empathy. Okay? For example, he's an asshole. Or he's struggling. Or he's stuck.

Or he's unsure. He might be an asshole. That might be the reason. Yeah. And it just gives grace. That's empathy. So when somebody's struggling at work, we say, hey, listen, your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. If you don't pick up your numbers in the fourth quarter, I don't know what's going to happen.

Fairly normal scenario. Now let's replay that with empathy. Hey, your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. We've had this conversation before. What's going on? I'm worried about you. That's empathy. It's not assuming. It's giving grace. It's assuming that there's something that we don't know about.

That's all it is. Right? You know, we talk about putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. It's hard to do. I think that's true, but it oversimplifies it. And I think the easiest way to have empathy is just have grace, assume good, and add to that list of possibilities. And that's a good way to practice it.

Super helpful. I'm going to ask my wife this question tonight. We'll see how it goes. It'll go well. You know why? Because if you're serious about wanting to take yourself on, and if you're serious about asking for advice to do it, it will go well. It's funny because as you describe empathy, I wonder if there's actually something my wife describes that I'm missing that's not that.

Because in the workplace, in a lot of places, I kind of have that, I'm going to call it optimism because I know you like that word, but it's like, oh, well, maybe this other thing could be at play. Like seeing that someone that's not doing well or struggling or missing the boat could have another reason behind that, I feel like I'm actually pretty good at.

But there's something that I'm obviously not good at because it gets brought up a lot. No, but I think you're also making the point, which is like, would you prioritize a meeting over a friend or prioritize a friend over a meeting? Anybody who cares about their leadership skills works on this stuff at work because they want work to go better.

And we work on these human things because we know what teamwork is, and we know what camaraderie is and morale. We know all of these things, and we work hard to be good leaders so that we can boost morale in order to increase engagement, productivity, and innovation, blah, blah, blah.

Like we do it. And then we turn it off and we come home. For years, girls I dated, friends, they'd say to me, "Simon, you are the worst listener." This was honestly my response. I'd be like, "Do you know what I do for a living? Like, what do you mean?

I'm a phenomenal listener. Are you kidding me?" That would be my honest answer. Then I took the listening class, and I called up all of those friends one by one. I'd be like, "Hey, I just took a class, and I'm a shit listener." And they're like, "Newsflash." And I said, "I learned that I am a fantastic listener with people I will never see again for the rest of my life.

But people who I love to read my life on a daily basis, terrible. So you might be brilliant at all of these things at work. The question is, can you bring them home?" It sounds like you made that change. So there's hope. I'm a work in progress. But yes, I did.

And I think I'm proud to say that my friends would say of me now that I'm a much better listener. Well, my big action item is to go find a listening class, because I feel like that's something that I'm incredibly interested in. So thank you for sharing that. Where do we want to send people if they want to go check out everything you've been writing and talking about?

All the usual places. The Instagram, the LinkedIn, YouTube. It's, you know, the bookshop. My rule is it's my job to find a way to get my message where people are, not tell them where I want them to go. So wherever you like to go, I'll try and be there.

Love it. Thank you so much for doing this. You're welcome. Thanks, Chris.