How to Cultivate Friendships at Work and Beyond with Shasta Nelson

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and sixty three. We'll be talking to Shasta Nelson, who is the author of a new book called The Business of Friendship, which is talking about building and maintaining close relationships with colleagues and why that's important. It makes your career both work better and also feel better if you have people you enjoy spending time with at work. So, Sarah, how's your your friend game looking at the moment? Not great? I mean I've talked about this before, but I felt like it takes years when you move to establish your friend group. I think it took me like four years in Miami Beach. We moved here less than two years ago, haven't been able to do it. I feel like I'm like starting, but then COVID really really threw a wrench. Like there was I was on some neighborhood what's Up groups and was like at the point where I might be like, oh, maybe this person would want to run with me, or like sort of tried to start a neighborhood book club that didn't go anywhere, and then COVID really like wasn't great timing, because when you've moved to a new place, like you want to go to a kind of bigger and more casual gatherings perhaps as you're getting to know someone. So so yeah, my friend game is sort of lame right now. And even my like really close friends from Miami Beach, like, we did one zoom date with them recently and it was great, but like we've barely seen them and it makes me so sad. So I don't know, hopefully that we'll get a little bit better someday. We did go to an outdoor pool party for Annabelle's BFF that was really fun, and we're probably gonna do a beach play date with them, and I like the mom, so that that'll be nice. As an aside, I have a little bit of an issue where I like can't bring myself to attend a kid's Zoom birthday party, like just doesn't do it for you, in fact, any Zoom celebration, Like I have this block where I just don't even want to write it my planner. I'm like, I just and I will, Like I had one that I would have gone through that I actually did accidentally miss and that made me kind of sad because I'm very close with them. But otherwise, like I just I don't know. Did you do the car parade? No, I don't do car parades. I mean if it were like a close family member and I was gonna get to like see them and have a conversation with them, like tiny car parade, I would consider it. But like the idea of like twenty third graders like driving past a like I'm a horrible person. I'm sorry, Please don't hate me for this. I just we all have the things we dislike. Not into it. What you people hate puppies and rainbows. I don't hate puppies or rainbows. Those are both lovely things. Have you gone to a bunch of have you piled all five kids in the car and gone to some We've only done a few of I mean most people have just not done stuff. I mean they've just you know, if people were celebrating birthdays, they just do a small family kind of thing one year. I guess it's not a big deal to do something like that. And we've done a few car things for like end of school related stuff, right, So we did those to go celebrate and see the teachers and wave and say hi and all that, and that seemed fairly innocuous. I don't know it was okay for me. No, I did do it for the school. I guess I drove by to get annabel supplies and said hi to her teacher. But that was that was about it. Yeah, I mean Zoom is just awkward in general. We've family conversations on zoom. It's it's always it's as hard to manage as it would work thing, only it's harder because you don't have an agenda per se, and you don't have one person in charge. So given that those are necessary components of a business zoom meeting and you don't have them generally when you are having a social get together, it makes it quite difficult to pull it off, so you know, there's a reason it feels awkward. I wonder if families would be better off being like, okay, agenda, we're all going to go around and say this so much it would I mean one hundred percent would be. You need one person to be the facilitator, so whoever, maybe whoever organized it, can just put that person in charge of it. They can then go around and ask everybody a question in turn, ask people follow up questions by name, like Joe, can you say what you wanted to say about Mary? Doing that? You know it sounds terrible, but that's how it works, right, and that keeps it from being exhausting and awful. So I asked you I kind of got to get your head around that, because truthfully, if you're at a FAMI gathering, everyone's having individual conversations. Is not all one large thing with you all facing each other. And that's why assuming all of you on it is like the worst Thanksgiving dinner ever, because I mean, imagine like twelve of you around a table trying to have one conversation, like somebody winds up dominating it. Somebody's you know, trying to say something, but being ignored like somebody is just carping about whatever, somebody's like on our phone like it just that's what it winds up being. So it has to be either put into smaller groups or somebody facilitating it. Yes, I don't know. Yeah, we haven't done that much friend related stuff either this summer. But you've run with another person. I don't run somebody, so that's great. We have had our a couple people over for like porch like drinks on the porch in the course of the past few months, and it's been wonderful every time we do that. I think you could obviously have too many social obligations and feel like they're draining or whatever. But when you're only having a few of you wind up looking forward to them a lot. It's like other people, Oh my goodness, we're not just talking to each other. So I've really enjoyed doing that and that was nice to have. Yeah, that does sound really nice. Yeah, Well, we'll hear from Shasta about how we can maintain friendships in this challenging time, so looking forward to that. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Shasta Nelson to the program. She is the author of a new book called the Business of Friendship, and she is also an expert on friendship in general. So Shasta, first, I would love to have you introduce yourself to our listeners, and then you know a little bit about your work, your life and what drew you to this topic. Yeah. I've been studying friendship now for twelve years. Really specifically, I've always passionate about relationships in general. But I found myself looking at us some studies coming out talking about specifically at the time for women, how significant their friendships were to their health and to their happiness. And yet I was looking around at all of us being so obsessed with the parent child's relationship and the romantic relationships, and like we were buying thousands of books, and we were like, who am I if I don't have these relationships, And it was like that was just like we think of them as the kind of the things we need in our lives, and yet the research shows that those things actually aren't always that great for our happiness and our health, and traditionally haven't always been that way. And that is our friendships that matt make such a difference. So I just found myself kind of in that space where I was looking around being like, why aren't people talking about this more? Why aren't people doing more research on this? Why are we like not finding resources for people? And that's really what kind of just put me in that space. It wasn't because I knew that much about it. It It was because I was asking the questions and just trying to find resources for people, for people I was working with and stuff. And ever since then, I've been reading and devouring and learning and listening and teaching and writing books and speaking and gathering up you know, most of it's with women, and this book puts me a little bit broader. I'm doing more co ed which is actually very cool too, because I've long felt that men I think this is one of the reasons why they die younger than women. And I think this is why I think men need. I don't think it's a women's issue. I think it's a human need, and so I'm really excited to be talking about it in those broad terms too. But yeah, friendship is like the thing. Friendship is the thing. And you actually have a ministerial degree, don't you. I mean, you're approaching this from a really sort of holistic perspective. Yeah, my training is I've got a Master's of Divinity and I used to pastor and so it felt like a big veer off the road. But when I look back on it, I was like, that was where I was doing marriage counseling. I was training small groups and as a pastor, you're asking the question, how do I bond community? What is community? And how do people belong? And so really thinking through when somebody walks in the door as a visitor, what does it mean to actually participate and belong? And so, yeah, I've in many ways have always been about community and wanting all of us to feel that sense of yeah, belonging, And unfortunately in churches, not all of them, but unfortunately in most churches, you can expe that belonging. But there's a lot of that. You have to believe a certain thing to belong, or you have to behave a certain way to behave, or you have to appear a certain way to it, you know, And that kind of never rubbed me right either. So it's really just how do we all as humans get that need to feel connected met in ways where we just feel accepted for who we are. So, yeah, that's been a life passion and what made you want to tackle the workplace side of it? Then, Yeah, such a good question. I So here's the thing. My second book was a titled Friend Timassy, and that one was talking about how most of us when we feel lonely, and that's a word that most of us don't actually even use a name very well, but when we feel like we want something more, most of us, it's not we want more interaction or that we need to know more people, or that we need to go make new friends. Most of us, it's that we need to we need to have closer relationships. We're craving intimacy, We're craving more meaningful relationships. And so I was noticing that a lot of us, when we felt lonely, we were like, oh, I need to go make friends, I need to meet people. And I was like, no, you actually know enough people. You don't feel known by a few, and so you need to like go deeper. And so when I teach what deepens relationship, one of the three things that deepens relationships is consistent time and shared experiences and repeated interaction. And I this won't surprise you at all. The number one thing I heard is I don't have time for that. I don't have time to be that consistent. I you know, I can only meet here for lunch once a month, or I can only see them, you know, once a year, wife fly out there, or I just don't have time to be on the phone. And I just over and over and over, I don't have time. And I've thought, you know, I could do my darnedest to like talk you into one more hour a week, and that's not going When you see the numbers collectively of sixty one percent of us feeling lonely on a somewhat regular basis, I was like, I don't think I can talk you into one more hour, and that's going to make the biggest difference. I think we need to tackle. You know, work is like to adults what school is to kids. This is where we're spending time with people, where we're interacting, where we're making our biggest contribution. And I was like, why don't we talk about putting friendship in our whole life as opposed to trying to fit it in this personal life bucket with a thing I was and other things. And to me, this is really answering the question of, like, how can we get more of our emotional social needs met in the biggest part of our lives in that bucket. So it's answering the question I don't have time, Well you do, just yes, exactly. But I think a lot of people feel a little weird about that, right, I mean, first, we're accustomed to thinking of life and separate spheres, but you know, one is where we can have this this vulnerability, you know, the intimacy with people in our personal lives. You know, we feel a little bit weird about that in the workplace, Like is it okay to be vulnerable and intimate with people at work? Yeah? Absolutely it is. And it's so interesting because we are uncomfortable with it. When I was doing the research, about thirty percent of us are like yeah. And yet when asked how many of us want a friend, almost all of us are like, oh, yes, please, you know, and at work we're like, we're not sure it's appropriate, but we want one. And also, it is. It is, whether we like it or not. It is the number one place adults are making their friends. And so that is happening. And my bigger question is it is happening. We need it to happen. What we need to do is talk about it more and teach healthy expectations and set this up so that it's best for the people involved and for the workplace. And the research shows it is absolutely paramount not to our not only to our individual health and happiness, but to the organizations of whom we work, which is really fascinating. I mean, there's twenty years of research. I mean we're talking decades and many, many different people studying it in a variety of different ways. Who say, if you have a best friend at work, you are the best employee for the workplace. You're more engaged, you have better you treat the customers better, You're less likely to leave. So we're bringing our turnover costs down. You call in sick less, you have fewer workplace accidents. I mean you just look down the list, and the people who have a best friend at work absolutely show up and feel more engaged, look forward to Monday morning, the Monday morning and air quotes, and feel like they want to kind of. They feel supported, and they feel safe for brainstorming, They feel safe for taking risks, They feel safer showing up with big ideas. And those last few ideas are examples of vulnerability. In the workplace, And to your point, a lot of us are like, well, we picture people telling personal drama and disclosing like all these like he did one last night, and we picture vulnerability and we have like these fears that pop into our head immediately. And I do teach incremental slow vulnerability when we talk about disclosing, and I teach how to do that in a healthy, safe way. But more importantly, vulnerability is what we need in order to brainstorm. It's what we need to be able to say, I actually don't know the answer to this, right, I actually need help with this or you know, not just diversity, but inclusion is vulnerability. It's like, let me, I don't want to just have you be a token different person at the table. I actually want your differences to impact our answers here and your story to change what we're trying to do and how you're experiencing this, and I mean all when we actually list everything we want for the workplace and how we will be better together, it takes an incredible amount of vulnerability to do that. This is so interesting and very much falls in line with some projects that I'm actually working on at work right now, which is funny. Because I don't really let that part get into the podcast too much. But I am one of the newer roles is to be on this wellness committee, and one of the things we're doing is exactly that, trying to just build a friend community amongst the like jillions of physicians that work in this one healthcare system. And there it is. And I will say the older generation is more resistant to that, and I wonder if that's because they're trying to preserve some separation, whereas the younger ones, and particularly the younger ones with parents, have been like, yes, let's get together, let's do stuff, Like we just started a what's Up group that people are actually participating in, and I can see that, like we're starting with these really like mundane things, but if we continue, maybe people will start to like strip some layers off and then maybe we could someday actually meet in person and hang out and that would be like a whole other level. Yeah. I love that. I mean, the research just shows and backs that up of how important that is. From I mean, I just listed a whole bunch of stuff where that benefits the organization, but from us personally, these are the people that we're interacting with who help us build resilience, you know, you especially when you talk about doctors and the people on the front lines. I mean, the more supportive they feel, the more people that they have sharing similar experiences and saying I struggle with that too, and yes, this is what my customer did or my patient did, and you know, I mean, these are the things that help us build resilience, help us feel more supported, help us feel like what we're doing matters. It helps us kind of get oriented to ourselves. And when you look at happiness and health numbers, these are the people who are impacting our health more so than like that best friend we only talk to every couple months or something. I mean, these are the people we're interacting with and have more are affecting whether we're come home stressed or not, more than anything else. I say, come home, whether it's virtual or whatever that looks like for each of us. But yeah, these are the people that are shaping us and our happiness and our mental health and our well being in the area where we are arguably spending the bulk of our brain and our time. So it's that's a beautiful story. So how do you go about getting a best friend at work though, I mean it's sort of you're not in seventh grade anymore and class and you know, pinky swearing your best friends or something. So how does this tend to happen? Yeah, so it tends to happen where we So what makes the workplace amazing for building friendships is there's three requirements that have to be So when we study any healthy relationship, there's three things that have to be present, and one of them I named earlier was consistency. It's consistent interaction. And that's why that one is what happens automatically in many workplaces because we have proximity, we have kind of we're being pulled together on video calls, like we're meeting people on it and seeing them on a regular basis. If in our non work friends, this is the one that's hardest for us to pull off because the only way to get that consistency is to initiate it, to schedule it, to send those five emails back and forth to like schedule three weeks out. But here we're paid to interact. So in our work we have the consistency somewhat done for us, which is fabulous. And then we're going to build our bond with the people in that space who do the other two requirements with us. So we're seeing a whole bunch of people. Well, the other two requirements are vulnerability and positivity, and so we're going to build relationships with those who we practice these three things with we pick. Like, it's interesting, our best friends are not the people we pick because they're the most amazing people because we interviewed them, because we have the most in common with them. Our brains tell us that, but we actually, any relationship we've ever built, it's because we practice those three things the most. With those people we had the most enjoyable, positive emotions when we interact with them, we have the most We feel most seen and understood and gotten with that vulnerability, and we have enough shared history that we start feeling like we can trust each other and have that safety and that reliability to that pattern. And so the more we practice positivity, consistency, and vulnerability, that will be who becomes our best friend. And that takes time and that's developed. And in a workplace, I'm always saying there's five levels of relationship that I teach and it's kind of subjective, but that's just for our brains to kind of see different growth. And it's you don't find a best friend, you develop a best friendship with some people by practicing these three things over and over and over and over. Well, awesome, We're gonna delve more into that in a second. We're gonna just take a quick ad break. So Sarah and I are talking with Shasta Nelson, who is the author of the new book The Business of Friendship, and she is sharing why friend You know, work, the workplace is a great place to make friends, to have friends. The consistency is of course part of this. But it's interesting that your book is coming out now six months after so many people have been you know, ripped out of their workplaces working from home for the first time. How how does that change what's what's going on in terms of workplace friendships. Oh, it changes it in huge ways because now that consistency that we had by uh, you know, now I can walk to my kitchen and take a break, but there's nobody else in the break room, you know, And now you can like we have a we have a we can do a video conference meeting, or we're all still pulling together. But if we were in person, we would have a little side call conversations before the meeting got started, so one on one we'd have to ask about the weekend, and we'd walk to the back to our desks together. And so we're missing the small moments. We're missing the spontaneous conversations kind of what proximity allows and invites. And so yeah, we're now a little bit the way I would compare it, you know, it's a little bit like sending your kids to school versus now they're being homeschooled. Then you have to be more more strategic, you have to like it can be done. But now we have to kind of go back to being intentional about scheduling that consistency again. And now this puts it back into the same category as some of our non work friends, where it's like for us to feel close, we are going to have to have some pattern, some way of interacting, and if it's not automatically being done in meetings and in video calls. Now we're back to the place where we do have to figure out a new pattern we have to which, on the one hand, is good because I always say work is the number one place where most of us make friends as adults. It's also the number one place most of us in friendships not meaning to, but when we change jobs, most of our friendships die simply because we never put to put together a new pattern of consistency. We actually really liked each other, and then we just assumed we'd stay connected. But if we never actually created a new pattern, a new way of like now, how do we interact now? When do we interact? Now? How often do we get together? And what is it we do together? If we didn't answer those questions, that friendship kind of died. And now in some ways we have that privilege of getting to practice that with if we had good friends in the workplace, we get to practice putting that new pattern together now, and it could help build make sure these friendships laught beyond the time we share this job together. You know, so at some point this has to happen. We're being forced to figure it out sooner than later. Now, I wonder if you could give an example of what that might look like like, You know, should I if I have let's say somebody is your colleague and you'd like to have a friendship with them, I mean, should you say, let's let's do a Monday coffee break together. I mean, should you just call them after every meeting you're in and say whatever you would have said on the way to the bathroom in the hallway? But what should you do? It is? It is hard, and it depends on how much relationship you had with them before you got bad, before you're all back in your homes now, if you had, if you felt like you were good friends. Absolutely we should be saying, Okay, we don't know when we're getting back to the office. We need to figure this out. What works for you does Let's get something on the calendar. And to your point, anything that can be automated is a pattern that we can put in place that then means we're spending more time engaging and spending time together and less time having, you know, do the logistics of an inviting scheduling and organizing. So anything that can be automated. Let's say, would you rather start our week every Monday for twenty minutes talking about what's coming up for the week and how the weekend went. Do you want to end every do a quick video toast at the end on Fridays? Do we do virtual lunch on Wednesdays? Like? What works for you? So? Absolutely we want to be putting that into place. It's harder I think for those of us who got a lot of our social needs met but didn't really foster any friendships where it would feel that comfortable to reach out and do one on one And in that case, we still need to do it. It's going to be a little more awkward. Somebody may not want to just commit to you every single week if you didn't have that kind of interaction with them in the office, and or for people who are starting as new hires now and don't have that relationship to start with it, so we have to be way more intentional. This is where managers I do a ton of stuff. I'm like really passionate about managers on leaders helping take some of this on. But yeah, for those of us who may not have had those friends, I think we could. One of the things I've heard one person do that was great was he just made a list of a couple names of people that he wanted to know or liked, and he just like kind of reached out to them and said, hey, I'm just trying to make sure that I get my social needs met. And I think that's the cool thing is now we can say it like we can. We're all in it. We all know we're working from home. He's like, I need to talk to somebody other than my two year olds and in my meetings, and so, you know, just like I'm just reaching out and doing one phone call every Thursday, and I'd love to have you be one of my Thursday calls. You know, so schedule if you're happy to. And he kind of just put the call out to a broader group of people, and I think that's great. I mean, I think we can kind of own that and say this is we all have these needs. This is not a problem with us. This is us doing what's healthy and good for us. And so we can step into that and say I need to It's not going to just happen for me. I have to do something to make it happen. And I guess it's the reason why I having recurring things or patterns or rituals kind of help make it easier, because thed you're not kind of thinking about how you might accomplish that each time, or making that awkward Thursday call, you know, forty different times. Instead you just make it once and say we're going to meet every other Thursday. Done exactly. I mean, that's always the best answer to everything. I mean, I have every Sunday, I have a zoom call with four of my best girlfriends and you know, and that's just it's so nice. We don't have to like email back and forth and are you free and are you like it? It's just you just step right into it. And now now ninety nine percent of our relationship is just engaging and interacting and lapping. We do very little logistics like it's been done. So that's the amazing thing about something that's just long standing and ever routine. So I have a question. You mentioned that this is so important for managers to kind of get people to do, but it's it's kind of if you are in a managerial position, and I know a lot of our listeners are sort of in that point, the workplace relationship thing gets a little bit stickier, maybe in a kind of hierarchical setup. Can it only be friends with people on your same level? Like what can you have friendships with people who aren't or is people gonna worry you're playing favorites? I mean, how can you navigate that? Yeah, that is one of my chapters. I am most proud of in my book and most I just really have a strong stance that if there's anybody in our organizations that should be functioning from a place of not loneliness, it's our leaders. And I'm really not okay with it's lonely the top philosophy, and like, just to keep everyone comfortable, we need to make sure that you don't have friends in these relationships. I am like, if there's anybody we need feeling connected, it's our leaders and our managers. Though we know that loneliness reduces our empathy, we know that loneliness reduces our ability to dream big. We know that loneliness. I want my leader, I want my boss. I want my manager like showing up feeling so connected, so believed in and so loved and so for me. I really have a stance that our leaders should be building friendships. And I don't think it's realistic that we can say you can only do it with people at your level. I mean, what if we're at the same level, and then you get promoted and now we can't be friends? And then what if I get promoted and now we can And then I get promoted and now we can't. And I was like and I interview one story these two guys where it's just that it's like they both worked for each other, one went to another company, one was their boss, I mean, And I was like, I just love that they were able to say, rather than say, let's not trust ourselves to be friends and still do our jobs with this, let's instead show up and to say, let's have the big conversations and trust ourselves to say, so, what does our friendship bring to this that we can you know, we can do our job better because of our friendship? And what are the things we're hesitant around and we need to be cautious of and work around? And I teach you my whole I have a whole chapter where I'm like, here's the conversations we could be having, Here's the questions we should be asking. You know now that I'm your boss, if there was a situation, God, for a bit, I hope not. But what if you're not performing? What if I have to tell you that you're not doing a great job? How would you want me to do that? Like? What would be important? How how could we do that in a way where we do a good job and our maintain our friendship? I mean, have these conversations ahead of time, you know where there's no where we don't think it's actually realistic. We will learn so much about each other, we'll feel closer bonded, and it helps put in our heads this could happen, and we are going to we can do it. We can show up for that and be mature. So I really I didn't talk to a single leader who once they started feeling like they were closer to one person or had a friendship, that they stopped caring about the team, that they stopped caring about their job, that they no longer wanted to do a good job. They now wanted to show favorites. I mean everybody there, if anything, they were trying. So I think they they said they became better leaders because they were now saying, I don't want anyone to think I'm spending too much time with this one person, so now I want to make sure that I'm spending a lot of quality time with everybody. I mean, I think we can trust that if you're putting somebody in a leadership role, trust them. You know, we need them connected and we can practice trust and will there be a few mistakes, yes, but there's a thousand right now from loneliness. So I am all about having the awkward conversations and practicing exactly one other question with you know you mentioned that earlier talking about how most people don't need to meet more people, they need to sort of deepen the relationships they have with the people they already know. I wonder if you could share, just for our listeners, maybe a step or two they could take if they have identified a person or two in their lives that you know seems cool, Like you see this person occasionally, like you'd like to get to know them a little bit better, maybe build that into a deeper friendship. What sort of steps should they do to make that happen. Yeah, I would say, start that post it note and write down the names of those people so that you see those names, stick them on your computer, and just kind of be like, Okay, these are the people I think are kind of cool. And then I would kind of look at each of those and evaluate them based on those three requirements, and I would say, okay, so this one I see pretty regularly because every time we drop our kids off at school, I see her, da da da da, So which one do we really need? And we have a good time and we laugh and we tell stories, but we don't really know each other. We haven't spent enough time to be vulnerable and actually get to know each other. So that with this one, I need to practice a little bit like how do we get to know each other? Maybe we need to have a a longer period of times. So maybe the next step is saying, hey, next time we drop our kids off at school, do you want to go grab a coffee? You know? And so it's like strategically thinking through this person on my list. I've known her a long time, but we only talk a couple times a year. But every time we talk, we pick up right where we left off. So we've got vulnerability and it feels good. I get off the phone happy, but we don't do it for another six months. So in this situation, increasing the frequency of that, like calling her in three weeks instead of waiting five months, would be the thing. And so we can kind of look at those names and once you understand we have to have all three of these things to build a relationship. Once you get that, it changes everything because you can look at any person and you can say this one's missing positivity. We just are We just have not been having fun together. It feels heavy. I find myself not wanting to be consistent with her or vulnerable with her because it just doesn't feel good. What can I do to change the positivity ratio here? And so it allows us to start getting information that lets us be really specific. So it sucks for like podcasts because I can't just give one answer, but it helps the rest of us. And to be like, this isn't a one size fits all. This is a you need to practice consistency, positivity, and vulnerability with these people, and you have to do it again and again, and you just have to keep doing these three things. And I can guarantee you we can put two strangers in a room, we can put two people who don't like each other in a room, and if we do the activities and the questions that facilitate these three things, we will bond you. So this is the powerful thing is you don't have to leave it up a chance. You don't have to say I hope it works. Like you can bond with anybody if you do these three things. I wonder at what point in your vulnerability you could admit that you had to post it note with their name on it. I think they were living it. I did say I invited four girlfriends out to a wine bar a couple of years ago, and I did kind of say to them, I was like, everybody's moved away. I mean, I have really good friends that I talked to you, but you four are the people who are local that I am investing in this year. And I was like, so consider yourselves warned. I'm coming after you, you know. And they just all laughed and loved it, and they all like said to me later, like I felt so special. I felt so I was so excited. And I think we act like it's we're worried about it. And I think obviously, if obviously, if you don't know the person that well, it might be a little weird. But we do want to feel chosen, we all of us. The numbers are high. This isn't And I think that's one of the things that lights me up the most is we have treated loneliness as a problem, and it's not. It's your body telling you you're hungry for connection. It's the same way as if you feel hunger. It's not a problem that you're hungry. It's a problem if you ignore it or deny it or pretend you don't have it. It's a problem if you don't have access to food or don't have nourishing food. But just being hungry is not a problem. So loneliness isn't a problem. It's not doing something about it is the problem. That's where the damage comes from. So we want to all the emotional intelligence would tell us we want to get better at like, oh, that's interesting. I feel like I wish I were more seen. I wish I felt more connected, I wish I felt more understood. I want to feel more supported. Okay, what is my body? Who should I do that with? And how can I get that need met? And it's the healthiest among us that will pursue that and do something about it. And when you see that sixty one percent of us and millennials and gen Z is even higher than that are feeling a desire for more connection, it says to us most of the people were connecting with and seeing out in the world and my workplace and the people they're feeling it too. I mean, I'm not alone in this, so they will appreciate me reaching out. Awesome, well, shaw, So we always end with a love of the week, which is something that is really cool in our lives. Right now, Sarah and I can go first to give you a second to think about it, all right, love it? Yes, So mine is our crepe myrtles, which are blooming right now. I can look out the window and see them. They bloom late summer and are continuing to bloom in September, which is when we were recording. And in particular, there are two right on the behind my back porch, and one is big and tall. The other is finally tall enough that we can see from the porch and from inside the blossoms it. You know, the old one died about six years ago and cut it down to the stump, but left one little shoot going up and now it is a tree. It's always a reminder that, you know, trees do grow and they get bigger. And now I enjoy looking at it. So now we all want to see it. They've all post a picture. Yeah, there you go. Well. Mine on theme with this podcast is the several What's Up groups that I am part of. None of them are like close friend groups, like one of them is my daughter's class, and one of them is my other daughter's class, and one of them is now a work parenting group, which I feel like could be fodder for friends in the future. But they're just like a nice way to get conversations started, and I don't find them like super addicting, Like I can check in and then do something else, and then, like you know, when I feel the need for that sort of connection, can check back in. So yeah, I think it's a great tool. Love it, love it, love it. Yeah, I'll follow that theme around. I'm gonna go with Marco Polo the app, and I just was on it this morning. It's an app where you could just do quick video call quick video messages to each other, and so what I love about it And I just went on with four girlfriends. We have a group going, and it's nice because I can just listen to them while I'm making coffee. They can do it on their commute, like we can all do it whenever it's most convenient to each of us, and we can just pop in and have this ongoing conversation. And so I feel like I had girlfriend time this morning, and it's just because I watched their videos from yesterday and last night and left a little video this morning. So Marco Polo is helping me feel more connected. That's awesome. Well, shessa, thank you so much for joining us and for our listeners. Her book is the Business of Friendship, so please be sure to check that out. And do you have a website people could come visit you at as well. The business Friendship dot com is the best one for the book and all of the free resources. But Shassonnelson dot com is where you can find me with my speaking and all of that kind of stuff. And thank you so much for having me and for the good work both of you are doing in this world, inspiring and teaching and just putting good stuff out there. I'm so impressed. Well, thank you and thanks for joining me. Well that was great. So now we are back with the question portion of this episode. I'll start, I'll ask it, and then Sarah can answer and we'll go from there. So this listener writes in that she'd love to hear more about the roles that your parents and in laws play in your lives. How close do you live to them, how often do you see them, and how has the pandemic affected this. I have a two year old and one on the way, and we have two busy jobs and live far away from both sets of grandparents, and COVID had made this harder because there used to be lots of travel, but even before we debated moving closer. So, Sarah, what's your situation here? Yeah, so we are close to my husband's family from a distance perspective. We're about like thirty forty minutes away. However, like there are some family health issues that have meant that we haven't been able to see them since COVID hit, which has been really sad. I think maybe the time is starting to turn where we'll be ready to at least have us like come by for some outdoor stuff. Perhaps. I think having a toddler like just makes things a little bit more difficult because I'm just trying to like imagine scenarios, like I don't know. Plus our weather has been unpredictable anyway. I think things will get a little bit better down the road. But we really haven't seen them in person. We still do lots of FaceTime. My parents are far away and we have not seen them. We FaceTime with them as well. They're also over seventy and being fairly cautious and they haven't been ready to like fly down here or anything. But they did get to hang out with my sister and her daughter, and they just in an abundance of caution, they just got tests before they went and then drove up and got to hang out for a few days, which was was great. I guess I will say, like, you know, the the upcoming holiday season is going to make me kind of sad, Like there are some Jewish holidays where I don't really celebrate the holiday, but I really enjoy the family gatherings, and obviously that part's not going to be happening in its usual form and that's going to be sad. And then like Thanksgiving, like envisioning that happening without you know, the big family gatherings I'm used to. Anyway, I'm really digressing from this question. I guess I would say, Yeah, COVID's changed a lot. I think I'm hoping it's temporary, and I really like living near family. I think it's really worth doing. Like we can't live near all of our familcause they are in different places, but I feel like I would inclined to live near one or the other unless there was some reason that I didn't like those areas or they were just not conducive to our jobs. But Josh and I are doctor, so we could kind of work in most places. So I would think that, you know, on our priority list would be being close to family of some kind. Yeah, and this person has one kid and another on the way. I mean if you have young enough grandparents that they are able to help out. I mean just having them as backup, Like not that they're going to be your primary childcare or anything like that, but you know daycare, there can be times you can't send your kid but they're not really that sick for instance, you know a grandparent might be able to step in for that, or if you have to stay late at work for some reason, they might be able to go send us sit or home, or go pick up your kids at school or daycare or something like that. And having that layer of backup allows you a lot of flexibility and ability to focus that many people either don't have or have to pay a lot to get. And so it's an incredible kind of subsidy to the two income lifestyle that is amazing for people who can pull it off. And that's one of the reasons that people do move because it is worth it. Uh, you know that you're not paying many, many thousands of dollars a year for that extra layer of backup that you might need if your parents are able to provide that. Now, obviously not all parents can do that, and so that's a separate issue, you know. But if you can, then then that's great. And the more kids you have, the less realistic and probably is. Nobody wants to watch five children. I let me just put that out there. But we've we've been sending, you know, one kid at a time to my parents. They moved to New Jersey a year and a half ago and a year ago roughly, and they will take a kid at a time for a special weekend and that's been really nice over the past few months for them to go have this time with their grandparents, especially when a lot of their camps were anseled and things like that, that it was something special for the summer. So, you know, that's a fun way to incorporate them into your life as well. Well. This has been best of both worlds talking with Shasta Nelson about the business of friendship and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com. Or at the Underscore shoebox on Instagram and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together