Benefits with Friends

Alt. Title: Meditations on Being a Friend to Others (and Yourself)

File this under sentences I never expected to write: I had a fateful Zoom call.

Todd Lieman and I were both a few minutes early, and we started chatting. We instantly had a good rapport, connecting over “Marin County things” and books, because of course. We were, in the parlance of our times, vibing. After the call, I sent him an email with a book recommendation based on something he mentioned about intuition. He replied and suggested we meet up in person.

I said yes.

A few weeks later, we met for coffee and talked about a wide range of topics, including his consulting work, my approach to coaching, raising kids, his novel, and my movement practice. We were present, broke bread together, and had a great conversation. In short, it was the beginning of a friendship.

It can be hard for adults to make friends. A Pew Research Center survey found that a narrow majority of adults (53%) have between one and four close friends. More than a third (38%) reported having five or more. And 8% reported having no close friends at all. The benefits of friendship are wide-ranging: better mental and physical health, stronger performance, and a longer life. Our lives are busy, and while making time for new friendships can be challenging, the potential benefits are worth the effort.

My conversation with Todd inspired me to write this Substack post on friendship… and motivated me to work on one of the biggest challenges in my own mindfulness practice.

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A Meditation on Friendship

Friendships enrich our lives. As we get older and our behavioral patterns become more entrenched, new friends can offer us insights and options we wouldn’t otherwise notice.

Aristotle, who wrote more thoughtfully about friendship than just about anyone in the ancient world, believed that friendship wasn’t something that happened to you. It was something you practiced. He identified three kinds of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics: friendships of utility (you’re useful to each other), friendships of pleasure (you enjoy each other’s company), and friendships of virtue (you genuinely admire and wish good things for each other). Most of our adult friendships live in the first two categories. The third kind, he argued, is the rarest and the one most worth pursuing.

Aristotle was clear that the deepest friendships don’t just materialize. They require proximity, time, and what he called “living together”: not necessarily under the same roof, but sharing experiences, showing up repeatedly, being present enough that the other person actually gets to know you. You can’t rush it. But you can create the conditions for it. And that starts with being open to new friendships in the first place.

So what does this “openness” actually look like? For Aristotle, it looked a lot like goodwill: wishing well for someone before you have any particular reason to, before they’ve done anything for you, before you know if the friendship will “go anywhere.” It’s a generous default setting. It means giving the stranger at the dinner party your full attention instead of scanning the room. It means following up after a good conversation without expecting anything in return. It means showing up to the thing you said you’d show up to. Goodwill, practiced consistently, is what turns an acquaintance into a friend.

If you’re trying to make friends, there’s a final truth that Aristotle leaves us with: the quality of the friendships in your life tends to be an honest reflection of the kind of friend you’ve been. Not the kind you intend to be. The kind you’ve actually been, in the small, unremarkable moments when no one was watching. The good news is that those moments are everywhere. You don’t need a dramatic occasion to be a good friend. You just need to be present, be curious, and show up.

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During our meeting, Todd asked me a question that stuck with me. We were discussing my coaching practice and my belief in the importance of self-awareness as a necessary precursor to any self-improvement when he asked me what I struggled with most in my own mindfulness practice. While this might seem like a very personal question to ask during a first meeting, his goodwill made me feel comfortable in responding.

I told him that the issue I’ve been struggling with most is a lack of self-compassion, particularly in my relationship with my movement practice as I get older (and slower). I’ve been (mostly) lucky to stay healthy and fit as a lifelong “athlete,” but I suffered a debilitating back injury last year that took a long time to recover from. Intellectually, I know that, like entropy, there is no stopping the passage of time, and that it’s the natural order of things to get slower. Emotionally, this hasn’t stopped me from periodically relating to my former self and admonishing myself when I’m unable to meet my previous standards. While this hasn’t stopped me from competing and trying my best, it’s a struggle to give myself grace and accept where I am with gratitude.

My conversation with Todd inspired me to be more mindful about this and strive for greater self-compassion.

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A Meditation on Self-Compassion

Kristin Neff is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin and the researcher who essentially put self-compassion on the scientific map. Her framework breaks self-compassion into three components, and each has something useful to say to anyone wrestling with a former version of themselves.

The first is self-kindness. Neff’s research recognizes that being imperfect and experiencing life’s difficulties is inevitable, so we need to soothe and nurture ourselves when confronting our pain rather than getting angry when life falls short of our ideals. In other words, beating yourself up for not being who you once were isn’t toughness. It’s just noise. Research indicates that self-kindness is associated with lower stress and depression and enhanced motivation, whereas self-criticism has the opposite effects. The harsh internal voice isn’t making you run faster. Paradoxically, it might be slowing you down.

The second component is common humanity. Acknowledging our collective vulnerability helps contextualize personal struggles as part of the human condition rather than as isolating experiences. Every aging athlete is probably having some version of this conversation with their former self. You are not uniquely diminished. You are just human, and humans age. The sooner we stop treating that as a personal failing and start treating it as a shared condition, the sooner we can get out of our own way.

The third is mindfulness. In the context of self-compassion, mindfulness helps us accurately recognize our emotions while providing a non-reactive, accepting approach to them. Not denial. Not catastrophizing. Just seeing what is actually true. And what is actually true is that I can still run and compete. I can still show up. It might not be how it was in the past, but I am still out there doing my best. That is worth something.

Here’s what I find most useful about Neff’s three-part framework from a performance standpoint. Her research dispels the common myth that self-compassion is weak, selfish, or self-indulgent, or that it diminishes motivation. The opposite turns out to be true. Self-compassionate people are motivated to achieve for intrinsic reasons rather than to garner social approval, and this is linked to greater self-confidence, a key ingredient in successful motivation. Letting go of who you were doesn’t make you soft. It frees you to fully invest in who you are now.

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A single coffee meeting gave me two benefits I didn’t expect: a burgeoning friendship and a nudge toward something I’d been avoiding working on in myself. That’s the thing about good friendships, even the ones just getting started. They have a way of holding up a mirror.

The two ideas in this post are more connected than they might first appear. Aristotle was right that the best friendships require us to show up as our best selves. But you can’t show up as your best self if you’re too busy berating the version of yourself that walked in the door. How we treat ourselves quietly shapes how available we are for the people around us. When we’re locked in a losing battle with our former selves, we’re not fully present. Not for our friends, our work, or the life we’re actually living.

So here’s what I’m working on, and maybe you are too: making more room. Room for new friendships that arrive in unexpected places, like a Zoom call you showed up early for. Room for grace toward the person you are right now, not the one you used to be. And room for the quiet recognition that both of those things, real friendship and genuine self-compassion, are not soft pursuits. They are the foundation of a well-lived, high-performing life.

Todd and I have already planned our next meetup. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to it.

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Three Book Recommendations:

Dinner at God’s House, Todd B. Lieman

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristin Neff

Nicomachean Ethics (Books 8 and 9), Aristotle (Adam Beresford translation)

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Three (Non-Obvious) Meet-up Location Recommendations:

Tea House

Public Library

Local Taqueria

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Thank you for reading this edition of Rhetorical Exercise. I hope you found it both useful and entertaining as you strive to perform your best at the things that matter most to you.

Peace and love,

Chris