last week ross and i had a really interesting conversation about relationships that are important in our lives.
ross puts a really high priority on spending time with his family. i won’t go into the details because that’s their business, but he spends a lot of time with them. from my perspective, he spends time with them individually and collectively, pretty much every week. it helps that they live nearby.
i, on the other hand, i spend a similar amount of energy into my friends, especially my inner friend circle. depending on our schedules, i have 3-5 friends who i try to spend a significant chunk of time with (60-90 minutes at least) every other week. those relationships are really important to me for many reasons, but that’s not what this post is about. my family also lives over 1,400 miles away.
the conversation ross and i had was that, like in many other ways, we’re opposites. the time and energy he spends with his family i spend with my close friends. maybe it’s a capacity thing: we both have a maximum amount of relational capacity and we just utilize it in different relationship spheres.
the plot thickened when i had a conversation with my friend miriam about her perception of relationships as people age. basically, her point was that intimate friendships become increasingly important as more and more friends couple off and settle down.
that’s when i thought that maybe the coupling off stage is when people transition from friends taking up their primary relationship capacity to family taking it up. in ross’ words “when you ask a friend to get drinks, ‘sure’ turns into ‘lemme ask the boss [spouse].’”
in some ways, this isn’t new or surprising. it’s definitely not bad (necessarily). i guess i’m curious about if the transition is inevitable… and what does it mean for those folks (of whom there are more and more of these days) who want to stay single for a long time? are they destined to have fewer close friends over time?
karr mentioned that in a world that is as crazy as ours, it’s much more radical, much more daring, much more dangerous way to have hope than to not. i touched on this a little bit in a post i wrote yesterday, but it really comes down to this: your worldview shapes your actions. if your worldview is pessimistic, you behave in the world in a negative way. if your world view is hopeful, you act accordingly.
this, of course, doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to hopeful people and good things won’t happen to pessimistic people. but, as i learned from a study cited in resilience, ways of being and thinking can be contagious and the spread of emotions can be modeled in similar ways to tracking disease spread. so then, regardless of which way you’re being, even your smallest actions can have a positive impact on your community over time, thereby creating a positive feedback loop of your intentions. when other people notice and experience your hopefulness, it can impact their ways of thinking and being, bringing about more positive actions, etc.
now, the reason to be pessimistic, obviously, is to minimize disappointment when things don’t well. it’s much easier to avoid the pain of loss when you expected things to go poorly in the first place. however, in karr’s language, the tricky thing about having hope is that it creates both lower lows and higher highs. the disappointment when things go poorly will be very real. but on the other hand, opening yourself up to the possibility of things going really well creates such benefits sometimes that it can be worth it to experience the pain.
i’ve thought for a long time that living a full life and living a safe life are somewhat opposites. the greater your emotional range, the happier and sadder you can be. and that’s actually a good thing. staying close to the mid-line seems boring.
two recent episodes of on being have discussed working hypotheses (heuristics) and they both made me realize the value in knowing how to use them.
it first came up in the leonard mlodinow episode. he said that, from a scientific standpoint, the value isn’t in that it’s right. in fact, most hypotheses turn out to be wrong. the value is that the hypothesis allows you to test assumptions. in the end, the hypothesis will likely be discarded or upgraded, but the truths learned remain.
then in the mary karr episode, karr explained how she challenges atheists to pray everyday. she believes that their lives would get better (assuming they were praying genuinely) just because they would be thinking concretely about what they want to happen to them. just like mlodinow, the value is in the thinking and learning that happens regardless of whether God responds in some directly attributable way.
for me, this connects to why it feels better to me to live with hope and work towards justice. even if hope is just a working hypothesis, the value i gain from living with hope is real. and, i know plenty of people who live life with no hope and the damage it does to them and those around them is palpable.
these two lessons are part 2 of yesterday’s post. although i’ve thought about the two particular lessons below before, miriam put them in succinct ways that i appreciate.
“if i’m gonna say no, i have to be serious about when i say yes”
i like the idea of saying no as a muscle. but, as far as i know, every muscle in the human body has a counter-muscle that controls the opposite motion. your biceps help you bend your arm inward and your triceps help you bend it outwards. so, to stretch the analogy maybe too far, on the other wise of the saying no muscle is the yes muscle. and, as miriam said, getting better at saying no means being serious about showing up when saying yes.
imo, this just means not bailing at the last minute. i used to bail a lot on things i had committed to. mostly i’d bail because i had committed to the thing when my schedule was already full and then when the time came to do the thing, i was exhausted and couldn’t bear to go. either because i didn’t want to have to answer the dreaded “what do you do” question or because i just needed sleep or because i was socially over-scheduled and needed to do some work. either way, learning strengthening my no muscle has actually resulted in an increased ability to show up and show up well when i do say yes. people seem to really appreciate it, too. they know when i say yes, it’s not just off-hand or out of courtesy.
“saying no is really about setting boundaries”
this is accurate in all sorts of ways. i don’t even know where to start with this one, but one thing i’ve noticed is that it seems people’s individual capacity to set boundaries is diminishing. it seems like in some places it’s structural and cultural. for example: working at a place where it’s normal to be on your email all day every day and to have your work email on your phone with notifications. or another example is just how rude it’s perceived when you tell someone you don’t want to get together for a drink or coffee.
saying no, in some senses is about being clear about what you need to be well and then setting boundaries so that you get what you need.
this, to me, is the most powerful part about getting better at saying no. i definitely don’t feel that great at it yet, but i can tell that over the past two years, i’ve been able to make way more progress in the areas that i wanted to. i think that’s fundamentally related to the fact that i say no to things that aren’t helping me move towards my goals.
during a productivity boost session with my friend miriam, one of the topics we touched on was the power of saying no. i wrote about this a lot when starting my coaching practice, but my thinking on this has expanded (much in part because of my conversations with miriam). here are some ways that saying no has shown up in my life:
saying no has helped me not commit to seeing a ton of people all the time
i used to fill every night (and many afternoons) with catch up meetings. i’d run into someone in the street or the library or at an event or coffeeshop. then the inevitable “we should catch up!” would follow and we’d schedule something. i’ve been in boston so i know a lot of people. every week i was probably meeting up with 4-6 people. it was exhausting. i would feel myself get tired of telling people what was going on in my life. not a good sign.
now, because i have specific slots on my calendar, i have more confidence in saying no (or just scheduling way in advance). this, in turn, leaves me time to actually just be alone. at first, i thought it would be lonely. turns out, it’s not. it’s actually glorious.
saying no has helped me not fill unscheduled time with seeing people nearby
when i first wrote that, i actually cringed a bit. am i a person who doesn’t want to make time for people when i’m near them? but then, i remembered, i love making time for people; i just want to do it in a way that makes sure i get what i need to be healthy, happy, and sane. like i mentioned above, having specific slots on my calendar for when i see random people outside of my inner circle of friends helps me decide whether i have time to drum up a random social meeting or not.
i used to feel bad about not trying to see everyone all the time. now, because i have a fairly robust personal system, i know that the time i’m not spending having random catchup meetings is helping me move towards the goals i established at the beginning of the year.
out of time for today. tomorrow’s post will cover the last two points:
lesson from miriam: if i’m gonna say no, i have to be serious about when i say yes
lesson from miriam: saying no is really about setting boundaries
ps - i just saw the book below in a space my friend, sidney, manages. maybe it’s relevant?
