Lost 99% of my friends by 33.

hey thanks for clicking on this video
today while I have your attention I have
a question for you it's a pretty um
personal question are you head are you
headed to a friendless third
decade so by that like are you are you
almost 30 years old and do you do you
feel like you lack
friends do you feel like you should have
more friends than you have right now do
you have any at
all this is a complicated question cuz I
mean many people have friends some
people have close friends some people
have acquaintances some people have a
mixture of
both I personally have a few close-knit
friends and like I like I say in the
title I've lost 99% of my friends that
I've had growing up and right now I'm 33
years old uh just
FYI so today I'm going to be talking
about whether or not having a few
friends is a good or bad thing and if
that's not something that you want how
you can fix the
situation and before we go into that I
want to make sure especially if you're
new here um that you know what we do
here on this channel so I mean forgive
me I'm a little bit sick uh my voice is
kind of horse might be coughing a little
bit but pretty much on this channel we
are on the road to articulacy we want to
be able to I mean I want to be able to
articulate my thoughts and uh my
emotions and everything very clearly to
whoever I want to especially to myself
whenever you're inarticulate it's even
difficult to express how you're feeling
to yourself and how how how do you
understand yourself if you can't express
how you feel right so I've thought of
this very powerful concept of basically
it's pretty much an adults version of
word of the day but it's going to be
more like a word of the week so I'm
going to choose a powerful concept each
week so this week's concept is nuance
and I'm going to incorporate it into my
life so the way I benefit you there is
that I become a high quality input into
your life because pretty much even with
vocabulary you are what you eat so if
you have high quality inputs then you're
naturally going to also have higher
quality output in your life and I mean
my only goal in this life is to have a
positive influence and
provide value as much as possible
because that's a great I think the role
the role model that I want to be for my
kids um it really doesn't matter what
you do as long as you you're providing
value to the world and to other people
so that's what we do here um just a
reminder this week's word was Nuance um
that in in the Latin form it was nubis
which is which means in the clouds or
French shade so it's the the small
little details the gray area of things
in
life uh just things in general so I I've
also begun using a little bit of uh
bullet
point help uh you can let me know in the
comments if you think bullet points are
cheating or not because I want to be
super articulate so I'm not sure if that
means just speaking off the cuff for
minutes on end I just find it still very
difficult to weave my way back into what
I want to say in the video so for
example this video I want to explain why
losing your friends might not be so
bad so uh yeah let's get get on with it
um if you're almost 30 or in your 30s
and you've lost even if you've lost all
your friends I want to let you know that
this is not the end of the
world
it so just some backstory so that you
can you can see where I'm coming
from I have really bad ADHD and with
that comes pretty much uh one of the
symptoms is having trouble um not only
connecting with people where people can
relate but also just keeping up with
relations because I just have so I I'm
never bored I'm just always doing
something
and I tend to like forget to text
message people back and things like that
and so basically by the time I moved mov
to Seattle in uh whenever I was
31 I had lost 99% of my friends I have a
few close friends that are close to my
heart but I'm I wouldn't say that we are
we've been as close as we can be for
sure just because I mean like I said
text messaging is difficult I I don't I
even have trouble making time for calls
which I mean might just be because I'm
selfish but
I mean there's no butt there just that's
that's the the point I guess is whenever
you're thinking about yourself you're
not going to be able to upkeep the
friendships that you want
to but then again not all friendships
are good so for example a lot of the
friends that I made in my 20s uh even in
my teens are just were I guess bad
influences maybe not bad influences but
they just didn't want to go
where I I wanted to go in life um I mean
some of them
are do are ambitious and those are the
ones um I've kept around also I mean
it's not just ambition ambition isn't
the only Quality quality here that we're
looking for it's someone who you feel
safe being your authentic self around
and someone who is always rooting for
you those are very
difficult uh attributes to find in
Friends
and I I think this is because just human
nature is kind we're kind of competitive
with people around us and we feel
uncomfortable whenever people around us
who are close to us start to achieve
things that we may not have achieved
ourselves and that's something I've had
to reverse engineer in myself as well
and maybe it's because I'm on the
Spectrum
but I I really don't feel
that whenever I think about my friends I
want my friends to do better than me if
anything um and I've grown to see that I
even enjoy being around people who are
of a higher caliber or have achieve more
than me in life it's just that it it
feels like they don't really want
to be my friend as much I guess but
that's something I'm working on and I
I'll talk about that a little bit more
later because it is very important uh
how to make friends with these people
who are of a I guess higher caliber
however you want to put it
so yeah I mean a lot of people are have
this crabs in a bucket mentality for
example in the past I've like brought up
business ideas to friends and not only
were they not supportive but you can
just tell like they would say things
like entrepreneurship is bad for example
and my thought is like what how is
entrepreneurship bad whenever for I
think we're s this friend and I were
sitting in McDonald's and they were
saying they were calling me greedy for
wanting to start a business and to make
my own
money and I was just trying to
rationalize with him um who do you for
example who do you think uh grow plants
all these flowers around this beautiful
McDonald's right um it was just the
setting at the time and they didn't
really have an answer it was just
that they had this thing this Vendetta
against
businesses and people have really
demonized money and I don't I don't
agree with that at all and I think that
people are using that as a guise almost
of just trying to bring you down to
their level because if they if they can
convince you to be to hate money I guess
then you're going to be in the same
social class as
them which is just I mean a brutal truth
of this world that uh
money affects many things and that
that's where I'm going to leave it for
now
so how how do you make friends right
it's it's not it's it's actually pretty
easy to make
friends if you think about it especially
whenever you think about it from the
perspective of the Nuance the day
day-to-day nuances so if you introspect
your interactions with other people with
people who you meet dayto day you might
notice for example your body is shifted
away from them like you're about to
leave or something um you might be
looking at your
watch indicating to them that you have
somewhere to be you might be uh
distracted when you're speaking to them
and not truly
listening these are all things that add
up that make people not like you not
only not like you but it it just comes
off as you don't want to be friends with
this person you don't want to spend time
with this
person and whenever I moved to Seattle
I made a determination to make friends
and to make as many as I can because I
want to build some form of community
here I don't know any I don't know
anyone here and this this can work for
you anywhere especially even if you have
no
friends he said just take all those
little details and flip it the complete
opposite direction to the max so
whenever I first came here I would do
things like face people I would
would focus on them intently and
listen and also I would just shower
people with kindness and I very quickly
saw that the the switch had been flipped
and I was becoming you know really good
friends with a lot of people and it was
honestly overwhelming for me because I'm
naturally
introverted and the amount of social
attention I was
getting was off putting because I really
value my time
alone sometimes I wish you know I would
be invited to every party I would that
people would uh I guess pay more
attention to me I mean this just
natural but when it comes at the cost of
the the time the the time to myself that
I really
cherish and it's very difficult to get
that time whenever you have
kids I had to even pull it back so now I
do still uh Focus use that uh have that
intent with a few people for example in
my community now that I really mesh well
with but the the be the attention I was
getting before really told me that this
what this approach works on pretty much
anybody how do you hate someone that is
earnestly just throwing their heart at
you right if someone is just kind to you
listens to what you say
and comes not only comes off as
trustworthy but they do what they say
then I don't see any reason that a
person would be would not be want to be
friends with
you so yeah I'm trying to I'm okay so
I've been talking for about 10 minutes
now my voice is starting to hurt and I'm
losing my train of thought so a very
difficult thing with getting articulate
is especially late at night I'm I I get
get pretty I've been getting pretty bad
sleep to be honest I've been doing these
videos once a day trying to be super
consistent I'm actually scared of Los
losing the consistency because of uh
this is a concept I brought up before
but building trust with yourself
building credibility with yourself is
incredibly important whenever you want
to build something of
value because there's nothing as
powerful as momentum but to keep the
momentum going you have to trust
yourself enough to get you to the Finish
Line you have to have that Crystal Clear
Vision of the end um trust in yourself
in the present moment and a track record
of credibility in the past so that in
the present moment you can trust
yourself
to reach that Crystal Clear Vision of
the
future and that's what I'm trying to do
now um I'm I'm getting a little bit off
topic
here I don't even know where I'm going
I'm tired of balls um
all right uh yeah so if you have any
questions about making friends just let
me know in the comments and I'll see you
next time