You Need Better Friends: How Your Inner Circle Can Create Your Future

You know, if you have a problem with impulse shopping, hang around with some frugal people. If you have a problem with binge drinking, hang around with a lot of sober people who know how to have fun without drinking too much.

If you have a problem gossiping, hang around with people that never gossip and convict you in a way when you know when you're gossiping, you realize, you know what, this isn't integrous, this isn't virtuous. I don't want to be that person. Hang around with the opposite, right? Hey, welcome to another episode of the Growth Lab Podcast. I am Hi, I'm Dr. Josh Axe.

I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. I'm the founder of AncientNutritionAndLeaders.com. And each and every week on this podcast, we uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, your career, your relationships, how to grow spiritually. We grow through how to grow you. And on today's episode, I'm going to be talking about why you need better friends.

In fact, this is one of the most important topics I could talk about because You become who you surround yourself with. And I'm really going to walk through how you find a great group of friends, what a great group of friends actually looks like, and how you can develop and grow together. You know, my biggest life lesson, I mean this, I become who I surround myself with.

And so, the fastest way that you can experience a breakthrough, if you want to have a relationship breakthrough, start changing who you're hanging out with. If you want to have a breakthrough in your career and double or triple your income, change who you're hanging out with. If you want to experience a breakthrough in your health, hang out with different people.

In fact, I'm going to go through a study at Duke University and another incredible psychology study that actually shows the type of people— there's actually some very specific character characteristics they have that you want to find in having friends that are lifelong friends, that have your back, that fight for you, that you can build a deep In meaningful relationship with.

Now, I want to share something here, and this is really a big deal. When I was growing up, my parents told me— and this drove me crazy— they were very conscious of who I hung out with. And they said, you can't hang out with this person, you can't hang out with this person, these are the people you can hang out with. And I thought, who are you to tell me who I can and can't hang out with?

Well, you know, come to find out, now that I have a 3-year-old, I realize it's like, well, They were my parents. That was their job in a way. And, you know, and this is what parents should be doing, looking out, looking out for their kids and doing everything they can to help their kids grow into successful human beings that contribute to society, growing in character and skill.

That, that's the job of a parent. But looking back, I thought to myself, you know, my parents can't tell me who to, who to hang out with and who not to hang out with. But over time, I realized, I humbled myself and said, Okay. After my parents explained why, I thought, okay, you know what? I'm going to be obedient mostly. Okay?

I didn't do this perfectly, but mostly do my best to honor my parents and listen to them. And so, I was really conscious growing up about who I spent time around. And because of that, I had a great group of friends in high school. I had a group of friends who were really successful. In fact, one of them went to— graduated from Harvard. Another went to Wake Forest.

Several of them, you know, now just really successful and have great families. And so I'm really grateful that my parents really tried to put me around, uh, kids growing up and other families that had a certain level of integrity and character. Uh, and, and that really impacted my life in a really positive way growing up.

My parents were also very conscious about putting me in youth group at church and doing all the things to make sure I was hanging out with the right type of people. And this is really important. Now, now here's what happens though. Sometimes when we grow up or you get to college and beyond, you think, well, I'm gonna hang out with whoever I want to.

I don't have my parents telling me who I can hang out with now. And so I'm gonna hang out with whoever makes me feel comfortable or, or I'm just gonna hang out with whatever's easy oftentimes, kind of whoever's there.

And that's one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to say, okay, I'm gonna have my friend group and create a friend group that's Really based upon what's easy and what naturally falls into my lap. And listen, again, going back to this, you need better friends. I've hardly met anybody who, when I look at their friend group, I think, you know what? They don't need better friends.

Or oftentimes, that person needs to be a better friend to the people they're hanging out with. You know, I want to give you an example of this again from high school. And by the way, I think all of you will connect with this example here or this personal story of mine. I had a friend, I'm gonna call Mike, in high school. And Mike was, he was the captain of the soccer team.

He was, you know, for, for, for a man, incredibly fit and attractive and super smart. You know, when he was, you know, younger, he was in all of the AP classes and, and, and he was supposed to get a full ride to a Big Ten university to play, to play soccer on a full ride scholarship.

And this was, and, and I remember his junior year of high school, um, he decided his, he started hanging out with a different group of people and it was the class up. I remember for us, we were juniors. He's starting out with this, these, some of these guys in the senior class started smoking a lot of pot. And basically the next year of his life, he just smoked a lot of pot.

He didn't get good enough grades to, he didn't turn in a simple project, so wasn't eligible to play soccer. And I remember thinking, you know, a few years later, well, what's Todd going to do for college? Decided not to go and ended up working at the local Applebee's. And I remember running into a friend. This was 10 years later. So, I was 18 when we were 30 years old.

And he said, hey, I saw, I saw Mike. I said, really? I said, what's Mike up to now? He said, he's still waiting tables at Applebee's. Now listen, if Mike was called to wait table at Applebee's and that was the highest sort of level of what he was capable of, and that's what God had called him to do. Then, hey, I think, again, I think that would be great. But the reality is Mike had so much talent.

He could have gone on to be, I mean, he was brilliant at things like math, like an engineer. He could have gone on. He was actually incredibly creative. I actually think he would've made an awesome architect. He could have created, you know, he could have had a full-ride scholarship. He could have done something with his life, but he literally wasted his life.

But the biggest thing I saw that changed for Mike was this. He changed his friend group. He had a pretty good friend group and decided to go off with a group that was more popular and started doing drugs and all these things. And literally his entire life, I don't wanna say the entire thing's a waste, but he wasted so much of his life and so many, so much of his potential.

Let me ask, do, do you know anyone like that from maybe high school? And you look at 'em now and you thought, again, we see this in movies, maybe it was the high school quarterback or something like that, and they were all about this certain thing in life, but. They end up— you look back and you think, wow, this incredible God-given talent, and they wasted it. They wasted their potential.

And that's really one of the saddest things in the world. The saddest things I can think of is this idea of wasted potential. Well, think about this now. The number one thing in your life that will cause you to waste your potential or fulfill your greatest potential is who you're spending time with. Who is your inner circle in your friend group? That's the biggest thing.

You might think it's, oh, this, you know, a certain type of education, or maybe I got— maybe it's a certain just natural ability a person has. No, it's the people you spend time with and those people spend time with is the number one determining factor if you will be successful or not.

Successful in your relationships, successful in your career, successful in just life fulfillment and fulfilling your God-given mission. You become who you surround yourself with. And so it's so important to be ultra-conscious of that specifically. Now, I want to get into a study here that was really interesting.

There was a psychological study done at Duke University, and they found one of the most effective ways to stay on track and reach your goals is to surround yourself with more disciplined people than you are. So, they said, this is the biggest thing. Okay?

This Duke University study, they said, okay, if you want to level up at something and you want to grow up, the biggest thing is to find somebody who is better than you at it. So, not find people even at your same level, find people that are either quickly growing or people that are higher than you at that level.

So, for instance, if you want to get fit, go to a gym and make some friends with some really fit people and spend time around them. By the way, the number one characteristic they found in the group that can help transform you is hanging around people that are disciplined in some way. That could be a spiritual discipline. Maybe the person is very, like, you know, they're serving others in some way.

It's a natural habit they have. Maybe it's, again, they eat a certain way, they work out. Maybe they think differently about money than you do or about business and career. And so, by being around them, they're talking about— you know, marketing or doing something at a whole nother level, that starts rubbing along you, rubbing off on you, and it literally pulls you up to a whole new level.

This is my biggest life lesson in my entire life. You become who you surround yourself with. I want to give you some examples of this.

When I decided in my life, you know what, I want to grow, I want to experience a breakthrough spiritually, I went around and there was a— I remember in college when I was working on my doctorate, there was a school or there was a church and I went there and this pastor was a big— he was a disciple of Tim Keller, uh, incredible pastor who actually passed away recently.

And he was an instructor at a, at a seminary called Reformed Theological Seminaries in Orlando, Florida. And, um, it was just a— it was just an incredible mentor of mine for 4 years. And so I went, I took part of his small group, and I experienced such an incredible spiritual growth because I, because I was around this person.

You know, when I wanted to experience a breakthrough in my career, I was able to get in and actually give an example of this with my clinic. You know, when I went and started learning about functional medicine and chiropractic and nutrition and all these things that I practiced. I went and spent time in a clinic and there was a doctor there and I spent time around him.

And then I started spending time around him, a group of doctors, and then other students who wanted to grow. And it transformed who I was. Listen, it even transformed my thinking. When I first went into school to become a doctor, at first, I had this sort of mission early in my life of that.

I wanted to save lives because my mom's life was saved in a way, and I knew there was a better way for her to heal using more natural medicine. And, but then I kind of lost my mission. I kind of lost my purpose for a while, and I thought, well, I want to do a career because I can make good money.

And that was kind of the biggest part of it is I want to make good money and I want to have a lot of free time.

But then I got around this doctor and he talked about, you know what, we can help save tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives by teaching people food is medicine and natural treatments and, and, uh, like, like chiropractic and like, uh, uh, vitamin IVs and chelation and nutrition, all these things.

And, and literally spending time around these people, it changed my entire trajectory in life. And because of it, I could have been sort of an average physician who goes out and might make the average— I think doctor in my field made about $60,000 their first year in practice. Okay? And by the way, this, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm bragging at all, but my first year I made $600,000.

This is, it wasn't even a full year. It was like a, it was like a 3/4 of a year, made $600,000. My second year in practice made $1.2 million. And I don't share that to say that that was because I was great. It's because of the people I was hanging out with. I learned they just rubbed up. This is why, this is how you should think about it.

The people you spend time with, they're constantly rubbing off on you, even if you're not conscious of it. You know, I had this happen in getting out of debt. You know, I was around, I had this amazing mentor. He was Jewish and very financially wise. His name was Ben, Ben Lerner. And I would ask him about what to do with money.

And I also, right after practice, got around I got to spend a very little, a little bit of time, but a little bit of time around Dave Ramsey. And most of my friends, when they became doctors and started, you know, even if they built a really successful practice, I had one friend and he may listen to this episode, so I'm not going to use his exact name. We'll call him John.

But actually, he'll know who he is because this is so specific. But he went out and he bought his first, after a year of practice, he bought an Escalade. Okay? It was like this pearl white, brand new, top of the line. And then he went and got these Bose speakers in it. And then he got a motor— got a motorcycle. He bought a really expensive house.

Um, and then he would go on a vacation every month to Hawaii and buy rings and jewelry. I mean, you know, spent everything he made. And then I was around, you know, Ben, Dr. Ben, and then a little bit around Dave Ramsey, going to his events, around his people. And I said, you know what? I am, I'm going to get out of debt. And I was $300,000 in debt.

And what I was able to do over the next 3 years was I paid $100,000 off a year and I was completely debt-free. And I was the first person that I knew who went and had all of the school debt to pay it off. Listen, I say all that to say that wasn't because I'm smart. That was because I said, I'm going to spend time around Ben Lerner.

I'm going to spend time around You know, guys like Greg Lohmann, Jordan Rubin, Dave Ramsey, people that are— Dan Yachter. I'm thinking about some of these people. I spent time around this whole group of people that were very financially wise, and I just did exactly what they did.

Again, if you're saying to yourself, I want to experience a breakthrough or grow in any area of life, you can read books, you can watch videos, you can go and get degrees. But the fastest way that you will grow and become successful in any area of your life is based upon your friend group and who your inner circle is.

There was another study published in Psychological Science, and I love the title of this study. It's this. It says, the title of the study was Riding Other People's Coattails. It said individuals with low self-control value self-control and other people. Here's what the study found.

They said, if you are not self-controlled, the greatest thing you could ever do for yourself is hang out with people that are very self-controlled. In fact, I think in the study they mentioned marriage and they said, if you're not self-controlled, if you don't have good self-control, you should marry somebody that has a really high level of self-control.

It's the, it's the greatest thing you could ever do to make your life better. I'm thinking about, I got a friend right now who has no self-control at all. And he's not married. And I'm like, listen, you need to marry somebody who is very self-controlled and very self-disciplined. And it will make your life 10 times better.

And so, and by the way, those are 2 of the characteristics in terms of people you want to be conscious of spending time with. People that have a high level of self-discipline and self-control. Self-control oftentimes can even relate to a level of a character quality, integrity, which you really want in your friend group.

Now, again, going back to this, thinking about kind of the negative here, I was talking about a little positive. You know, if you have a problem with impulse shopping, hang around with some frugal people. Okay? If you have a problem with binge drinking, hang around with a lot of sober people who know how to have fun without drinking too much.

If you have a problem gossiping, hang around with people That never gossiping convict you in a way when you know when you're gossiping, you realize, you know what, this is, this, this, this, this isn't integrous. This isn't virtuous. I don't wanna be that person. Hang around with the opposite, right? Don't hang out with people who do those things.

You know, if you wanna become virtuous, hang out with virtuous people. You know, I've had the opportunity recently and I've been really blessed to, uh, recently had him on the show and I can tell we're gonna be great friends. The guy, Patrick Lencioni. And when I get around certain people, I think about, I see certain qualities in them that convict me.

And I think about, I want to spend more time with that person because I want to be more like them. I want to grow. And if that person's committed, here's the other big thing. We talked about self-control, self-discipline. Here's the other big, here's a couple other big things with people. Are they purpose-driven and are they committed to growth?

You know, they're really, they're walking in this level of hunger and humility saying, I want to grow. And that's the thing. If that person's on a high trajectory, you can see, oh, that person, they are growing. They're going to take off or they are taking off. Going back to that study, what was the title of the study? Riding Their Coattails. You want to do that in a way.

You want to ride their coattails. Now, you should be committed to growing where they're riding yours in a similar fashion in different ways. But again, someone like Patrick Lencioni, somebody I admired, him and John Maxwell are probably the 2 most well-known people in the leadership space.

Patrick Lencioni wrote the book, The Advantage and Five Dysfunctions of a Team and just a number of great books. And so, thinking about myself, okay, I want to continue to grow as a leader. So, I'm going to have, you know, I'm going to do my best to spend time with Patrick Lencioni and become part of his friend group or invite him into my friend group and certain people and grow in that way.

And so, you want to do that. You want to be on the lookout for finding people that are high character, high skill that you can spend time with. And then, you want to be committed yourself to being hungry and humble adding value to them, but be committed to growing. You wanna be very, very conscious of that.

I wanna talk about— there's a quote here from Thomas Aquinas that I love, and it says, there is nothing on this earth more prized than true friendship. I'm gonna say that again. Thomas Aquinas, by the way, probably the most brilliant theologian and saint of all time in terms of his wisdom. He says, there is nothing on this earth More prized than true friendship.

You know, I've spent a lot of time digging into the psychological research recently on loneliness and sadness, and most people today don't have true friendship. And that's why people are so lonely today, is, is, is maybe people think, well, I've got 1,000 followers on Instagram or Facebook, and I, you know, I have all these relationships. But are those people truly your friends?

And so you really want to be conscious of who your friends are. Okay? You want to be really, really conscious of this. And I want to share with some of the qualities that I look for in friends. Okay? Number one, I look for people that share my values around faith and family and being very mission-driven in my career. Okay? So faith, Family, mission-driven career, health—that's another big one.

And so I look at those and I say, okay, who are some people that fit fit the bill there? I also look at things like again purpose, like like like like they're not they're not only thinking about this life; they're thinking about eternity. They're thinking about a long-term purpose. I look at these people again; they're they're fit, they're active, they eat healthy.

I mean, these are these are things they they you know I can trust them. I know I can count on them in times of need. Those are some of the qualities that you want to look for in people. I want to mention just a few friends and examples of why I'm friends with some of these people. One is Andrew East. So, Andrew and his wife, Shawn Johnson East, are 2 of Chelsea and I's best friends.

And the thing I love about them is that they are— the thing we share, we share values of friendship and family. And freedom and, uh, and purpose, all those things. But, you know, Andrew is one of those guys where he's such an encourager. You know, when I'm around Andrew, I feel like— like, and he's— and he lives in this state of gratitude.

Like, if you ever have a chance to hang around Andrew East, you'll notice he's one of those persons just saying, I believe in you, you can do this, go get 'em. I mean, incredible encourager. And so that's a quality you want to look for in people, is a person that is Encouraging. Now, he's got a lot of other things. He's self-disciplined, he's incredibly kind.

But again, if I think about one big word about Andrew is, man, he's just— he's encouraging you. Another person who's a really dear friend of mine is Jordan Rubin. I co-founded Ancient Nutrition with him. He's a former founder of Garden of Life and does a lot with regenerative agriculture. But when I think about Jordan, I think about integrity and I think about conviction.

Jordan is an incredibly convicted person. In fact, he gets so convicted about things. Like, I'll give you the example of the environment. He is so, uh, so absolutely committed to building back carbon in the environment and creating a— I mean, his idea is, I want to create a small Garden of Eden-like areas in the planet, you know, creating food forests and using regenerative agriculture.

So when I spend time around Jordan, I'm like, man, I'm so convicted right now. I'm convicted that I want to help heal the planet. I want to go serve people. Yeah. Here's the other thing about Jordan is he is very black and white in terms of right and wrong. I mean, he would lose, you know, and like Jordan would not tell a white lie.

I mean, Jordan would rather you cut off his arm than him tell a lie. It's incredibly convicting. And so when I'm around him, it's like, you know what? I don't wanna tell a— what? Like, I wanna stand up for what I believe in, even if I have to die for it or, or, or have some sort of bodily inner injury or lose my reputation because of it, because I'm honest and true and I'm a convicted person.

Yeah. Those are the sort of friends you want to be around. They convict you deeply. Now, listen, you want to hang around these people in person. I think about another person who's like that for me is a guy like Tim Tebow. You know, we're going to have the opportunity to have Tim on the show here, Tim Tebow, in the near future.

And, you know, I watch him the way that he operates with a level of kindness to people. And I'm like, wow, he is so incredibly kind to everybody. In fact, even people who may— you know, when I— he does this thing called Night to Shine where he cares for kids who have disabilities.

And some people may think, well, these people are— maybe they may have a level of like a low IQ and a mental inferiority. But, but Tim treats them like, you know, like they're the president or they're the Pope. I mean, that's how Tim, uh, he treats them like royalty. And so that's convicting for me.

And so that's the feeling you want to get, by the way, how, how you know you have really good friends. Is there's a sort of emotions welling up in you in a positive way when you spend time around them? Another good friend of mine's a guy, Dan Sullivan, and Dan is one of those guys I know he has my back no matter what.

If I'm thinking about all my friends, who's somebody who will go and have my back? It's Dan, you know, and I can trust him. He's the sort of per— here's another big one. Can I trust my kids with them?

Like if, if my 3-year-old, if, if, if Chelsea and I had an emergency and had to run out and do something, Who could I give, you know, friends of mine, Arwen, and think, you know what, they would do such a good job? Let's say we were gone for a week or a month. You know, I know Dan and Amanda, they homeschool too.

I mean, they would have her, you know, the next day they would have her with their girls learning and growing and doing just, you know, uh, you know, all those things that we would just, that would blow us away, uh, that they would do.

You know, I think another friend, Vonnie Hari, she's, uh, you know, the, she goes by the Food Babe and And she's a person when anytime I get to just speak to her on the phone or around her, she just sent me a, we've been kind of sending some voice texts back and forth about spiritual growth and things like that. And Vonnie's a person who just, she, she, I think about justice with her.

She fights for what's right and justice. And so all that being said, even mentioning these people, I'm kind of overwhelmed a little bit with a level of emotion because they're emotionally driven people. They add value to me. They cause me to grow. They have my back.

And what you should do with your friends is you should write down who are your top 5 friends, and on a scale of 1 to 10, where do they rank in terms of iron sharpens iron? They're causing you to grow. They're causing you to be better. They have high values and high, uh, and, and, and, and, uh, high, high character. So write that down. Who are your top 5 friends?

On a scale of 1 to 10, where do they rank? Then think about, okay, who are 5 people that you could spend time around with in person? And maybe you're not even close friends with them now. They're acquaintance. But you think and then write down who are 5 people that are at least a 7 out of 10 and that are committed to growth that you can grow with?

I'm telling you right now, it's one of the greatest things you could ever do to accelerate your personal growth and help you experience a higher level of success. I want to go through a few more studies and I want to go through a few more qualities of friendship. Of things that you can do.

So there was a study done on college freshmen, and they found that, uh, the more a person hung out— this is so obvious, by the way— the more, the more time that a person, uh, a college student hung around friends that studied, the more that they studied. And the more that they skipped class, the more they hung out with kids that had skipped class. But it was related to grades.

Even somebody who went in with a college GPA who was, let's say, you know, a C. If they hung around with A-level students, it bumped up their GPA to a B or an A. This is big in every area of your life. You got to think about it, okay? This is really big.

One other study is— this is a Dutch study— Dutch scientists found that the closer a person lives to delinquent friends, the more likely they are to engage in similar behaviors.

This happens a lot of times when people decide not to move out of their same small town if they had high school friends and all the successful people moved away and some of the other people decided to stay and they hung out with the same delinquent friends they grew up with. Well, they end up modeling the same behavior and not being successful, right? And think about that.

You might think about somebody you grew up with and you thought, hey, it's the same old whatever because they, you know, they're still, you know, they're still binge drinking. They're still, you know, they're still the same person today than they were in high school. And that's sad.

You should be the same person in terms of your authentic you, but you should be bet— you should have greater character, you should have greater skill, greater life success, more wisdom from life. All of those things should happen.

Uh, there's a, uh, a quote from Simon Alexander Ong, and he says— he's a life coach, he's an author, he's a business strategist— and here's, here's what he had to say about friendship. He said, our success in life more often than not comes down to the people we choose to spend our time with.

How smart you are, how talented you are, where you were born, the family environment you grew up in— these may all play some role at how successful you will be in life, but in comparison to the impact of surrounding yourself with people who can lift you higher It pales in comparison. That's the thing you need to know. It pales in comparison. You can't compare it to the people you hang out with.

All of those things, your education, your talent, where you were born, they pale in comparison to who you spend your time with. And there's something called Dunbar's Law, by the way. Dunbar's Law. There is an anthropologist, his name's Robin Dunbar, and he found, you know, we can maintain about 150 you know, friendships at one time.

But then from there, there's something called the social brain hypothesis, which states the closer you get into your inner circle, the greater impact it has on your life. So, for instance, who you marry, your spouse, if you choose to get married, that has the greatest impact on who you become, your spouse. The second biggest thing is who are your 5 closest friends?

So, you've heard that quote, right? I think it's Jim Rohn. You become like the 5 people you hang out with most. But then the reality is it's those, those 5 people, it's who you should be the most conscious of. But then it's the next 15. You can tend to have 5 close friends, you have 15 good friends, and then 50 friends, and then 150 meaningful contacts.

So, 150 is like, that's how many people might come to your wedding or your funeral. Okay? Something like that. But this idea of social connection and Dunbar's Law, you want to think about and write down. Who are those 5 people? And then who are the 15 people? And those are the people that really affect who you become in life. And by the way, I'm even conscious of my 50.

I'm conscious of the friends and the mentors and the people I even mentor myself. And I write those people down, those 50 people. But think about at least your top 5 or your top 15 and be conscious of spending around and write down, okay, who are my 5 to 15 now? Okay. Who do my 5 to 15 people need to be in the future?

And again, this is if you want to experience a breakthrough, this will help experience— help you experience a great breakthrough and success more than anything else you can imagine. And here's a big point I want you to get. Social media doesn't count for friendship.

Many people seem to think that having friends on Facebook or Instagram or social media equates to meaningful relationships, and they don't. The idea here is you want to go— you want to stop going so wide in your connections and go much deeper in relationships. And you do this in a few ways. Number one, through vulnerability.

You share where you're vulnerable, you share where you need to grow, you open up so a person truly gets to know you. And you have a person across from you, they share their vulnerabilities. The next thing is you commit to growing together in community. In, in character and in some other way. But you commit to saying, hey, we're going to grow in some way. We have a purpose.

There's a reason why we're together. It's not just to hang out. It's not just for pleasure. It's not just for, for, for, for practicality. It's because, hey, we both are really interested in, uh, growing spiritually together and, and serving God. Or we both, you know, are really interested in marketing, or maybe we have health clinics, and so we're spending time because of that.

But there's some level— or, or we really want our kids to be around other kids that have high character, high family values and faith, and around that. So you want to be very, very specific about why am I hanging around with this person? And there should be a level of vulnerability there. You should build trust.

There should be a lot of character involved, but there should be a common purpose is probably the most important thing that, that really leads to Good friends. Here's the thing I want to mention again too, with people having fewer friends. There was a study done, and this was published at the Survey Center of American Life, and this was done on more than 2,000 Americans.

And they found that not only did people have fewer friends compared to 30 years ago, they talked to them less often and relied on them less for support. So listen, people today compared to 30 years ago, have a lot less close friends. They have much less, fewer friends, or at least meaningful friendships. And that's such a big part of what life's about.

I think about, you know, the book of Genesis, and God's like, it's not good. The first time God says it's not good is for man to be alone. Well, one, that's talking about a spouse, but also I just think about, generally speaking, you can have a friendship or you can have somebody you think is a friend and still be alone. You can be in a marriage and still be alone.

You can have a, you can have a million followers on social media and still be alone. What causes you to not be alone is when you open yourself up and the other person to open themself up and you truly get to know each other and there's sort of a connection. And so again, there's 2 things. You're opening yourself up with vulnerability.

You're sharing your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, but also your struggles. And then the other person is doing the same thing, and then you're committing together. And this is what partly connects you to saying, hey, we're going to grow together.

We have, we have this meaningful purpose that we have together to, to be better husbands or be better wives, to be better leaders, to be better sons or daughters, to be better, better parents, to, to be better at business in a mission-driven business, to be Those are the things, right? You think about those things. You have this common purpose in growing together.

You know, I think about— when I think about certain types of friendship, one of the things I think of is actually sports and military. You know, when I think about my dad served in Vietnam, served in the military, and I think about the relationships he had, and I think about, you know, what's interesting is what, you know what, initially one of the initial things that connected C.S.

Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. You might know they were friends. They were part of a friend group as well at Oxford called the Inklings. But what originally connected them was they both served in World War II. So, they both served in the war. And they called it a band of brothers. These 2 guys, they experienced life hardship that no one else could understand. There were other people around them.

They didn't go through war. They didn't lose people they loved. They didn't experience the, the terrors of war. And because of it, they both had this thing that they kind of knew, you know, and they were kind of vulnerable. They both realized that this person gets me right. Do you ever feel that? I mean, this is an important part of friendship. This person gets me.

They've been through the same thing that I've been through. And that thing that happens creates this level of connection. And part of it is sometimes you don't even need to speak it. There's a level of vulnerability or level of understanding between the two people of, of, Ben, I'm not alone because this person understands what I've been through. This can happen in sports.

Sometimes somebody's putting it all on the line. It's the most important thing. I think about kind of the closeness of, hey, we have a common purpose of winning a game.

But oftentimes after sports and after military and after, you know, school, getting by, whatever, we kind of go through, we get later on in life and a lot of times it's like, well, I don't, I don't have any real, real close friends right now. I don't have any real relationships, people that understand me.

By the way, this can happen when you transition in life and sometimes you have kids for the first time, or, or you get outta college and you gotta have a new career and you think, well, well, I have, you know, my friends, I'm the first to have kids. They don't have kids. Or, and, and so you don't feel understood.

And so anyways, that's a really important part of friendship is, is that there's a level of like, we have this level of connection, understanding. And one of the deepest is spiritual.

I think for myself, You know, I might not have the same career as somebody, but if we both have this connection of we're trying to love God, love people, make Earth a heavenly place, you know, that creates a sense of connection of living for eternity. And so it's important though to recognize that, listen, here's the stats show people have fewer friends today. Part of the reason is social media.

We're not engaged in real relationships, we're just engaged online. And if you truly want to develop strong, great friendships, You need to find people that where you share a common purpose and you need to pursue those people. That's another thing I think we've missed out on today. You gotta pursue good relationships.

You know, when Chelsea and I, uh, first, uh, first met Sean and Andrew, actually we started praying. We, we were at a point in life where we had a transition. We, we were living in Nashville, we moved to Florida for a year, we ended up coming back. And I remember we thought to ourselves, things are different now. Like we're at a different phase.

Like, like we're, we're kind of, a different phase in life. And we want to find friends who were highly ambitious and into health and wanted to change the world. Like, we're big thinkers. I'm like, I want to hang out with people that want to change the world. And we just didn't have that.

And then it was actually a couple years, but I was really conscious of, I want to create this type of community, be around these people. We met Shawn and Andrew at a coffee shop. I pursued them. We went on like a couple's date, you know, we dated as couples in a way. And it's like, okay, these are our people, right? These are, these are these people we feel connected to.

We did movie nights, we did food nights, we started going to church together. You know, we started doing morning workouts, and then we'd go to brunch together. We had all these great experiences. But I pursued it, I initiated it. And if you want to have close friends, don't just think it's going to fall into your lap. Pursue it. Be the one that starts that type of community together.

And you'll see, I think other people, according to the research here, as I've shared, people want deep and meaningful friendships. People are empty, people are lonely. You know, according to the study I quoted earlier, 12% of people said they have no friends at all. That's 4 times what it was 30 years ago. 4 Times. 12% Of people said they have almost no friends.

50% Of people said they have less than 3 close friends. Friendship is such an important part of us living a high-quality life. And I, you know, I also think about this. I think COVID hurt relationships. We think about COVID-19, the mandates, people not being together.

I even think about how politicizing that was and how there's certain maybe acquaintances that I had that I feel less connected to now. Actually, I think it's deepened certain relationships because I saw some people standing up with courage for our freedoms and gave them a greater sense of purpose.

So, I think whenever you go through crisis of any type, it's going to cause you to— it's going to fracture some relationships, but it's going to also cause some relationships to deepen. Flourish and grow. There's a survey done at AARP that found that 28% of people 50 and older said their friendships grew weaker during the pandemic.

And so for a lot of people, listen, if you're not spending time with people, one of the key qualities of having close friends is you are purposely spending time together. So as you can see, not only is friendship important, but deep and meaningful friendship is important. According to a study at the Mayo Clinic, here's what they found the benefits of friendship are.

Uh, it gives you a greater sense of belonging and purpose, increases your happiness, lowers your stress levels, gives you more self-confidence and self-worth, gives you a higher ability to cope with stress during difficult times. So here's what makes a great friendship. Friends should be nurturing. They should be loving, kind, and encouraging. They should be your biggest cheerleaders.

They should see the very best in you, even when you're not acting the best. Okay? So that's, that's number one. If you want to have a good friendship, look for people that are nurturing, loving, compassionate, encouraging, and your biggest cheerleaders. They see the best in you. Number 2, friends are challengers. They see your potential and the best you can be.

But when you're not living up to your potential, they have the courage to confront you and tell you you're better than that and to challenge you to be better. That's the next one. So they're nurturers, they're challengers. And then friends are focused on growth and purpose.

They share your values of faith and family and health and life mission, and they're committed to growing and getting better and creating a community of growth. That's all it is. If you're looking for friends, somebody that encourages and loves you, somebody that challenges you to be better, and someone where you share purpose and values. That's what you want to pursue in a friendship.

And if you can do that, it can radically change your life. All right. So, in closing, remember this. You want to go deeper, not wider. Listen, all of these superficial friendships on social media, they're not real friendships. You want to find your 5 people that you want to become like. Iron sharpens iron, cause you to grow. You want to go deep.

So have deep and meaningful conversations of things like, what are your hopes and dreams? What scares you the most in life? What are you excited about right now? How can I serve you and help you grow? Hey, what's something meaningful we can do together? Hey, what do you want for your kids? What's the best you have for them?

You want to have those sort of deep, meaningful conversations, support each other in that becoming a reality. So identify the common purpose and grow and contribute to helping each other grow through nurturing, through challenging, and through, again, having a purpose-driven friendship. If you can do those things, you're gonna have such meaningful friendships. Here's another thing.

You know, I really prayed about having good friends. And so I think there's an element of bringing God into the equation and maybe going to those sort of places like churches or mastermind groups or other things where you can really find some great positive people. If you don't know where to look, maybe start there. That could be a great place for you to look.

But remember, you need to have the best friends possible. Rank them right now, your 5 closest friends on a scale of 1 to 10. How are they in terms of their character and virtue, commitment to growth, being iron sharpens iron for you? Then go and find those 5 people, your 5 that you can grow through life with and change the world with.

Hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Growth Lab Podcast, where each and every week I cover How to grow yourself, grow your health, grow your wealth, and grow in your career, your spiritual life, your relationships, don't forget to subscribe, like, and share this podcast. By the way, it's just so meaningful when you do this. Also, I love your comments below.

If there are certain topics you want me to cover in the future, hey, let me know that. I'm excited to cover almost anything you can imagine here related to the topics we talked about. I'd love to have you recommend something. And again, thanks for subscribing.

If you know somebody who needs friends or needs to know about friendship, hey, take this, send 'em, send 'em a text message, share it on social media, DM them or something like that. But again, I'm so grateful for everybody who is sharing and loving this podcast and taking part here in the Growth Lab community.