Why You Need Friends

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. This is where we empower US military veterans to live their absolute best lives. And we do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help them to become happier, to become healthier, to become more productive, and honestly, to help them on their way to changing this country for the better. And we're gonna talk about that in a second.

Today's episode is actually about something that we don't talk about very often. We talk a lot about success. We talk about a lot about moving forward. We talk a lot about fitness, but what we don't talk about as much are friendships. Trying to get those same kinds of friendships that you had back when you were in.

And, you know, it seems like it's a simple thing, like, oh, I can't go out. I can't make friends, But it becomes progressively more difficult as you get older. You know, you go through this period that's super social when you're in your teens, your twenties, when you're you're in the military, maybe even your late twenties and thirties. But usually by the time, particularly men get to their early third... Early to mid thirties, they are drifting further and further away from a group of people whom they could call their close friends.

And so there's a lot of us who exist in loneliness. And for a lot of veterans, it's particularly difficult because most of the friends they've had, they're scattered across the country right now. Right? And so you end up going back to your hometown or or to whatever destination you may end up, and you end up not making the close friendships that you once had. Well, I think that this is particularly important.

You know, it's important for happiness. It's important for health. It's important also for success. If you don't have anybody who's willing to speak honestly to you, to tell you how you're messing up, to to give you honest critiques. If you don't have anybody like that in your life, then it becomes difficult to move forward.

And I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about my experience today, and I'm gonna give you some things that you could use moving forward to try to find good people. Try to find good friends who you bring into your life to help you to be happier and to to step up your game, frankly. Before I do that, I just wanna say this. I got two things. It's...

And it's not an ad. It's a big thank you and a big apology. The thank you is because I've been doing this podcast for five years. I've been able to talk to some of the most interesting people in the world. I have been able to scratch my own itch to talk endlessly into a plastic box and make a recording and have lots of people listen to it.

But beyond that, it's honestly been such an honor to serve this community, you know. I don't have the most popular podcast on the Internet, and I certainly am probably never gonna make the millions off of this. But the reason why I keep going through this, the reason why I keep doing this show is because of you guys. And I've kept doing this show through some really hard times. When I lost 50 pounds because of a health crisis due to my autoimmune disease, and I was sick as a dog, I made sure that I was still publishing this this show three times a week.

When I was broke as hell and barely had any money, I made sure that I had the money to pay for the bandwidth for this show. When... And right now, I've moved across the country. Life is great down here in Florida. Florida's a freaking wonderful state.

Bought a house and really happy about that. But... And I'll talk to you guys more about that in another episode. But I just really really appreciate you guys because it was those emails I was getting and those messages I was getting from veterans who'd listened to the show and who told me that it helped them in some way that kept me going. When I thought nobody was listening, when I thought that, you know, this was never gonna go anywhere, I had people reaching out to me and told me keep going.

And so, you know, it's my honor, and thank you for allowing me to do this. The second thing is the apology. You know, over the past few weeks, I don't know if you could tell by the quality of my episodes, but things have been a bit rushed around here. And it's a combination of things. So over the past, like, eight weeks, I've been in moving mode.

So I moved from California to Florida, and then I went out on search to buy a house. And I bought a house, but that that process took a few months. So we've been bouncing from Airbnb to Airbnb out here. So I haven't had a regular office, for this stuff. And then the other aspect of it is that I started a full time position, with an awesome company called Fortress Anchors out here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I'm currently serving as the director of sales and marketing for them. And, you know, that job, though I love it, takes a lot of time. And so whenever I've been able to record, I had to steal minutes here and there. And maybe I'll talk about that in another episode this week. But today's episode is focused on you guys and your friendships.

Thinking about how to reestablish the kinds of friendships that you had back when you're in the military. And I'm gonna come at this from a few different angles, but again, I just wanna emphasize the importance here. It is so important to have good people in your life. So important to have friends who can speak to you honestly. So important for you just to be able to spend time with other guys or other girls, and to be able to talk about things, to to be able to express yourself.

Right? Human beings are tribal. And that means that we, throughout our history, we evolved to be social, and we evolved to be social for a reason. It's a big part of our health, a big part of our happiness, a big part of our survival. If you look at the statistics of people who are isolated and who don't have big social circles, they're more likely to die early.

They're more likely to get chronic illness. They're more likely to be depressed. And I don't have to tell you that depression is a huge problem in our community. And I'm a believer that it's in large part because so many of us isolate ourselves after we get out. We we either put our heads down and go to work, or we get busy raising our families, or, you know, we just don't feel like dealing with other people.

I've heard that expression so many times before from other veterans. I hate people. I've used that expression before. I fucking hated people. There were times when I would make it a point not to speak to anybody prior to 11AM when I had to.

When I was running my own business and I was doing recordings, stuff like that, I was one of those people. I fucking said, I hate people. I said, I I told my girlfriend. I said, I wish we could move out to the woods and just be off the grid and be away from everybody. But that was the wrong way of going about things, and it was wrong because of a number of different reasons.

The biggest reason is because, you know, I... If you don't have somebody outside of your closest circle, right, and I'm talking like your family, like, or your significant other. If you don't have other eyes on you on what you're doing, you're not gonna get a lot of honest feedback about what you... Where you should be, what you should do, what you should be pursuing, how you're messing up, or anything like that. You need that kind of honest feedback that only a really close friend could give you.

The other reason is this. I mean, you know, let's be honest about being honest. You can't be completely honest with your significant other or your friend... Or not your friends, your your family. Right?

I I... People say you shouldn't have secrets in relationships, and I think that's bullshit. Right? I think that's complete bullshit. There are certain thoughts that I have in my brain that I do not want my girlfriend to know.

Right? There are certain things that I think, and I'm not talking about like shit about other girls or anything like that. There's dark fucking shit that we all have that we need to get the hell out there and that we need to express in some way. In a lot of ways, I substituted that by doing this podcast, but not everybody's gonna do a podcast. Right?

There are certain things that that you need to get out of your head that you'll only be able to tell a close friend. Right? And you need that in your life. Right? It's it's just a fact.

Right? It's a fact of our community. It's a fact of, I think, men in general. Right? There's shit you need to get out there.

And if you don't have that outlet, then what happens is you end up sitting there thinking, hey, I'm fucking crazy. Hey, I'm a nutcase. Hey, I'm abnormal. But if you're able to talk about it, you start to see that a lot of these things, a lot of those dark thoughts that you might have, they're they're actually a pretty normal thing that happens with men, and particularly men in our community. Right?

And ladies, I'm not trying to leave you out here, but us dudes, we think about some really messed up shit some... From time to time. So just something to put out there too. But, you know, the other aspect of this, and I know I said there is no substitute for a real human being talking to a real human being, right, using all this technology. But technology does have a blessing.

Right? And and one of the things I always say is that in this world, there's a lot of really dark shit, a lot of loneliness, a lot of pain, a lot of hardship. And if you wanna go out there and you wanna search some... For something bad, you're gonna find it in an instant. But there's also a lot of beauty out here. There's a lot of brotherly love out there. There's a lot of really good people out there, and you have to go out there, you have to search those people. And when you come in contact with them, you have to figure out a way to keep them in your life. And so one of the things I'm gonna tell you right now is this, use the technology to find the beauty rather than just going out there and finding all the stupid bullshit out there on social media that's going on right now. All the news that's gonna piss you off, all the other crap.

Right? Go out there, set a freaking link on your calendar. Right? Set set a freaking time on your calendar once a week where you're going to make it a point to connect with a close friend. Right?

Where you're gonna make it a point to connect with a close friend. And you might sit there and you might say, hey, well, I don't have any close friends or anything like that.

That's fucking bullshit, especially if you are in this community. If you are a veteran, I can guarantee you that you probably have a friend out there that would do anything for you. Right? And I'll I'll give you an example here. One of the reasons I moved out here to Florida is to be, obviously, for my job, but also to be closer to to one of my best friends in the world.

His name's Ron. He lives out here in Miami. He's my best friend from the Marine Corps. And I could have called him during the past eight years, every week if I wanted to. But you know what?

I let my freaking pride and my shame get in the way. I was ashamed of the fact that I wasn't where I wanted to be financially. I was ashamed of the fact that I was sick. Right? Allowed myself to get sick with ulcerative colitis, and I was freaking skinny bastard.

Right? And I was ashamed of that. And so I avoided talking to people like Ron, who I was very close with, who would have picked picked up my call, who would have listened to me, you know, who would have given me advice. And I avoided it because of my own pride, my own stupidity. And if you're allowing pride or shame or not being where you wanna be in life to keep you from connecting with people who care about you, then you're hurting yourself in so many ways, and you gotta stop doing that.

Right? So that's your first action item. Go to your calendar. Set a time once a week to freaking connect with somebody who's not geographically close... Located close to you or or maybe he is and you just haven't talked to him in a while or you're not connecting like you should.

Set that calendar, connect with them at least once a week, and if you can't meet up in person, FaceTime them. Right? Message them over Facebook. Right? Use that freaking technological BS that's invaded our lives for something good.

Okay? The next thing is this, maybe you don't have anybody you can call. Right? And like I said, I doubt that, but maybe you don't. And if you don't, it's be...

It's for a big reason. It's not because nobody likes you. It's not because you don't have people who care about you in your life. It's because you're not putting the work in that you need to to get around good people. So what should you be doing?

Well, the biggest thing is, obviously, you need to be working on yourself. Right? You need you need to have interests. You need to have hobbies. You need to have professional interests that are going to guide you toward whatever group you're gonna try and connect with.

Right? Maybe once COVID nineteen lifts its hold on all of us, maybe that's martial arts, maybe it's fitness, maybe it's CrossFit. Right? Maybe it's... Maybe you are a contractor and you're trying to find other contractors out there.

Try to find a contractor professional group or a Facebook group or something like that where you can connect with people in your area. It really all depends on whom you wanna connect with, what you wanna get better at, whom you're trying to bring into your life. Right? And again, I know that... And I'm not saying be disingenuous, but they...

These groups do exist. And yes, you can form real friendships based off of profession. Right? You know, one of one of my really good friends now, his name is Marcus, and the way we connected was he was my client. I was...

When I was a personal trainer. And yeah, he lived across the country, lived in Virginia, but, you know, we connect every couple of weeks. We talk shop. He gives me advice on business. I talk to him about his health, and we trade ideas.

Try to find somebody on common ground with you. And again, guys, this is not something I'm naturally good at. It's something I've had to put a lot of work into and a lot of thought into, and it's something that I'm still trying to get better at. You know, I just moved to cross country. I'm in a new place, a new area, and, you know, I am definitely trying to work on this as much as possible now.

Because what I don't wanna do is I don't wanna go back to that isolated asshole who was so prideful, so shameful, so freaking stubborn that he let everything go. And I believe that having good friends in your life is one of the ways that we create a safety net around ourselves. Keeps us from stepping on land mines of our own making, keeps us happier, and it allows us to get that stuff that's in our head out. Alright? And it allows us to get that honest feedback that only other honest friends can provide.

So I know I've been jumping around over here. I just did a run. I'm all charged up, and just wanted to get this out there to you guys. So I hope that helps. If you guys have any questions, please let me know.

And, you know, I'll be back at you next week with some more awesome content. This is Chris Albert, the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am out.