Can You Bank On Your Friendships | LAYC25

Welcome back my friends.

And I hope that it's all right with you...

That I call you my friends, because I feel that way.

After all here I am, sharing intimate thoughts from inside my head and my

heart, and sharing so much of my own life, experience, and evolution.

Just like I would with my really good friends.

And that's the conversation today.

It's about friendship.

I know we've talked about friendship on a couple of past episodes, including Best

Friend Day Everyday and BFF Not Forever.

But there's still more, so much more to be said on the topic.

And I know I'm not alone right now in having friendship very much on my mind...

Because I'm hearing from you, and I'm hearing from the people in

my immediate circles, about...

Wow...

Friendships are not simple.

Friendships take work.

They're like flowers in a garden.

They need tending, and cultivating, and sometimes they need weeding.

They will always need sunshine and water to bloom...

And very much like flowers in the garden...

Each one is unique and beautiful.

That is the magic of friendships.

They're always different, changing...

Growing.

Adding color and joy to our lives.

But if you neglect the friendship...

It will wither and die.

No matter what age you are now, I'm sure that you've probably

lost at least one friend...

To a life ended sooner than we wanted to let them go.

One of my greatest regrets in life was not making up with a very, very dear friend,

before she was killed in a car accident.

We'd had a terrible falling out over something completely unimportant now.

I'd had the opportunity to say, I'm sorry.

And to accept the apology she wanted to give me, but my stubborn pride kept me

from enjoying her, and our friendship, for those few more weeks that I could have.

As the years go by and as life changes and we start to experience

our own human body frailties.

We have to say goodbye to people that are dear and our lives.

Recently, we've also lived through the experience of a global pandemic that

made human connection and relationships even more important in our lives.

In episode 23, Best Friends Day Everyday, I talked about evaluating your

friendships coming out of the pandemic.

And what you noticed about who were the friends that showed

up for you during this time...

And who were the friends who did not show up for you and how

that might have surprised you...

Or disappointed you.

Plus on the upside...

Who were the new friends that you made?...

That you might not have otherwise?...

Without the changes forced on you, because of COVID-19.

At the time I also introduced to you a tool, that I developed

that's helped me for years...

Work through the complexities, and challenging times, of really good

friendships with evolutionary women.

I call it my friendship health check-up.

It's a free tool that I'm offering to you to download and use any time, and often.

It may help you to go through the process of evaluating your friendships and knowing

that relationships change just like we do.

Who are you now in those relationships?

How are they serving you?...

To be more of you?

Not less of you...

and perhaps...

It will also reveal, that some friendships may now be at a crossroads...

And it's time to consider re-allocating them in your life.

So when you're ready...

Pop on over to www.MyEncoreFriends.com and grab a copy.

I'll also put that URL in the show notes, to make it easy for you to find it.

Recently, I was reminded of something that Stephen Covey said...

and by the way...

Wasn't that man just brilliant and insightful about human

relationships and human behaviors?

Mr.

Covey shared a very powerful metaphor to describe relationships

as emotional bank accounts.

He showed us how we could use that as a frame work for evaluating

the health of our relationships.

I think it's very interesting to think of each important relationship

in my life as a joint bank account.

It takes two of us to sign up and engage, in this joint emotional

account, to make it sustainable and available for both of us...

When we need to draw on it.

It's also where reminder that we must always be making regular deposits...

Or the account will simply be overdrawn, if we're not both putting

in more than we're taking out.

So using Stephen Covey's model, I took a look at some of my relationships that I

wasn't sure were really balanced anymore.

And it helped me to look at it less emotionally...

And make some decisions around continued investment in those accounts.

It's always important to be thinking about our friendships in terms of...

Who we are now...

Not who we used to be...

And who we want to become next.

If you've been with me for a while, you know I talk about vitamin G, which

stands for Vitamin Girlfriends, and how significant my best girlfriend

relationships are in my life and contribute constantly to my sense

of wellbeing, and my personal and professional development.

And of course...

the pure joy and fun of having friends to celebrate my accomplishments in my life.

I examined each one of those treasured Vitamin G relationships...

In the context of that joint emotional bank account...

And asked myself questions like...

Is this account solid?

Does it have a balance that was built on mutual respect, and

shared values and commitments.

A commitment to continue to work together through ups and downs,

and grow together and solve any problems that may come along our way.

I had to ask myself, am I honestly able to say that I'm adding deposits

and adding value to the relationship?

Do I feel confident that each of us, are making deposits and adding value?

Do I feel there's balance?

Is there a fairness?

A balance...

a reciprocity in their relationship?

Even though I have no expectation of us to be equally contributing,

always at the same time, the same amount, or with the same impact...

After all, life just doesn't work that way.

Some days I will have more to give, and some days, I will need to receive more.

What's important in a really good relationship is that there is a commitment

over a long term, to work together and grow together and support each other.

Sometimes, and I hope it's not too often for you, or me, that we have to

make a decision to freeze a friendship account for a while, until we can

renegotiate the terms of the relationship, and restore the account balance...

A healthy, happy, loving relationship.

Occasionally, we may have to face the difficult choice of having to terminate

or close a friendship account forever.

Conditions like willful neglect, emotional abuse, betrayal of trust, or confidence...

Passive aggressive behavior.

Friendships cannot thrive under these conditions.

So it's best to make a difficult decision.

Do it quickly, and know that you're closing the account, in

the interest of both of you.

Carefully chosen friendships serve an extremely important

purpose in our evolution.

They're there to help us become the best of us.

The right friends see potential in us...

That perhaps we're not even aware of yet.

They're there to support us, to live the legacy that we desire and

enjoy it while we're present to experience it, and influence it,

and leave an impact in the world.

They're there to celebrate with us great achievement, and epic accomplishments.

I want my best friends there.

When I reach my goals,

I also believe strongly that it is a disservice to our friends, if we're

not doing everything that we need to...

To live up to our full potential, and be the best version of ourselves.

In doing so...

In always striving to be the best us...

We automatically become far better friends...

To our friends.

When we continue to invest in ourselves, we have more capacity

to invest in our friendships.

So for today, I'd like to leave you just to think on the friendships

that have had an impact in your life.

How many of them are still close friends?

Which ones perhaps have been re-allocated to a different priority in your life?...

But they're still there.

And like friends that we haven't seen for a while...

But when we reconnect with them, it seems like we can just pick

up right where we left off.

Then there are those friends, that as they say, have come into our

lives for a reason and a season...

They've taught us something valuable.

If you're like me, and you realize how much richer your life truly has been

because of the investment that friends have made in us, and the investment

that we have made in our friends.

You're going to want to continue to have a return on your investment, for years...

and make sure that you're always being the best friend that you can.

Wealth managers and financial advisors will always counsel you that it's best to

take a long-term view of your investments.

And it's essential to make sure that you're doing regular review of your

investments so that you can rebalance your portfolio when it's necessary.

That's how you get the greatest return on your financial investments, but it also

works for your friendship investments.

Remember...

You've got my Friendship Health Checkup as a resource that can help you with your

planning and assessing friendships, and make the necessary adjustments to create

strong, rich, beautiful friendships.

Every day is a wonderful friendship day for me.

Especially when I get to engage with you.

I'd love to hear your friendship stories..

How you learn to be a better friend.

It would be great if you share those stories on the Lift As You

Climb Movement Facebook Group, because I know that your story...

Your examples can inspire someone else and you'll be there to lift

them on their friendship ladders.

All right.

So that's a wrap for today on the friendship conversation, but

we'll come back to it again.

There's never an end to that topic.

However, next week, I want to change things up for us

with a totally new theme...

Where I'm going to share my musings on the "We FIX You" industries.

I think they've got it all wrong...

and...

I'll be excited to share some insights, and some news on spectacular

summer guests on the podcast.

So Tune IN!

And have a great week friends!