3 TYPES OF FRIENDS - 2 TRAPS to AVOID! - The Value of Friendship is LIFE-GIVING! - 062

Just because you drove cars with that guy, just because you played basketball with him for the last seven years. No longer requires you to be his friend when circumstances change. We're often driven by duty here because we spend time. That's bullshit. Aaaaah! Yeah! I've built many startups, most of them are failed, so Bitcoin is exactly the place that I like to be. We're gonna end it right there. You know, sometimes I figure if I'm struggling or I'm thinking deeply about a particular subject, then there are chances are there's probably some people out in the seven billion or so in the world that are probably thinking about this or considering this idea as well. Now, today I wanna talk with you about something that might seem really boring, really basic, but it's this idea of friendship. It really is. You know, you have this near 40-year-old

man that I am talking about this idea of friendship, and I've really been percolating on this for a long time, at least three or four months, at least. And the reason is is because I have experienced friendship tension. I have experienced friendship tension, friendship conflict, friendship changes, friendship transformations, all over the past couple of years or so, in really interesting, dynamic, fun, exciting, scary, and moments of friendship changing in ways that I never imagined. And so I've been percolating on this idea, and I've really been trying to formulate my ideas around this. I wrote a lot of notes here, and I wanted to give you guys some keys to, or not keys, but some understanding around what friendship is and the categories of friendship, and some of the pitfalls. Really, that's what I wanna talk about most, is some of the pitfalls around friendship and

how friends can hold us back. How friends can retard our growth. How holding on too long or not having, or having the wrong expectations around a friend move us to a place of ruin, move us to a place where it's not healthy for us. And so I really wanna dig in with you guys today around this idea of friendship, and this would be one of those podcasts as I was beginning to think about and formulate my kind of the presentation of this. What came to my mind is like, this is one of those podcasts that you should really just sit back, relax, don't take notes, and just listen, and see if you resonate with any of the things that I'm talking about. So let's jump right in. I spent a lot of time googling, and spent a lot of time typing in a lot of

different wacky phrases around friendship, so that I could kinda come to a better grips of some of the ideas that I had in my mind around friendship. And what I found is that actually, backstreetly, there were Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Greek philosophers who actually spent a lot of time understanding friendship. And so let's go through this. So the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, he identified three types of friendships. I didn't even know three types existed until today to be quite frank, so this is really cool. He identified three types of friendships. The first is friendships of utility. Friendships of utility. Now, friendships of utility makes an absolute sense. You have a mutual benefit for both of you guys. I have a ton and had a ton of what we would call friendships of utility when I was a consultant for the last 12 years. Obviously, friendships of

I didn't even know three types existed until today to be quite frank, so this is really cool. He identified three types of friendships. The first is friendships of utility. Friendships of utility. Now, friendships of utility makes an absolute sense. You have a mutual benefit for both of you guys. I have a ton and had a ton of what we would call friendships of utility when I was a consultant for the last 12 years. Obviously, friendships of utility, when it comes to mutual benefit, are people that are like colleagues, customers, clients, maybe you're a member of some type of club, or some type of club. And there is a mutual benefit to both of you for being attached at some level. And so both of you gain from this. And often this happens because of circumstance. The second type of friendship that Aristotle talked about was

a friendship of pleasure. This makes a lot of sense. You guys enjoy a shared interest, whether it be a hobby, maybe you guys love painting together. I don't know why they're king. Painting, where the hell is my mind, guys? You enjoy driving together. Maybe you enjoy working out together. Maybe you enjoy these types of things. And so, friendships of pleasure are people who enjoy a shared interest, whether it be hobby, something that came to my mind is friendships of pleasure are, I've met a lot through travel. I have friends all over the world in Europe, Asia, all over the world. And these are friends really of travel. We met, we had a great experience together, we promised we would keep in touch, and we have. And in the moments, because I am a world traveler, and in the moments where I'm back over in Japan

or Korea, or UK, Europe, Germany, Switzerland, Amsterdam, I can name all the places where I've met people that I know that if I contact them and say, Hey, I'm going to Amsterdam or say, Hey, I'm going to Japan. I will have great people to hang out with, great people to eat with, and just enjoy life. Also, friendships of pleasure I wrote this down are people of pastimes, right? If you have a particular pastime that you've enjoyed, similar to a hobby, maybe you just keep going to the same red socks game, or the same Atlanta Hawks game, and you're always sitting next to the same person. You're always finding yourself engaging with this individual. And these are friendships of pleasure. The third type of friendship that Aristotle identified was the friendships of virtue. Friendships of virtue. And he is quoted as saying that the friendships of

virtue are built out of mutual respect and admiration for each other. Obviously, friendships of virtue take a lot longer to grow. A lot longer to trust each other, a lot longer to understand each other. You guys don't miss this. You guys have similar values. This is crucial. Similar principles, similar values in life. Similar life goals. You see the world. You see the world similarly. You guys have a similar worldview. You have an understanding of how life should be and how the world should be ordered of sorts. Right? And these friendships of virtue are often formed when you're younger. Right? Aristotle clearly was wise enough to know that this circle, this circle of friendship, the friendship of virtue, is really, really small. And it takes a lot of time to form these times to relationships. And I'm sure you guys can harken back to some of

a similar worldview. You have an understanding of how life should be and how the world should be ordered of sorts. Right? And these friendships of virtue are often formed when you're younger. Right? Aristotle clearly was wise enough to know that this circle, this circle of friendship, the friendship of virtue, is really, really small. And it takes a lot of time to form these times to relationships. And I'm sure you guys can harken back to some of your friends, maybe within your inner circle, that really formed around elementary, middle, high school, or maybe even college days or just post-college days. But I'm going to tell you guys from my perspective, I have found it to be exceptionally and exceedingly hard to find friends post-college, and decades past post-college, to really form friendships of virtue. And this was a little bit of attention of mine as I

came into the subject writing about it because I truly believe that we as humans are meant to connect. And not only are we humans and creatures that are meant to connect, but in many ways we are creatures that are meant to connect deeply with each other, with other people. And so what happens, and this was kind of one of the questions I had written down, is what happens when you don't have a circle of friends, a small circle of friendships of virtue, right? How do you grow these things? How, and is that a requirement for a fulfilled and happy life? You see, these are questions that I wrestled with, and I don't know if I've exactly landed on whether it's required or not, but certainly you can move through the friendships of utility, the friendships of pleasure into the friendships of virtue over time, over

time. Now here's one of the things that we have to take note of and we have to just be real honest about, and I wrote this down here. When circumstances change, when circumstances change in life, we often find that the friendships of utility and the friendships of pleasure, they go away, they usually end. And the reason is it's very simple. Circumstances have changed. Right? I have my neighbor over here, right? This is a friendship of utility. I love being able to borrow tools from them. He enjoys listening to my cars and all sorts of things that we do. We share a fence, so we share the responsibility to keep it up, keep it up painted and keep it nice looking. We share the responsibility of the tree branches and making sure that they're not overgrowing everywhere. Right? But if he moves, or if I move,

the circumstances have changed and the friendship of utility of my neighbor is no longer. Right? Another example is hobbies change. Life, your interest change, hobbies change. You used to go to that basketball game every season for the last ten years and you know what? Now you don't. Life has changed. You're no longer interested in that. You're moving on to bowling or you're moving on to something else. And you know, circumstances in life are always changing, whether it be for you or whether it be for the other individual. Certainly other ideas around circumstances changing is that you might get married. You have kids. You get a new job. You have to move for that job. I can't tell you how many and this is just being abundantly honest here. I can't tell you how many friendships of utility and friendships of pleasure changed. Really, really quickly

And you know, circumstances in life are always changing, whether it be for you or whether it be for the other individual. Certainly other ideas around circumstances changing is that you might get married. You have kids. You get a new job. You have to move for that job. I can't tell you how many and this is just being abundantly honest here. I can't tell you how many friendships of utility and friendships of pleasure changed. Really, really quickly once I got married. I mean, once I got married, I moved into a different tier of understanding life. I knew what love and suffering. I knew what love and suffering was at a deeper level once I got married. And the friends of utility and some of the friends of pleasure certainly moved out of my circle. They just they they could not resonate. They still signals till trying

to play the game. Oh dear Jesus, thank you Lord for getting me out of that dating game. The dating game sucks by the way. Small side side bar. What happens when you have kids? I can tell you lots of my friends have changed once I had one kid, once I had two kids, once your priorities change. So this is all natural and good that your circle of friends change. They oscillate in and out and mostly the friends of utility and the friends of pleasure are the ones that are on a rolling scale. They change, they move. But the friends of virtue, I'm hoping for you and for me certainly friends of virtue are the individuals that you have grown mutual respect, mutual admiration and you share similar values with. There's another thing that I thought of when it came to friendship and it's done bars

number. Now you might not have heard of Dr. Dunbar but Dunbar is a scientist who understood organizational systems and human and people systems. And Dunbar's number basically says and I'll define it here is that you pretty much only really have 150 people in your relational network. Now as a consultant I used to use this as a joke with large organizations. I used to tell them, hey, Dr. Dunbar told us that it is only really possible to have relationships with about 150 people or so. So if you have more than 150 friends on Facebook, you really don't have that many friends. Number one, but number two, if your organization, let's say your IT organization is over 150, it's going to be really hard to have enough relational equity to make impact within that entire organization. So there should be opportunities to slim down or trim down

or create relational bridges so that a large organization can have better relational network, better relational connectivity, better conversation, all this one stuff, it's all organizational design stuff. But you guys understand the point is that you really don't have a capacity. Here's the point guys. You really don't have a capacity as a human to really manage that many friends. Now Dr. Dunbar was great, he broke this down for us. So I'm going to break it down for you guys and then we're going to get into the thing that I really want to talk about. Dr. Dunbar, I'm going to say it here with 150 friends, these are what he would call casual friends. You met through work, through leisure, through interest, or through location, often 150 or so of the friends that you could quote unquote manage mentally are drawn to you by circumstance. Work, leisure,

for us. So I'm going to break it down for you guys and then we're going to get into the thing that I really want to talk about. Dr. Dunbar, I'm going to say it here with 150 friends, these are what he would call casual friends. You met through work, through leisure, through interest, or through location, often 150 or so of the friends that you could quote unquote manage mentally are drawn to you by circumstance. Work, leisure, interest, hobbies, these types of things. And then there's 50 friends or so. They're just called friends. You see them often, often through circumstance. And then there's 15, maybe in inner ring here, 15 friends that you are friends of support, friends of support that you can call on, that you can be present with, and active with. And then we go down to the closest circle of friendship is

about five or so, what we could call a close support group. And this can include family as well. And so in Dr. Dunbar's breakdown, 150 casual friends, 50 friends, 15 supports, and then five really close supporting people. You see, what happens in life, and this is what really kind of was the genesis of this idea for me, I was writing ideas down, it are the traps of friendship. And remember, the context here, this is on my mind because over the last couple of years, especially the last, you know, four or five, six months or so, I've had friends oscillating in and out of my life. And this is not a problem. Circumstances have changed. Direction has changed. Priorities have changed. Projects have changed. Focus has changed. And so I wrote down, and this is really the beginning of my notes, I wrote down two traps,

two traps of the friendship cycle, like the issues of friendship, like two traps. But I want to start with a really important foundational idea. It's a really important foundational idea. Friends, whether they're your 150, your 50, your 15, or your five. Friends, whether you, their utility, virtue, or pleasure, right, utility, pleasure, or virtue. Friends should always bring life to you. Period. Period. Friends should always bring life to you. Period. Now, are there going to be oscillations of emotions with friends of course, or are you going to have a great day and he's going to have a shitty day? Absolutely. Is she going to have a great day and you're going to have a shitty day? Absolutely. There are obviously going to be ups and downs with any type of friendship, whether it's a utility friendship, whether it's a pleasure friendship, or whether it's a virtue

friendship. But at the end of the day, if there's a prolonged time in which that individual, that friend of yours does not bring life, you need to act that shit. The number one trap, the number one trap that I wrote down is people holding on to utility and pleasure friendships as if they're virtue. Let me say that again. One of the biggest traps, number one, is holding on to utility and pleasure friendships as virtue when they're really not and you're holding on to them. Life has its ups and downs. And why do we end up holding on to these friendships? I can tell you a couple of reasons why maybe you can fill in some others. But one reason why that we hold on to these friendships of utility, these friendships of pleasure, even when they're no longer bringing life to us, is we are

on to utility and pleasure friendships as virtue when they're really not and you're holding on to them. Life has its ups and downs. And why do we end up holding on to these friendships? I can tell you a couple of reasons why maybe you can fill in some others. But one reason why that we hold on to these friendships of utility, these friendships of pleasure, even when they're no longer bringing life to us, is we are often driven by duty. I should. I should spend time with them because I've spent so much time with them. Why is this a causal issue? Why does this create the tension? That just because, and I'm going to save you guys the mental anguish, I'm going to save you the mental anguish, just because you spent a fuck ton of time with them hanging out doing that hobby or

hanging out as a client. Okay, those are my best two examples. A friendship of utility would be a client, a friendship of pleasure would be a hobby. Just because you spent two years, three years with that client, you are not driven by duty. You have no, you don't have to still be their friend just because you're client, you change clients and you got a new contract and you moved on. What about friendships of pleasure? Just because, just because you drove cars with that guy, just because you played basketball with him for the last seven years, no longer requires you to be his friend when circumstances change. We're often driven by duty here because we spent time. That's bullshit. If they're not bringing life to you, if they're not bringing life to you, then you don't have to worry about it. Cut it off or let

it just disintegrate into its own. What about driven by regret? Driven by regret to hold on to a relationship. Oh, man, what happens if I meet that client again or meet that colleague or meet that customer? What happens if I re-reinvolved myself in that hobby or go back to that country and I don't contact them or I go back to what old past time I used to enjoy and I know that they're going to be there. That we were driven by some sort of regret that we didn't please them. We didn't get the relationship to what expectations did you have? What expectations did I have? What happens is that when we hold on to friendships that are not providing life and there were friendships of utility and there were friendships of pleasure and there no longer providing value, what happens is it slows down our

growth individually. And it makes us live in the past. Don't do it, guys. Go back to one of my podcasts about living in the past. Search for it, guys. Don't let your future be a prisoner of the past. Don't let friendships driven by duty or friendships driven by regret to hold you in the past. They're moving on. Go back to my other podcast talking about no one's thinking about you. Trust me, they're not thinking about you because you're no longer involved in that past time, that hobby, that going to that place or that colleague or customer or client or member of a club. You're no longer a member of the club. Trust me, they're not thinking about you. And so let those friendships cycle in and out. Leave spaces for more opportunities for people to come in to your world and give you and bring

thinking about you. Trust me, they're not thinking about you because you're no longer involved in that past time, that hobby, that going to that place or that colleague or customer or client or member of a club. You're no longer a member of the club. Trust me, they're not thinking about you. And so let those friendships cycle in and out. Leave spaces for more opportunities for people to come in to your world and give you and bring you life. Here, that's the first trap is holding on to friendships of utility and pleasure based on regret or duty that makes us live in the past. That would be one of the first traps. I'll tell you the second trap. And this is intensely personal for me. The second trap is moving a friend too quickly to a different tier, especially as an adult and not taking the

time to really understand their values. I will be the first to admit when it comes to friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, I tend to go deep quickly because I enjoy engaging, I enjoy sharing, I know that life change happens when you share intimately, when you share deeply and you reveal yourself to an individual like I totally understand this and I enjoy that because that's where life change happens. That's where input to my system, input to my world happens and I can become a better person, ideally, and I can become a better person because I know them. But here's what I've learned and pleased guys don't miss this is that when you have friends of utility and friends of pleasure, you have to take the time to understand their values, understand the worldview, understand their goals. They are not allowed to enter into the inner

sanctum of friendship quickly. It should not happen. I learned this way. There's a saying that my father used to say he didn't say that often but he said it enough that it stuck with me and I wrote it down here. It's not exactly true but it brings I think a focus on some of the truths of the statement. So let me just say the statement here. The statement is simply this. Your friends, he told me one time, he said your friends should always stay in the position that they began in. Let that sink in. Your friends should always stay in the position that they began in. So let's unpack this idea just a little bit. What did my father mean when he said your friends should always stay in the position in which you began or you found them? Well, if we look at it

through the lens of Aristotle, if you have friends of utility, a colleague, a customer, a client, or your member of something, they should always stay that way. They should always stay that way. Allow them to be a great client. Allow them to be a great customer. Allow them to be a great colleague or a member or someone that you enjoy being with because there's mutual benefit there. Leave it there and enjoy it for the time that it's there. When it's done and circumstances have changed, move on. When it comes to friendships of pleasure. Yeah, my dad will say, yeah, enjoy that hobby with them. The circumstances allow you and your hobbies and your interests to meet this individual. Enjoy and be present in that position with that individual. And when circumstances change, your hobbies change, your interests change. You got married. Right. Yeah, I got

Leave it there and enjoy it for the time that it's there. When it's done and circumstances have changed, move on. When it comes to friendships of pleasure. Yeah, my dad will say, yeah, enjoy that hobby with them. The circumstances allow you and your hobbies and your interests to meet this individual. Enjoy and be present in that position with that individual. And when circumstances change, your hobbies change, your interests change. You got married. Right. Yeah, I got kids. You got a new job. You got new priorities when it changes. Then keep it there. If you find that you travel back to a place and you have a friendship of pleasure that's out in that place, go hang out with them. But don't try to invite them closer. Keep them where they are. Now you might say, well, Peter, that seems counterintuitive because if you're pasting, if

you're post college age and you're trying to find friends of virtue, then what your dad would say is that you'll, if you don't have any friends of virtue, then I guess you're always going to stay that way. Well, come on. Let's read between the lines. I think some real truth to what my father was talking about. The friends that you have should always stay within the position that you form them, which you found them. And there's makes a lot of sense because there's no need to go deeper. There's no need to go crazy. There's no need to invite them in a client to your house. It's just leave them where they are. And if it naturally, I think here's the the undercurrent in the context that's maybe missing from my father's statement is that if it naturally, if the friendship naturally evolves over a good

amount of time. If the relationship evolves over a good amount of time and they move into the inner sanctum to the inner circle, maybe because you've found out over time that your colleague, your client, your customer, the person that you have a great hobby with or an interest with or a past time with. They share the same values. Interestingly enough, they might share the same goals. Interestingly enough, they might share the same worldviews. And that will allow you to grow that relationship slowly with time, feeling them out, understanding who they are, going back to my problems. My problems in the past have been that I go too deep too fast and I did not heed the wisdom of my father. I let friends of utility, friends of pleasure move into the inner sanctum and they got burnt. I got burnt. And the reason is because,

whoa, our values completely different. Our worldview completely different. The way that we see the world completely different. A visions for my life, visions for my family and the visions for their life completely different. And so, my, and this is deeply personal to me, my, my advice to you guys if you're out there listening is that don't move too quickly to a different tier of friendship. Don't move too quickly, especially as an adult, because adults are fucking shisly. Don't have a gen does, okay? Kids don't have agendas. Adults have agendas. Adults have hurts. Adults have baggage. Remember I've talked about this before. Most adults actually, I'd say 100% of all adults out there post college, 10 years past college guys in your 30s, 100% of adults are communicating through their pain. They're talking through their tragedy. Right? And so be careful with who you form friendships

too quickly, especially as an adult, because adults are fucking shisly. Don't have a gen does, okay? Kids don't have agendas. Adults have agendas. Adults have hurts. Adults have baggage. Remember I've talked about this before. Most adults actually, I'd say 100% of all adults out there post college, 10 years past college guys in your 30s, 100% of adults are communicating through their pain. They're talking through their tragedy. Right? And so be careful with who you form friendships with. Understand that there are tiers, utility, pleasure, virtue. Keep them there. Enjoy them. Don't hold on too long because of duty or of regret. Don't move people through the tiers too fast or someone's going to get burnt because of mismatched values and misalignment around worldviews and visions and goals. This is really, really important. And so guys, I want to encourage you if you have great friends of

virtue, awesome. I got a couple. That's about it. And you know what? I'm really blessed and lucky just to have those couple. But here's the question that I want to ask you guys today. I want you to think about today. Do you have friendships that you've been holding on too long, maybe through duty and time or regret? Are they slowing you down? Are they retarding your growth and are they creating situations where you just live in the past? If so, maybe it's time to let them go. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It came from my heart and I hope I did a good job explaining it. Subscribe, share this with other people in your network. And have a great one, guys. Have a great one, guys. Thanks for watching.