How to Make Friends and Keep Them With Bestselling Author Eric Barker

The Verywell Mind Podcast

Guest:

Eric Barker is the founder of a blog called "Barking Up the Wrong Tree", which presents scientific answers about how to 'be awesome at life.' He’s also the author of two bestselling books. "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" addressed the science of success and his new book, "Plays Well With Others," discusses the science behind relationships.

Topics Discussed:

• Defining a friend
• The number of friends needed to improve well-being
• Why friends may matter more than family in life satisfaction
• The link between friendship and happiness
• How friends improve health and speed up healing from illness
• How spending time with friends might be worth $93,000
• Developing deeper friendships
• Why too much small talk hurts relationships and what to do about it
• How work friends can increase life satisfaction by 96%
• The extra benefits of having a community of friends who know each other
• How the modern world creates more parasocial relationships and why this is a problem
• The dangers of loneliness
• Feeling lonely in a crowded room
• The cure for loneliness
• Making friends as an adult
• Feeling like lifelong friends with someone in 45 minutes
• The most important thing to maintain existing friendships
• Two things showing we're being real friends
• Focusing more on connecting with people than impressing them

Key Takeaways:

• Many people pursue happiness individually. However, there’s a strong link between social relationships and happiness.
• Friendship is often neglected. We discuss the importance of strong family relationships, but not everyone has a healthy family that bolsters good mental health.
• Friends are relationships you choose; developing relationships with people who support you can go a long way toward becoming the strongest and best version of yourself.

Quotes From Eric:

"The research consistently shows friends make us happier than any other relationship because it's voluntary. Because if we don't like somebody, we don't have to do it [be friends with them]. So it's fragile, but that keeps it [friendship] pure." — Eric Barker

"Friendship is great. Communities are even better."

"A lot of social media ends up coming out of the buddy budget. It’s that the more time we're on Instagram talking to people, the less time we're usually doing it face to face."

"If you feel like you're not connected—like people aren't thinking of you or don’t care about you— then you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely."

"If people don't know about your struggles, they can't help."