035: Making Friends as an Adult

Making friends seems to be more challenging as we grow older. Are we making it harder than it has to be?
In this episode, I am concluding the conversation we had this month all around love by talking about friendships! Friendships don’t have to be difficult to find, nurture and maintain and in this episode, I am giving you some tips to find genuine, solid friendships with great people.
You’ll hear about the importance of affirmations and a positive mindset around friendships, my advice on small gestures that can make a big difference in maintaining friendships and how sometimes friendships just aren’t meant to last forever.
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on my mindful moment
How you get to decide what you want
My tips for making friends as an adult
Things that could be hindering you from experiencing great friendships
Small things you can do to make a difference when maintaining friendships
Read the transcript of the episode below:
Does it ever seem like it's harder to make friends as you get older? This is episode 35: Making Friends as an Adult.
Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone, and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives. I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I am excited for today's topic. I think it's something that a lot of us, I don't know if I want to say struggle with, but it's something that comes up for a lot of us. Before we get started with that topic. I want to do a segment called a mindful moment.
So I know I talk a lot about finding moments throughout your day where you can be mindful. And I know that I'm often encouraging you to find, you know, ways to be creative or do something artsy, but it can also just be any moment, especially when you're doing something that might be kind of repetitive.
And I realized the other day as I was cooking, I was making mashed potatoes, so I was peeling them and it's just kind of that repetitive motion. And I thought, you know, this is something that in another day I might've been kind of annoyed, like, okay, we got to get these potatoes peel. Do you know? And instead I thought, no, this is a moment that I can just relax.
And. I mean, it's not hectic. It's the same as getting a massage at the spa. Okay. But I can be present and I can just kind of like allow my mind to rest for a minute while I focus on that repetitive motion. And. Focus on my five senses and just kind of being present and something as simple as peeling potatoes can be a mindful moment in your day.
And it's often something with a repetitive action or emotion that can really allow for that. So I find that of course, with the lettering too, when you're doing drills or strokes or, or doing the lettering, that it's also somewhat of a repetitive action, that can be good for your brain to kind of release.
Like I said, especially when you're doing drills and I just want to encourage you that mindful moments are already hiding in your day. So look for them, find them, be present in them, and don't expect that you will be mindful every moment of the day. There's no price for being mindful. This is not like, who can be the most mindful? And how many minutes of your day are you being mindful? No, the reason why we're doing this isn't because it's the right thing to do. It's because it feels better. And it, for me, it aligns with my values and how I want to be living my life. And I want to be able to let go of stress and anxiety, and I want to be able to be more present and enjoying even the simplest things such as peeling potatoes.
All right. That is our segment for today. 
Okay, so for today's topic, we're just going to keep it real and talk about making friends as an adult. Maybe friendships come easily to you as an adult. Maybe not, maybe you're somewhere in the middle. I am someone who's pretty outgoing. When I meet someone it's not necessarily really hard for me to make conversation or anything, but it can, even for me, who's pretty outgoing, it can still be hard to make and maintain friendships as an adult. So we're going to talk about it. 
And I just want to say that your friendships don't need to look like anyone else's. If you see people around you getting together with big girls nights or going on vacation together, or doing a lot of couples dinners, that's not like, the gold standard. That's not like, oh, I need to get there. I need to make it there. I need to find my group that's going to have a girls night. It's like, when you want to find another couple that you get along with, it's like, you have to both date. It's like, you go home from a date. Like, did you like him? Did you guys get along? Yeah, I really like her. Like, is this going to work? And so you may think like, oh, we should have more, a couple of friends just pay attention to when you hear that should word, because you shouldn't do anything. I mean, you get to decide what you want to do. 
I think that it's helpful to evaluate: why do I want to have and make friends? And what do I believe friendships would do in my life? And it's not necessarily a selfish thing to want to have friends, having friends is a great way to get outside of yourself and think about others and serve others as well. But when friendships are difficult, it's often because of our ding ding, ding mindset.
You know me, I'm over here at creative mindset. That's what I do. So that's what we're going to talk about. So the first thing that I want you to do, when you're thinking about having friends, making friends, keeping friends as an adult is to write down all of the thoughts that you have about this topic.
And if you don't have a pen and paper or you're driving or whatever, I'm going to encourage you to pause it right now. And take a moment to think what are the things that I think, and when you're trying to figure out what your thoughts are, it's the things that you tell someone else, like, it's what you tell your husband at the end of the day, when you say things like it's so hard for me to make friends, or I never get invited. Or, nobody really likes me. Those are the kinds of things that you may be aware that you think yourself, or they may be the things that you tell someone else. But those are the thoughts that you're currently having about making friends as an adult. And I'm not assuming that they're all negative, but I just want you to be aware of what they are.
So. Take a minute, if you can right now to do that. 
All right. So knowing where we're at with our mindset is so powerful because oftentimes it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not like, oh, everyone else knows exactly what we're thinking, but if I'm really focused on how I am not ever getting invited to anything, I'm probably not putting my energy into inviting people to do things.
So it can be interesting to take a look at that. And I have to be careful about this too. The other day, I was talking with a friend about something and I was teasing saying, oh, well you can tell her I never get invited to anything either. And then I thought, that's ridiculous. This is a silly thing to say.
It's not helpful for me to even say that because it's not completely true. And I don't want that to be the story. I don't want that to be the headline. And I think it's really helpful for us to remember that even if something is true, like you could fight for it. You could say, no, I'm going to fight for this.
Like, I can tell you, I for sure have not been invited to anything. And of course there's, COVID so. I'll talk about that a little bit more later, but I want to talk in generalities because I think that this can extend beyond and hopefully one day when we can gather normally. But I think that you might be able to say to me, oh no, I can prove that I haven't been invited to anything that might be true, but is that what we want to be the headline?
Is that what we want to focus on? Is it helping us to focus on it besides feeling very validated in our sadness, you know, and, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't feel sad or disappointed if we don't get invited to something, I'm not saying that you shouldn't care, that you should fix your mindset so that you just don't ever care about anything.
No, no, no, no, no. I just want us to prevent extreme suffering or additional suffering or pain because of our thinking. Does that make sense? So I think it's very normal to feel bummed. Bummed out a little, if we don't get invited to something, but are we allowing that to become so prominent that it's really not serving us?
So that's where we want to ask. Is it serving us or not? I want to allow a little bit of that because I'm human and that's okay. It's okay to feel sad and disappointed and whether or not we want to feel those ways, we probably will because we are not patrolling our thoughts preemptively to where we can stop ourselves from feeling feelings because we're humans and not robots.
And so that's totally okay. It's okay to be bummed, it's okay for it to feel hard, it's okay to, to kind of take some time to figure out how we're feeling and thinking about maintaining and making friends as adults. 
So once we figured out how we're currently thinking about it, then we want to think about the intentional thoughts that we would like to train our brain to think so that they can help.
And of course, we'll still have some negative thoughts come in. That's okay. But if we can have a few positive thoughts that are believable to us, that we can focus on. So one might be, I love making friends and it may not mean that it's super easy or that it's just happening already. But you can say I actually love making friends.
I love having friends. I love serving my friends and getting into like a positive space, a positive mindset where you are more open to the positive friendships happening instead of focusing on, you know, not being invited or not having any friends and then feeling kind of closed off and turned inward.
And, you know, I think most of us growing up, at least for me, I definitely had many, many times where I broke down and got emotional was sad. And it seemed like the tagline to all of those meltdowns was, I don't have any friends. I think sometimes that can continue as adults. Sometimes, sometimes I think it's harder to make friends as adults.
You know, you go to the playground and your kids just like meet somebody and say, Hey, you want to play tag? And they're friends. And then they come home. I made a new friend and you're like, oh, what's their name? I don't know. They don't even care. It's easy. They can make friends easily in proximity. And sometimes as adults, it feels a little bit harder, but maybe it's not as hard as we want to think it is.
And maybe if we think that, you know, we find friends wherever we go, maybe we will. So try on some new thoughts. This is one reason why I love the daily mindful lettering book that's what we've been talking about this month. We've been talking about love this month of February and this last week of February, I wanted to talk about how we can have and make these friendships.
And that is a way of love. I love making friends. I love my friends and of course it's different than other types of love. But I think that so many of the affirmations that we find in the daily mindful lettering can apply to our friendships. So when you're lettering the affirmation I receive love easily, or I find love everywhere, those are helpful affirmations for friendship as well. And if friendship is something that you want to focus on, I dare say that many, many of the affirmations in that book can be geared toward friendships and just helped to get into the right mindset where you're open and positive and hopeful for friendships to happen.
And so I just want to put that out there. If you don't already have the daily mindful lettering book, you will love it. I don't know if we've ever gotten as great of responses to a book as to this book, because it's just such a great way to have a little bite sized piece of lettering to do each day that's going to help you to kind of wind down, have some creative meantime and it can help with your mentorships too. I really believe that. 
So the next thing I wanted to talk about is being open. You know, we have these ideas, maybe it's kind of a narrow idea of the type of friend that we'll make. Maybe we imagine that they will be our same age and have similar ages of kids or have a similar profession or live in our same neighborhood.
When we're open, we can find so many different things. I cannot tell you how many friendships I've had with women, you know, 20 years older than me, or way older than that, that have been my favorite friendships, just incredible women who had so much to teach me who understood me in deep ways. And it was so fulfilling to be friends with them.
And I just think that sometimes we miss out when we're just looking for maybe like a vanity friendship and I don't mean this in a bad way, but are we looking for just a friend that's like that friendship that we see other people having that we think we're supposed to have that kind of looks good from the outside or looks like fun or something other people might envy, or I don't know, like checking off a box? Instead of, who are people that I connect with, that I want to be friends with, that I want to serve and open up to and connect with?
 And I think that when we're open, we might find that. Age may not be as big of an issue. I've also had friends that, you know, were much younger than me that had kids much younger than me, but we meet up at the park and I just love them and connect with them.
And I'm not there to say like, oh, you, oh, you're worrying about that. Oh, that's silly. It's not that bad. Or you guys. Is that like the most annoying thing when you're a young mom and people tell you that like, oh, the things you're worrying about, aren't a big deal. Anyway, that was a side tangent. But the point is that age doesn't have to be something that keeps us from being open to friendships.
And also we might expect that we're going to find friendships in certain places and you just never know where you might find them. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more later. 
The next is to invite. So it's really common for when people say that they never get invited to anything. If you ask them well, how many times have you invited people?
They may or may not have invited people and maybe they have, and people haven't come. And that can be hard too. And I'm not saying that you should just be an inviting machine if nobody is responding well, because you're human and you need to, you know, figure out what works for you. But oftentimes, for me when I have been kind of down about not being invited to things, I realized I wasn't creating my own fun.
I wasn't inviting people to do things. So then even when we do decide to invite, sometimes I think we focus too much on the right or wrong way. Like, am I giving them enough notice? Is it too much notice? Is this too spontaneous? I mean, I have a sweet friend who will text me to go for a walk and a lot of the times I can't because I'm putting my kids to bed or doesn't necessarily work out and she's just amazing and it doesn't keep her from inviting me again in the future. So I think that if we want to plan ahead and get something on the calendar with somebody, I think that that's great. Sometimes I think that we believe that that's the right way to do it.
Now that we have kind of lost sometimes that spontaneity of just dropping by, or just seeing how somebody is doing. And again, I know this is all different right now with COVID, but I think that we can think about being more spontaneous and not necessarily believing that we have to have tons of notice and plan weeks in advance.
So. The key is that if you are going to be more spontaneous and maybe text somebody last minute and say, Hey, you want to go grab some ice cream? Or do you want to, you know, like during COVID you could say, Hey, do you want to come over to my backyard and chat while we, you know, drink our hot chocolate at night or whatever.
I don't know where you can have safe distance and all that kind of stuff. I think that we can be more spontaneous. We just can't take it personally if someone can't do it. Right. 
So if we're being spontaneous and someone says, oh my gosh, I'm running to my kid's game or taking them to school or I'm busy for whatever reason, we can't believe that that means something about us and that they really don't like us. And this is secretly how they're trying to get out of it. We have to believe that people are good and give them the benefit of the doubt. And I know I've mentioned this before and episodes about what other people think there's an episode called, what other people think.
And I mentioned in that episode that I assume that everybody likes me. It's one of my tricks up my sleeve. I don't know. It's something that I just, years ago, decided, wow, I can really spend a lot of time walking on eggshells or replaying everything I've ever said to someone and thinking about how they might've been able to take that wrong.
And do they secretly hate me? We give people a lot of credit for spending a lot of time thinking about us. When most people aren't thinking that much about other people. They're spending most of their time worrying about their own little family and what's going on, on, in their life. So anyway, I just decided that I'm going to assume that people like me, because why not?
What is the downside to assuming people like me and I'm not talking about in some like, puffed up conceded way where I'm like, everybody loves me. No, I'm talking about like a reasonable way that thinks. There's no reason for them to not like me. They don't necessarily maybe even know me that well enough to know whether or not they like me.
And so I'm just going to assume that they do, because I show up way better when I'm assuming that people like me. If I'm thinking that they don't or sitting in this kind of like ambiguous place where I'm just not sure if they do. And I'm hoping I can make them like me. I get kind of weird sometimes. I think sometimes we act a little weird when we're like, Oh, they don't like me. How can I get them to like me? Or what did I do wrong? Or maybe I should be different than myself. No, just assume that everybody likes you and just be who you are. 
I have been thinking about when I was younger and I would sometimes try to like things because I thought I was cool or I wanted someone to like me. One time, I went on a date. This is not friendship. This is obviously dating, but I know I've talked about this on here before. I think, I don't know which episode. I don't know if I have actually, but when I was younger, I went on a date to hike this crazy tall mountain top in Utah. It's called Timpanogos. And somebody invited this guy. I thought he was like so cute. And he invited me to go hike it in the middle of the night. Okay? He wanted to go so that we could be at the top of the sunrise. That sounds really romantic, except that I am not outdoorsy at all. And this is like a huge hike that people like train for. And he wanted to go in November.
It was either end of October, beginning of November, but there was snow on the mountain and I didn't even have any snow gear, any snow clothes at all, but I wanted him to like me, and so I thought I'm just going to go and I'm going to kind of pretend that I am having a good time and I'm going to pretend that I'm outdoorsy and then maybe he'll like me. I mean, this is just like prime example of why you should do this. So anyway, I am from California. I was used to, you know, sea level and this was, I don't know, I think it goes at the top. I think it goes up to like 10 or 12,000 feet. I don't, I'm sure I'm getting this wrong. And people from Utah, I'm like, no, that's not right.
But anyway, it's extremely high altitude. Definitely altitude that I was not accustomed to. And I got super sick and I will spare you the details of that situation, but it was bad. Really bad. And there were other people on the hike with us and they kept going and we ended up going down the mountain and let's just say, I didn't pass his test, his outdoorsy test, and I never saw him again.
So that was kind of a bummer, but it was a great lesson for me, as painful as that was in many ways, it was a great lesson for me to not pretend to be somebody that I'm not so that people will like me. It doesn't work out. It just never works out. 
Now I'm not saying that you can't branch out or try something new! Sure. Of course, but like, kind of pretending that you like something or pretending to have interests or skills that you don't have normally comes back to bite you. Just going to say. So hope you guys enjoyed that little experience from my past life. All right. 
Next is to get out of your comfort zone. Um, I kind of like contradicts a tiny bit what I just said, but not really.
Okay. What I mean by that is to be open to telling that mom at the park that you would love to get together for another play date or to show up when you are invited. That's another funny thing you may say. I don't really get invited, but have you been invited and did you go, and it's sometimes easy to feel like we don't have friends, but then when we do get invited, it's hard to go. 
I say that as a homebody, I just, I really like being home. And so I also have to be honest with myself because sometimes that is what I would rather choose. But if I want to make friends, like if I've moved somewhere and I don't know anyone, or maybe I'm at a conference or something like that, and yeah, it might be nice to go get some rest instead, but I think, you know what? I want to make some friends. And so I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. I'm going to go show up, even though I don't know anybody else there, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. I did this with a conference multiple times, but one time in particular that I'm thinking of, I went to the creative founders conference in 2016.
I knew no one. I didn't know a soul and I showed up all by myself and I met the most amazing people I'm still friends with. It was so incredible. I totally got out of my comfort zone and talked to people and asked about them and made some incredible friends. So, whether it's doing something like that, you know, or showing up at a book club or going when you're invited, try to get out of your comfort zone.
And definitely if you're going to like, be getting someone's phone number, I know it sounds like dating, but like if you're going to be bold and ask someone if they want to go to that cooking store with you cause you both talked about it, or, you know, sign up for a class at the gym together, cause you mentioned, you both talked about how you might like that or whatever. You gotta be bold. You gotta get out of your, your comfort zone. 
And so I think that it's just a good practice and it can be hard just because we're adults doesn't mean that all of a sudden that that's easy. All right. 
the next tip is to try new things. So maybe that is going to a book club in your neighborhood or joining a mom's group or going to church and talking to and meeting people, volunteering at your kid's school.
Of course, all of these ideas are mostly non COVID ideas, but there are ways to connect with people online as well, doing different classes, art classes, dance classes, cooking classes. Lettering. And then of course active things like the gym or training for a triathlon or asking someone to go for a walk with you.
I think that being open to trying new things can be really fun. So I remember when I was newly married and we had met another couple and the wife asked if I would want to go to, uh, what was it like a hip hop dance class or something. And I remember at the time I was like, oh my gosh, no, that's not my, that's not my cup of tea.
Like, I'm not good at that. Whatever. It's not like something that I'm naturally drawn to. And looking back, I'm sad that I didn't say yes, that would have been so fun. And it was just like, not just out of my comfort zone, like way out of my comfort zone, like way, way, way, but I'm kind of home looking back that I didn't just say, you know what, why not?
I've never tried anything like that. And. Well, it might be fun. I mean, I didn't even like do dances like a kid, really. So for me it was like way foreign and I kind of wish I would have gone out of my comfort zone. I mean, I don't like to live with regrets, but that's something that I think, wow, she really extended an invitation and we ended up being friends.
Anyway, we did other things together and we were friends, but I just thought, you know, that was one time when I could have been like, yeah, sure. Why not? Let's give this a go. 
And the last thing that I want to talk about is maintaining friendships. And I just want to say that you would be shocked to know how far even just a text message can go.
And that's especially true right now during COVID, because we can't necessarily, you know, connect in the same way, but when we're all busy and we're doing things. Getting a text from someone that's just like, Hey, how's it going? How are you doing? It's really can make a big difference. And especially to let someone know that you're thinking about them, or if you remember that they have something coming up that was going to be difficult, or they were taking their kid to a tricky doctor appointment or that they're trying something new, anything that you might remember about them or nothing, just checking in to say, Hey, how are you doing today?
Wow. You know, like, do we have very many friends that we do that with where we just check in on them. And if we're trying to make new friends, sometimes this can be a little bit out of our comfort zone, but if you've gotten somebody number and you can just say, Hey, just wanted to check in how are you guys doing? That's a great way to connect. 
The next thing I want to talk about is the Marco polo app. This is 100% not sponsored. 100%. My favorite thing in the world. It has been my complete lifeline throughout this last year and longer. I just love it. I connect with my family through it. I connect with friends across the country. I connect with friends four streets over. Okay. I just connect with people on that app. 
If you are not familiar with it. It is, uh, like a video messaging app. So you kind of like take your video message and then it sends it to the other person kind of like Marco polo. So you Marco  there, they Polo back. It's the best. You can listen on double speed. You can do it when you have time, you can do it with grandparents. You can do it with siblings. Again, this is not sponsored, but I am here to give my testimony of the Marco Polo app, because it has helped me to not just maintain friendships, but to grow friendships too.
I have plenty of friends here locally to me. That maybe we're both kind of home bodies or maybe we aren't getting together as much because of COVID. So it's just a really great way to check in when you have the chance and you don't even have to schedule a time. You can do it when it works for you. 
So if you are not already a fan... for those of you who know what it is. You're like, oh yeah, it's the best. And for those of you, don't, you're like, oh, I'm going to have to check this out. 
The other thing is dropping things off. It might seem really silly, but it can just be like the bright spot in your day. So if you're wanting to make cinnamon rolls or something, and you can drop one off to a friend or, you know, six off for her family, or if you are grabbing a soda or coffee or whatever you grab and you want to drop one off for your friend lunch? Oh my gosh. That just feels like, I don't know. I just think it's like so kind and sweet. The other night I was sitting down to watch, I'm going to tell you, I wasn't going to say: jeopardy. My husband and I are we're watching jeopardy. I know, I'm sitting with my embroidery watching jeopardy. I am... it's awesome. Okay. So anyway, sitting down to watch it, and I got a text from my friend that said warm cookies on your porch. I almost died of happiness. I was just like, oh my gosh, that is just like the sweetest thing. They were seriously, still warm. I got a cold glass of milk and that was amazing. It was so amazing. 
And I just want to say something. For me, I realized as I've gotten older, that I don't need a million friends. I don't need to have a big group of friends or even a group of friends. I like to have a few good friends and I just that's works for me. I love pouring into friendships and I don't need to be super we're good friends with everyone. Now I do like to believe that I am friends with everyone. I want to be kind to everyone. And you know, I believe that everybody likes me, but, I don't need to have 20 friends in a friend group. 
And I'm not saying that that's wrong. If you do have that, or if you like that, you don't even have to have a friend group, even just have a friend. And if you don't have a friend, you can work on it. After listening to this podcast episode, I'm giving you lots of ideas. 
All right. The next idea is to not just give help when they need it, but to ask for help! This is very under rated way of connecting with people.
And I think that we have a hard time asking for help. We don't like feeling like a burden or feeling needy. I got to tell you that nothing makes me happier than when my friends ask me for help. When I have a friend that asks me for a ride to the airport or to watch their kids or for something, I mean, of course someone could go overboard with this, but my friends are not the type to be asking.
And so when they do it makes me so happy. Cause I'm like, oh, this means we're really friends that you would turn to me and ask me for help. And then I feel more comfortable asking them for help. And so it goes the cycle of being able to have someone that's your person or your people that you can tell turn to when you are having a hard time.
And that leads me to my next point of. Allowing yourself to be open and to be vulnerable. And this can be challenging, but once you start, it does get easier to open up about something that's hard or that's going on in your life. 
For me sometimes it's hard, but it's helpful for me to just send a text that's like, man, I'm really in a funk right now. And I just am not feeling myself. It's stinks so bad. It's so nice to reach out. And I'm not saying that so then they'll bring me a treat. No, I'm really not. And that's not really like how it goes. What I'm hoping for is a text back. That just is like, oh my gosh, that stinks so bad. I totally know what you mean. I love you or whatever. Just a little bit of acknowledgement and a connection. It's a point of connection because it's really hard to make friends when our walls are all up and we're all trying to like impress each other or something. I am way past the point of trying to impress anyone.
I don't need you to be impressed with my clothes or house or anything, which those of you who know me are laughing because you know that I don't care about my clothes or my house or anything. I mean, I care about it, but if I care about it it's for me, because I want to enjoy my space, but like, I am not someone who, you know, has a perfectly clean house all the time. And I also don't apologize for it. If somebody comes over, they get to see it in all of its glory. So if you're my friend and you ever come over, I'm not going to apologize that I've got humans living in my house. 
Last but not least is to allow your friends to be human. And this is just a reminder that, you know, sometimes our friends get busy, they may not stay in as close of contact. Maybe there are periods or seasons where you spend a lot of time together or you're texting or calling a lot, or you're going on walks regularly or something like that. And then, you know, it kind of changes for awhile and maybe they've got a lot going on with work or kids or family. And it doesn't mean that they don't like you. This happens to me plenty. There might be something that's going on personally or with my family or something. And I just am not as in-tune with my friends and that's okay. And if I don't hear from a friend for awhile, I don't make it mean that they don't like me and that we're not friends anymore, and geez, what happened? I just allow them to be human. I allow them to also be friends with other people and not invite me to everything that they do. Sometimes we get a little insecure, even as adults and we get sensitive. 
And I'm not saying that it's wrong to feel bummed out or disappointed if you're not invited. But I think that sometimes we keep some of these weird roles we had as kids about, well, if you're friends with me and you're friends with her, then you should invite us both. You know, instead of like, oh, you can be friends with me, you can be friends with her. You can invite her. Sometimes you invite me sometimes if you don't invite me, it doesn't mean you don't like me.
Like we can just allow people to be human and to believe the best about them to see the best in them. And to believe that they see the best in us. And I really do believe that checking our mindset is going to change everything. 
So I hope that this podcast has been helpful. Just giving some kind of number one, embarrassing stories about me, which I'm always good at sharing. Number two, just a way to kind of get in tune with our mindset and see how it might help us to improve to make friendships to maintain them and to enjoy them. This is not a check mark list. Like, okay. I made friends now. I'm good. No, we want friendships because it's such an enriching experience. It's a way for us to open up.
To love others to serve others and to connect. And so I know that for me, I want to have friendships that I take with me throughout my life, and I want to be able to make new friendships and also be able to let friendships go when our friendship is complete and that way, and I'm sure I could do a whole podcast about allowing relationships to be complete and allowing them to be done and that it doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. And I mean, I'm not saying you never do anything wrong. No, I'm just saying that we don't have to believe that, you know, something has gone terribly wrong because not every friendship is meant to last forever and that's okay.
I know that it can be really sad and hard, but I always want friendships to be a part of my life. And so these are things that I will be working on and it's not that I will always have this at the top of my priority list. And that I'll always be able to give it a ton of attention. No, there've been times in my life when I've been really overwhelmed with my mental health or with small babies or different things.
And it can be hard to pour into my friendships as much as I want to. I am not someone that I would say like, oh, Look at her. She is like the best friend ever. Sometimes it's just, when you're seeing your neighbor, when you're dropping your kids off, you're having a chat and you get to chat about something important or, you know, you're texting about, you know, soccer signups, and then you also happen to share something else that's going on.
And it doesn't have to be, you know, some formal thing or a really time-intensive, energy intensive experience. It can be those small moments that really add up when we are able to be vulnerable and open to ask for help and receive help and to find love wherever we go. 
So I hope that this has been helpful. I count help you all as friends. I wish we could all hang out together, I have dreams that one day in the future, once some things are back to normal, I don't want to say back to normal cause I know it's going to be a new normal, but when it'd be so fun to all get together and create, and I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. Okay. But I would love to meet you all in person and hang out. It would be the best. 
 I hope that you're having a great day. If you haven't checked out the Daily Mindful Lettering book yet, you've got to do it. It's the best. And that is our wrap-up for the month of love.
Next month, we will have a different topic, and I can't wait to talk to you again next week.
Links:
Daily Mindful Lettering Book
016: What Other People Think
Marco Polo
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035: Making Friends as an Adult

Podcast

046: Removing the Pressure

045: Creative Constraint
