 Now last month was all about happiness and in our two-part toolbox episode we looked at the science behind happiness. We talked about how happiness is not synonymous with pleasure or comfort which a lot of us have that misconception but it rather comes down to living a meaningful life. We also discussed the two major contributors to that meaningful and happy life purpose and relationships. Now those two toolbox episodes are jam-packed with information about the cutting-edge research in the field of happiness. If you haven't already checked them out double back and check out those episodes from last month. Our interview last month was with none other than Dr. Russ Harris author of The Happiness Trap. Now he's one of the leading authorities in the field of acceptance and commitment therapy on which so much of our coaching programs are based. So double back and check that episode out as well. The Happiness Trap is real and we want to help you overcome a lot of those myths. And certainly one of the concepts that he talked about with values is going to play a role in what we talked about today because those values are very important and of course when it comes to relationships those values if they're going to be similar can really strengthen and help a relationship be a very positive. And we also going to talk about what happens when we have some negative values being passed in our relationships. Now we wrapped the month of January with the Q&A episode of which Kristoff Schnedlitz CEO of High Moment joined us to answer your questions. It's a great app if you haven't checked it out already all around the science of happiness. Now this month we're excited to kick off our entire month dedicated to relationships. As we heard last month that is a major contributor to our personal happiness and well-being. This month we're going to be tackling just that. What do we mean by relationships? How do we build them? What's the science behind them? And of course we have Valentine's Day coming up where relationships are on the forefront of everyone's mind. But don't worry this toolbox episode is not about the best chocolates or flower shops. We're going to talk about what it means to be in a relationship with someone. And we want to help you build better relationships. In fact that is our why here at The Art of Charm. I know myself personally seeing my dad struggle in marriage, ultimately getting divorced. The importance of a relationship on one's health, happiness, and even wealth is honestly proven by science, proven by all of our life stories. So we want to take a look at how we can start building better relationships. Now we've talked about concrete techniques to build and maintain relationships in previous episodes. We're going to link those in the show notes below. We want to talk in this toolbox the deepest dive we can take on relationships, especially social networks. I know a lot of us think of social networks and we may not realize the impact that friends of friends and friends of friends are having. So before skipping ahead too much let's take a look at some of the science and challenges that we run into when it comes to relationships. Now if you listen to part two of our toolbox episode on happiness, you know that Harvard study, the famous Harvard happiness study that says your social network has a huge influence on your level of happiness. And a lot of us are sitting in a situation right now where maybe we have some people in our lives that aren't supporting us, that aren't helping us reach happiness. And I know we talk a lot about the impact that the people in our lives have on our emotional state, the way we view the world and ultimately our ability to handle and build resilience. Yeah. And if you're having a lot of issues, I mean the first place to look is who are you surrounded by? Are they adding to your life or are they taking away? It's as simple as that. And I think a lot of us fall into a trap of comfort where hey, my parents decided to buy a house next door to Jim. So now Jim's comfortably my friend. And we don't take the time to think about the influences, both positive and negative, that can be coming from that relationship with Jim. Well, if you've been following along the show, you and I talk a lot about how a lot of these things, if they're subconscious, we don't have any choice on the matter. Your friendships, your relationships, much in the same way as you just subscribed, someone moves next door, okay, you guys started hanging out now your friends, you got a new job or a coworker moves into the cubicle next to you. And now you guys are friends just because of proximity. And here's the thing about it. Just because they're next to you doesn't make them a good person to have in your life. And just because someone seems to have a missing component that you feel that if you can bring them into your life, that missing component will allow you to be happy or help your business go or be the missing piece to your happiness. You have to understand, you're not just bringing in that person. You're bringing in their culture, their values, their baggage, the work they did or haven't done on themselves. And a lot of times, if they haven't certainly done any of that work, they're bringing it in and they're going to dump it off on your doorstep and they're going to ask you to deal with it. You know why they're going to ask you to deal with it because they don't want to deal with it because if they wanted to deal with it, they would have already taken care of it a long time ago. Now, everyone listening can relate to that. I get it. We're influenced by the people around us. But here's the fascinating part. Did you know that through your network, you can be influenced by people that you don't even know exist? So the influence goes far beyond just the people you know, and even friends of friends, we're going to talk a little bit later about the influence of friends of friends of friends, complete strangers to us and how they influence our mental health, happiness, well-being. Now, obviously, we got to start with first degree connections. And that's what we're talking about here, the friends we already have in our lives, the relationships we already have. Now, relationship as we know is formed by two people. Fairly obvious. The first degree connection is your social network. It's the people that you spend time with your best buddy, your coworker, your significant other. These are the people that directly influence you and science shows that they have a huge impact on your life. Yes, they do. Now, we got a great listener question. We didn't want to wait until the end of the month to answer this because it really sets up exactly what we're trying to talk about here. And this question is in from Jennifer. She wrote an email saying, Hello, AJ and Johnny, I just listened to your show on happiness and it was pretty eye-opening for me. I think I'm doing very well when it comes to living my purpose. I been a nurse for the past 15 years and love it. It's a tough job, but it does add a lot of meaning to my life. I could totally relate to what you're saying. But when I heard you talk about how important relationships are, I'm a total failure. It's not that I don't have people in my life, but my friendships seem to be all over the place. Some are great. Some have a lot of negativity to them, but it seems like I spend more time with the second group just because they have more time to hang out when I'm off work. With what I know now, that's probably not a good choice. Where do I even start if I want to get this part of my life improved? Thank you. Now, as we know, Johnny, we were talking about this before we were prepping for the show. We've gone through these phases where we have people in our life that we've now identified as having a negative influence on us. We have to start being judicious with our time and our resources and understanding the influence that these negative people in your life are having on you, giving them your time just because there's an overlap in availability is probably not the best strategy. Well, why are they always available? It is pretty interesting that the people who tend to be the most negative of influences also happen to have a lot of free time. So obviously, because they have a negative lens, right? They have it's hard for them to get involved or give anything their attention because they've already view it in a negative manner. They're not going to have other people really to hang out with because of their negative attitude. Right. And hey, if you want a good time person to go have a drink any time of the day, that person is probably sitting there by his phone or her phone ready to take your call. Absolutely. And here's the thing when we start to put ourselves out there and this this is a dip that happens to all of us. We start to encounter these people more readily because we're making ourselves available and just like Jennifer, our schedules line up. What do you know? So when we're trying to put ourselves out there and trying to foster new relationships, we have to be aware of what we talk about as value vampires, these people that are having a negative influence on our life. And they're everywhere. You know, it's just not like, oh, there's a few over here, there's a few over here. You would be very surprised. I mean, they and the other thing is everyone is in different parts of their lives. They have their own movie to make, so to speak, right? They have their own goals, their own life that they're trying to build for themselves. And a lot of time, even if they are a high value person with a lot of things going on and a lot and would be very good for you in their pursuit is just a line with what you have going on. And so because of that, there's a naked it could be it could have a negative outcome. So when we talk about high value, let's break that down a little bit. I know we've done numerous episodes on it, but it is a term that we banter about the audience listening may not have heard it. So this idea of someone who's high value, what are they bringing to the table, Johnny? Well, for when we define value, it's always going to be the attention, approval and acceptance that you are looking for yourself because that is what allows you to feel good or the attention, approval and acceptance that you're able to give to others. Now, a high value person wants to give value because they know that getting value back through that method is it's worthwhile. It's from a good place and it does a lot of good for your self esteem, knowing that the value you're getting is from the value that you've given out. Now, for a lot of people and they learn to get value through all sorts of different ways, even from a child, the first thing that you've learned to do to get attention, approval and acceptance for yourself is cry. Yeah. And some of us are still crying. Some of us are still crying. And if you continue to do that, that value, it's a low value way of getting attention, approval and acceptance for yourself. That though it may feel good in a moment, it's fleeting and it doesn't last very long. Now, when we talk about approval, appreciation, it's actually being able to celebrate the wins of those around you. How many people right now in your life, if something good happens to you, are ready to give you that high five pat on the back, cheer you on, tell you, wow, you are amazing. This is fantastic news. And because value, getting it for yourself has, there can be an immediate gratification. It's the easiest thing to think about, right? Like all of us would love to go and just have the cheeseburger. All of us would love to just go to the bar and start drinking and hanging out with everybody because there's an immediate gratification to that. However, if we live our lives in that manner, it's going to be empty. It's going to be shallow. And eventually we're not going to feel very good about ourselves because there's absolutely no bigger purpose. There's no meaning behind it. Much like the junk food and the in the booze and value is in the same way. How does value give you that immediate gratification? When you get attention, approval and acceptance, those dopamine receptors get pushed and you get a little bit of a flood and then all of a sudden you find yourself chasing that high. And that is a low value place to be when we're chasing it from others. So what we're arguing is a high value individual is giving attention to others. So they're not self-centered. They're not egotistical. High value individual is also giving people appreciation, gratitude, expressing positive emotions and sharing in those wins with you. And lastly, when we talk about acceptance, it's inviting you to things. It's inviting you into their life, inviting you over to dinner, inviting you out. Now, how many people listening right now are always on their phone having to be the one to chase people down to invite them out to ask them to do something? These are the characteristics that we're talking about when we mean high value. Now, you can imagine someone as high value as being cooperative, someone who's looking to lift other people up and not doing it in a transactional way, looking for something in return. And if we look at it for the large picture, it's about fellow man. It's about the other people. There's a there's meaning and purpose there. You're setting yourself aside to help those around you, which gives that is the purpose. That is the meaning. And if you go through life in that manner, that the value that you're going to be getting back is it's it's meaningful. It's so full and it's given to you because of the work that you've done for others. Now, that's not to say it's easy. No, it's something we're all striving for. And Johnny and I are struggling with it at times as well. It's easy to fall into the low value behaviors of chasing that attention, approval and acceptance. And it's a it's about being a little bit better than the day before. You know, it's so funny what people view as high value and low value. And I've been accused before of how I've handled certain things as being a low value person. Well, if you're viewing that behavior through a low value lens, well, of course, it may seem to you as low value because it's not how you would have handled it. So when we talk about our first degree connections here, Dr. David McClellan of Harvard University did extensive research around this. Now, particularly among top performers, he found what's called a reference group in our lives. Those are the people that most strongly influence how we think and act, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. So when we talk about these first degree connections, we're talking about our reference group here, the people who influence our lives the most. Do you mean like Instagram influencers? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah, they're in our reference digitally these days. Right. So just to show you how much of an effect mutual friendships have on you, one study that we found showed that we are 15% more likely to be happy when a direct connection is happy. So when we surround ourselves with positive, that positivity is infectious. So how much influence do you think they have over almost everything we do? Your health, your inclination to work out, drink, smoke, bad habits, good habits, everything we talked about in December. This reference group is impacting. Yes. So choosing your friends wisely is important. Understanding the power of relationships. We want to make sure that we're letting the right people into our lives. And, you know, we had just done a month on habits and routines. I mean, these people are directly affecting your ability to put those habits and routines together. Why? Well, if if those routines and habits that you're looking to build that you feel are going to help your life, don't mean anything to them. Well, then it's going to influence your discipline and putting those things together. Not to mention, as Duhigg said, these are also providing cues for us to trigger habits. If someone in your friend group is judging you negatively, that might cue a habit to grab another drink, to have a shot. So you don't think about it, so you don't deal with that. So the people in our lives are definitely influencing us, but it actually goes a step further than that, which I'm excited to share a little bit later in the show. It does matter on the strength of the connection here. What we're talking about is is a match. So if George thinks you're his best friend and you think George is his best friend and you think George is your best friend, that's a strong connection. Now, if you think George is your best friend, but George thinks Mark is your best friend, that's not a strong of a connection. There's going to be influenced, but not to that degree. If you think George is your best friend and George doesn't even know you, then that's not a connection at all. And how amazing is that? So this means that you need to be able to either vocalize or show through behaviors and actions of how that other person means to you and why that connection is important or it's not there. Right. And these are things that we're maintaining and nurturing. This is now check one box and now I could worry about the next guy. And if you feel that you've been wrong so many times that you've shut yourself off, so it's not important for you to be vulnerable anymore, then no one's going to know where they sit with you as as well as if you're not expressive in any sort of manner. How are the other people supposed to feel good in their relationship? And you don't think they're going to find that comfort somewhere else. It's a very easy thing to do. So Jennifer, let's do a little exercise here. You've started to identify that there are some negative influences in your life. That's a great first step. Here's a challenge for you. Make a list of all the people in your own reference group. Listeners included. Now, who are the people that you spend the most time with or have a very strong connection with? This is who we're writing down. Now, it doesn't exactly have to be five. I know we say it on the show a lot. You are the sum of your five closest friends, but we want to get as close as we can to that number. It's a good reference point to work from now. Honestly, ask yourself, what kind of influence are these people having on me? And sit with that for a minute. Some of us, as I said earlier, we often just run to comfort. We're afraid of being alone. We know the difficulty there is in forming new relationships. So we know our reference group has some negativity in it, but we are really afraid to deal with that negativity and make a choice to stop spending time with those people. And to avoid that and to be uncomfortable to to to snip those relationships, you're going to justify it in a manner that will allow you to continue on. You'll say that, oh, well, you know, there are not all that great of people or a good influence. But I don't allow that to affect me. And there is a reason why in growing up, your parents were on your case about the friends that you brought over to the house. Yeah. And of course, any listen, I was one of those kids who always seemed to hang around with the burners and the worst kids in school. And there were several reasons. One, if I figured if I befriended all the largest kids that no one would mess with me, OK, pretty solid strategy, good reference group to have. And the number two. So I had been playing music from a very early age. And because of that, I was into a lot of guitar driven music, even at early teens, 13, 14 years old. And so who were the other kids at school who were remotely interested in that stuff? Yeah, the burners. The burners. And so I had friends of those kids in hopes to put a band together. And I remember there was a guy. His name was playing. He was a little bit older than I was. And we had wet skateboarding. And it was the first time that my dad was going to meet Blaine and and you have to remember audience. This is in the 80s. I just keep that in mind. So I was like, Blaine, this is my dad and my dad. Look, hey, how are you doing? And Blaine goes, yeah, you got a cigarette. And I thought it was, of course, hilarious. Right. Look at this guy. And I'm confident. And I grew up in a smoking household. So my dad was like, oh, yeah, I don't have one for you. And I just remember him looking at me like this. This is your crew. OK, this is who you bring it home. Yeah. And he was that skateboard. Yeah. And I got to say, he didn't say he didn't come out and directly say anything about it. However, he did give me the look is like, oh, so your friends are smoking, huh? Yeah. I was like, yeah. You know, that would probably be so much more extreme in today's smoking climate. But back then it was well, I think your friends would be joling in this climate. They wouldn't be smoking. Now, this list, this challenge we gave you, this is not about, oh, did Bob insult me last week? This is not one off behavior. We're looking at patterns and the sinking feeling of negativity when we're around this person. We're not writing people off for one mistake or one bad day. And I think a lot of people get all wound up in that, like, oh, they're wrong. We now just got to cut this person out. Well, to go along with that, if if you remember back when we did the value episodes, we talked about the 80-20 rule and using it there. Right. People are not going to be on their A game all the time and you have to leave room and know what their strengths are and weaknesses are because we all have them. Now, hopefully this reference group list is going to start to help you do what we call a friend audit. And this is an activity that all of our boot camp participants go under. And the idea is to identify these people who empower you and then actively choose to spend more time with them so that you can more readily reach your goals. Now, we get this question a lot, Johnny. What do we do when we've identified someone in our reference group that's just toxic, that is negative, that we really need to remove? And they may even be a family member. We get it all the time. And it's a very tough place to be in because here you are. You've brought it to your attention to a conscious level that there are now people close to you who are not so good in your life. So you have already put in the work of of doing the audit and that changes are going to be needed because now they've been identified. We're going to be talking about this in detail in March because this is one of honestly your most traffic blog articles, Johnny, about dealing with people who are toxic, these value vampires. So don't want to jump too far ahead. So we've talked about one-on-one connections, that first degree connection. But guess what? Everyone in your network also has first degree connections, some of which you may not know and have not met. Well, AJ, what does that have to do with me? Well, the science says that friends of friends also influence our mental health and well being. How is that possible? It's it is pretty shocking. I remember when Michael was showing us his research, it was like, well, wait a second here, because we all know the impact that the people around us have. We can feel it. We've been embarrassed by it. We felt the shame that's tied to it. We've been belittled by negative people. We get that. But we don't often think about the influence that friends of friends have on our lives, especially those that we may not know or have interacted with. Now, you may not have chosen them to be in your social network, but they're in it. And sometimes you might bump into them because obviously your friends will bring them along to your events. Now, they influence us directly and indirectly through our friends. So remember how we said you are 15 percent more likely to be happy when your friend is happy? Well, science also says that when the friend that someone you might know is happy, it increases your likeliness of being happy by 10 percent. It's a good number. That's a pretty strong impact. Yeah. When we think about the network effect here, the people who are friends of their friends influence us often subconsciously in ways we don't even know. Well, and for those who might not think that 10 percent, 15 percent is all that big of a deal. We have to also remember that suffering and the grind and the in and out of daily life is difficult. And as we discussed last month in the happiness month, it's happiness is fleeting. We're looking to get it in a more consistent from day to day, from the choices that we make. And here you are being told that a fleeting thing such as happiness and overwhelming good feeling about everything you have going on is now contingent or can be shaken either way by some groups, some people that you don't even know. And it works both ways. We're talking about happiness. It also works in the negative. It works for depression. It works for anxiety. It works for smoking, drinking, drugs, all these vices. If your friend's friend picks up smoking and now you're encountering someone who's a friend of a friend who smokes, you're going to start to look at smoking differently than your black and white smokers are unhealthy. Get away from me. It starts to humanize it and you look at it differently subconsciously. So we're not just talking about influencing our happiness here. We're talking about a range of things that friends of friends influence behaviors, attitudes, worldview, outlook. Absolutely, which is why one of the biggest breakthroughs that happens on the bootcamp is being immersed and surrounded by like-minded individuals. And in just a week, you can tap into potential that maybe your friends couldn't even bring out of you. Maybe you didn't even know it was possible. Well, let's visit that for a second because it is a very important component to what we do in the experience that is AOC and in our programs, because we want people to be able to see what their true powers, a true capability actually are. And if you're not, if you do not have a social circle that cultivates that and fosters the right things and maybe it's negative. There's some toxic people they can't see or they're not interested in development. Well, then how are you supposed to break those chains to find out for yourself? And what always happens is at AOC, when you're surrounded in that environment, that culture is celebrated and fostered. And now all of a sudden you're going out on a you're going out and doing some of the exercises and you're doing things that maybe in the past, you felt extremely difficult, judged, criticized for or even better. You are doing things that you had thought previously that were outside of your reality. Why was it out of your reality? Because none of my friends walk up to strangers and strike up conversations. Yeah. None of my friends walk over and compliment someone. None of my friends walk over and high five someone. And it goes from socially to business to entrepreneurship, all of these things because everything that you want in life has to be in your reality in order to achieve it. To achieve it. So. And that is first and foremost. And not only it's you have to believe that it's within your reality, the people around you need to believe that it's within your reality and their reality because they need to be cheering you on. They are there if they're high value to help you achieve those things. Let's let's take a trip down memory lane. Twelve years ago when we dropped everything to start the art of charm and start doing in person residential boot camps in New York City. How many people in your life were like, you're out of your mind. You can't do that. What is wrong with you? I will tell you because they tried to have an intervention with me. My friends in North Carolina before I moved to New York to start this company with you. Those people thought I had finally lost my mind and tried to put an intervention together to sit me down and to get me to see things clearly because I have officially went off the went off the farm. And I remember laughing so hard about this because previously and my getting involved in self development, they had looked at me very oddly, like, what are you doing? Why are you talking about these things? Why have you changed these behaviors? Why are you now getting to sleep at a regular time? Why are you waking? Why are you going to the gym? Why have you changed all these things? Well, it was for my own health, my own happiness to to to live by what I found science to say, here's the proper way to maximize who you are and everything that you want in life. Well, that was an easy sell. So I'm going to start doing those things. And of course, everyone starts freaking out. Why? Because now they see that if they want to make any changes, they're going to have to do the things that I'm doing. And that was very uncomfortable. And it was an easier deal to attack me and to think I was crazy than to do anything for themselves. Yeah, I mean, coming from a background where no one in my family, no one in my reference group was making money online, let alone teaching social skills or starting their own venture even. Yeah, I was faced with a lot of naysayers, doubters. And the one thing that we did was we shared a common vision. Our reference group, 12 years ago, shared a common vision of what was possible and we're able to live it today because of that. So that's the power of believing what's possible when you surround yourself with other people who share those beliefs. That empowers you. Well, to go along with that, the guy that convinced my friends to stop it with the intervention and the whole Johnny's crazy business. He was the boss who owned the club that I worked at. And he sat those guys down and said, listen, I've never seen Johnny so happy ever and looking forward to so much of life and being productive and doing so many interesting things and seeing the possibility and firing up about that. Leave him alone. And, you know, and for me, I remember and they did a number on me because I remember sitting in my room going, am I going crazy? Why is that? Because community creates beliefs. So if everyone's telling you the same thing, you have to figure this out. Like, because, yes, maybe I am doing things. Maybe they do see something that I don't. And I remember thinking I've never been this happy in my whole life. And the reason being is because I just busted open the doors of reality to allow all these new adventures to be to be a part of that. And even taking that view that it's an adventure, right? How many people did we surround ourselves with back home and how many of our family members were like adventure? That's the worst decision you can make in your life. Yeah, that's doomed to fail. There's no adventure there. What is wrong with you? Now, it gets even crazier still. Yeah, a friend of a friend of a friend influences your happiness. So you are now six percent more likely to be happy when friends of friends of friends are happy. It's a tongue twister, I know. But we're going 15 percent happier when our friends are happy. 10 percent happier when friends of friends are happy and six percent happier when friends of friends of friends are happy. Now, let's think about the compound effect of this. When you surround yourself with happy people, they tend to attract happy people. So now we're amplifying all of these thoughts, feelings and beliefs. And this culture works in many ways. We see it in all the tribes that are forming around us right now. And I love that. And think about think about everyone that you look up to and who inspire you, who you admire, who allow you to get excited about life and think about those people and the opportunity to be able to meet some of those people. And luckily, because of our job, we've had that opportunity. It's a wonderful thing. And imagine and think of yourself. How do I hang out with that guy? How do I be a part of that circle? Well, that person has done so much work on themselves, on their business, on their world view to allow things to be in their reality. Of reason they're at that point where you're looking up to them. They will not have that corrupted. Do you think a guy like Gary Vee or, you know, where we're talking about Kobe Bryant, these these athletes who need to be so extremely focused on what the task at hand. Yeah, you think they can have a friend of a friend of a friend act? No, that's not what that is. Like and because because these people who've done all this work, they're not going to allow that to affect them. They can't afford to allow it to affect them. And and because of how happy they are of building these lives, they're they're not going to allow Joe Schmo to affect that. And we're not saying surround yourself with yes, men and people who just certainly not and send you off a cliff and pat you on the back for doing so. We're talking about people who have a positive disposition, who know that happiness means greater meaning and purpose in one's life and fostering solid relationships and taking care of one another and being cooperative. These are all the signals that we're looking for when we're nurturing and cultivating our own network in our own relationships. So the obvious question is, then why are we not all just super happy? If our friends have this impact on us and all I got to do is surround myself with happy people and boom, problem solved. I'm happy. Well, all of this is transferable. Depression, vices, bad habits, negative emotions, complaining, height, weight, income, all of these things are influenced by our network. Yes, it's an invisible influence that a lot of us are not paying attention to. Well, if you're listening to the show, it's obvious that you that you enjoy self development and you probably listen to some other podcasts and probably have read a lot of books on this. We've all heard the saying that you can only rise as high as your five closest friends. That is no secret. And what I'm going to add to that, a lot of people when they hear that, they think of it as in business. They think of it as for monetary purposes. No, that is quality of life, which affects all of those things. And as we learned, we're most likely going to find our mate through our reference group, through our network. It may seem these days with digital apps that we have more options than ever, but most of us are still going to end up with people in our network. So we're attracting partners. We're attracting business. We're attracting wealth. We're attracting health, all of these things through our network. And I want to go back to that five closest friends thing really quickly. All right, let's let's go ahead and write those names down, right? Let's get your five people up there. Now, let's go outside and start thinking about the people we know, them hanging around. And you think if those people have some incredibly toxic or negative people in their life there, that's not going to. That's going to stop at them and not make its way over to you. Right, because now you got to. So your your buddy, Jim, is great. He's successful. He's working really hard on his life, but all of a sudden now he's having problems in his relationship, right? And his partner is driving him crazy and they're having it out and it doesn't look like that relationship is going to be so salvageable. And he's going through legal ramifications and all of this stuff. You don't think that he is going to color all of your interactions. And all of your views and now and what do you do about that, right? Do you do you kick Jim to the curb while he gets it figured out? No, we it's it's it's important to show the care and the effort there while Jim's going through that. But you can easily see how this is coming down the track. Yeah, and it's it's raising awareness. It's not saying cut everyone out of your life would be a hermit and write everyone off. It's just paying attention to the fact that these things are passed subconsciously to all of us and it's an invisible influence on our lives. So you've probably had an idea about the importance of your direct friends on your life, even before you listen to the show, as Johnny was saying, what we hope we could get across is that friends of friends matter and friends of friends of friends matter. So how come we can't just pick and choose what we want to pick up from our network? Can't we just be receptive to all the positive stuff and then just not lessen then just not listen to all the negative crap? Yes and no. Before we can look at this, though, we really want to get clear on what it is actually that gets transmitted here. Right. What we're talking about is what psychologists call a norm. It's a standard for how things ought to be. So we'll use an example here. Let's use exercise as an example. That's been shown to be heavily influenced by your network. You can imagine if you surround yourself with people who get up every single morning and work out, well, naturally, you're going to start to think, well, working out in the morning is probably a good way to get it done, a good way to get it handled. And if you're in great shape and say you like to stay fit and eat healthy, but one night you go to a party or friends hosting and you encounter that your friend has gained a little bit of weight since you last seen him. So your healthy friend has put on some weight. Maybe because of some depression or something else. You might think that's bad or good or whatever. You may not even have an opinion about it. That doesn't really matter. What matters is that in a small way, the norm is now changed in your group. The norm is people's weight has shifted from healthy, what's considered healthy to acceptable. And unconsciously, it's more normal to be chubby than you previously thought. So we're going to start to pick up this norm from the people that we surround ourselves with. And that secondary of connection also comes into play. So the friends of the friend at the party, they might also be a little less healthy. And maybe because they're the ones who influence your friend to gain a little bit of weight, have that extra in and out burger, stay out late, grab the pizza after the bar. Well, that norm you're encountering for the first time. So these norms are transmitted inside of our network. And we are influenced by all of them constantly and the norms shift. And a lot of us aren't even paying attention to some of the norms. You know, it's funny, I think about friends who've lived abroad and they come back with an accent. Oh, of course. Dialects the same. Well, you got your southern accent when you need it. You got your New Yorker side when you need it. And now I'm hearing from friends that I sound quite LA. We know language is picked up. Well, habits are picked up. World views are picked up. And in class, we talk about this and we will also view it as frame and the frame in which you're bringing in to your relationships. And the rule is the stronger frame dissolves the weaker one. So if you're very confident and you are very decisive and you have things going on and you're positive and happy, then that frame that what you're bringing in is very strong and people are going to look to you and you can imagine if that frame breaks down, you have a bit of depression, things happen. All of a sudden that frame starts and it can weaken. But here's the thing. A lot of times people only assume or look at it as a strong frame as a positive frame. A strong frame can also be an incredibly negative frame. And if you were the person who has a very strong frame, then you are in control of the norms in your group. Exactly. The norms emanate from the center. The center tends to be the leader. Yes. The alpha, the group, whatever you want to call it. And these norms get set by that person. So if this person who's gained a little weight has the strongest connections in the group, the norm of that group is going to shift. And we've all been there, right? Now maybe we're going to say a cheeseburger and go, hey, I can stop and have that. I don't need to stick with this diet. The norm has shifted. Now, people who are more periphery to your network who don't have so many connections or just weak ones, they're less likely to be affected by the spread. So connection matters. Strength of the connection is where the norms exist. And that's where they have their strongest impact. Now, let's take a totally different tack. Let's say you start a job at a new company and we've all know about company culture and the impact that it has. And let's say the culture at this new company is to gossip, to talk behind people's backs. And we've encountered these workers. Sometimes that infects the whole company, that culture of backstabbing, talking behind people's back instead of handling and dealing with the confrontation and fixing it. It's easier to just bitch and moan and complain about people. Yeah, and our one of our something we've dealt with in the past, the back channeler. Right. No. I'm going to have a meeting after the meeting. Check this out. You may go into this company saying, you know what? I am not a gossiper. I don't engage in that. I don't want to talk behind people's back. But you're around it. That's a norm at work. You're going to start looking at gossip differently in your friend group. Yes. You might let some of your friends get away with gossiping and doing some of these negative behaviors now because the norm at work has influenced you. Well, and to go and to go back with framed, you just got there. You're learning the culture. So of course, your frame of work is not going to be all that strong because you're trying to fit in. Exactly. So and then all of a sudden you realize that the project manager has a very strong frame and everyone's taking after his lead. And he likes to play the divide and conquer and only give people enough information to keep them busy, but keeps the full picture in his mind so that no one can, you know, supersede him. Like we have a problem and you're you can't help but be stuck in it. And now you're being you have to play reactive to the situation you're in. Now let's think about our relationships in terms of significant other spouse opposite sex. In those situations, this loving, romantic relationship, a lot of us don't realize the impact of norms, because in the beginning we have our rose-colored glasses on. Of course, we're trying to earn their appreciation, their attention, their acceptance, their approval. And in doing so, we'll look past some of these negative norms. We won't see some of these negative flaws in one another, but those norms are passed between partners. That's a strong connection. So what we're saying here is again, not to write everyone off, but these influences are real. They're based in science. And the more that we can work to grow our positive network, our influence within the network, we can start setting our own norms. We talk about leading from the seat that you're in. If we start to develop a stronger frame where we don't put up with gossip, we don't put up with negative talk. We want to handle the problems face to face. We want to deal with them in the moment instead of run from them. We're now leading from the seat that we're in. We can start changing the norm in that group. And you are responsible for your own area there. You can easily just fall in line and do what everyone else is doing because you're going to be heavily influenced and it would be beneficial. Well, it'll be easier for you just to adopt and assimilate to what's already going on to change the course. Is you're going to have to strengthen your frame and be committed and disciplined to your values. And now we get back to the Russ Harris interview of why defining your values is so important because that helps you strengthen your frame. And if you want any chance in that environment to change it, to fix it, to be a more positive one, that depends. That's going to be on your frame. You can't go in there and hope it's just going to be better today because it's not a strategy. So how do we use this knowledge to our advantage? Right? Why is all of this important? Well, first, just being aware of it, understanding the influence of our network, understanding how norms are passed is huge. When I made this realization, when I started to see as I grew as a person and started changing some of my habits, changing some of the things that I held dear, my values even. And I started to remove people from my life and surround myself with people who shared in those values, viewpoints. Everything shifted. Salads look better. Entrepreneurship looked more exciting. So when we surround ourselves with people who share values with us, share outlooks with us, it can have a compounding effect. And we now know that norms are the most powerful at the center of our network, weakest at the periphery. So if you want to design your network so that you're well connected to all of those that display the norms that matter to you, the norms that you appreciate, all we're saying is start to loosen some of our connections with the negative norms, the negative viewpoints, the negative influences. We're not saying cut everyone out. Become a hermit. I have to say this again and again because I feel like this is easily misinterpreted. Well, and because of it being misinterpreted, it sounds really scary. AJ, Johnny, I don't want to be alone. You're telling me I got to remove everything. I got to uproot all of my relationships. What? It's got to be something in the world that we're in with the technology that's creating this world where everything, it's getting more and more black and white. We're losing nuance. We're losing nuance in everything. But here you're going to have to have it. Biggest influence on all of this is time spent. If you are wise with your time and spend time with the people who reinforce these things and create the norms that you're looking for, like that work example, if you know that a couple of your coworkers love at lunchtime to just bash everyone, including your boss, then go have lunch with your positive coworkers who you have looser connections with. Start to shift your network so the norms represent who you want to be. Can I just want to add to this? And we'll probably dive into this more next month. But if you think that you could just roll along and talk shit with everybody at work and go on about your day, I got news for you because that little pow wow that you're having every day at lunch talking shit on everybody. At some point, the target is going to be you. Why? Because when you're able to talk shit on everybody, nothing's sacred. No one, there's. Everyone is a walking target, especially based on the whims of the person in the center of that norm. Exactly. Now what happens when we find these norms positive and negative in the same person? Let's say your coworker, Josh, he is very supportive, but he also likes to gossip. How do we handle this when someone who we have a close connection with is exhibiting negative norms? I think it's as important to talk about because everybody has pluses and minuses to that. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Right, no one's perfect. We're striving for greatness. We're striving to be better people, but there's going to be opportunities for us to falter. There's going to be times where these bad habits, bad ideals, bad values rear their ugly head. And here's the thing. What we're talking about here is understanding the influence that we have as well. We talked a lot about the influence of others. So let's start to take some agency in this and let's start to influence back and form some new norms. Imagine if Josh is in a supportive mood and he's helping you out with something, appreciate him for that support. Now, let's say after that, after lunch, the boss chewed Josh out and now Josh wants to give you an earful about all the coworkers that wronged him that led to the boss getting upset with him. Should we reward bad behavior, as my dad would say? You just nailed it, right? And how do we punish that behavior? How do we show that that behavior or not foster that? Right. Well, the first thing is we don't pay attention to it. We don't allow it to become the conversation. We don't allow it to become the train of thought and the thread. And here we go back to value, right? We don't give attention, approval and acceptance for that behavior. It's not reciprocated. Is what do they get now? Nada, right? You turn your back. Hey, I'm really busy. I gotta see you later. Or, hey, you can even flat out and say, listen, I'm not going to participate in this conversation. And you know what's so interesting about this? Especially when it's framed as that doesn't make me feel good. It talks about your emotional state and the impact that that behavior has on your emotions. We're picking something you can't argue with. I can't argue with your feelings, Johnny. I'm not feeling them. They're your feelings. So if you're like, it upsets me when you gossip about our boss, how is Josh going to react to that? And now you're setting the standard. You're setting the norm that this is not behavior that I want to engage in. And Josh might try it a few times, but if you have a strong frame and you're disciplined in that and he's not going to get anywhere, he either has to find someone else that will participate, reciprocate that behavior or has to change his. Right. Now we're leading from the seat that we're in. We're going to talk even more about toxic relationships next month. I don't want to, next month, I don't want to jump too far ahead. I'm excited about that too. And one thing I wanted to add here, also you have to give people an opportunity to be able to vent, to be able to talk about what's going on. And there is certainly a difference between gossiping, talking shit on somebody and just venting. Expressing frustration. Yeah. You know, it was, it was funny. And cause people really need that. And this was something that happened in the last couple of days that it has been interesting to me. So we had sent out a newsletter and that newsletter had asked the question, how are you? Hi, how are you? It was national, hi, how are you day? Or you check in with your connections to see how they are mentally. Yep. And it's a mental health exercise and we actually mailed it out to the entire list. Yeah. And it was, it was sent out by me and I started getting back emails from people who wrote us. And some were really great. Hey, I really did your show. And some went on to say that they weren't doing very well. And I was surprised of how many people were like, this was amazing to me. They, they stated, I know that this is a blast email and you probably won't read this. I read all these things, folks. Just tell it. Johnny's got a lot of time. And it would say, I know you're not going to read this but I just needed to vet. And I was, there was two parts of that. One part I was, it was nice that people wrote back and felt that they could vet to me. But I was also upset that they had to write to me and vet because they, I guess, obviously- Don't have a place. Perhaps they didn't feel that they had anywhere else to do that. And that was something that has been in my mind for the last few days. Now let's talk about venting, right? Venting is just explaining your frustration, talking about the negative emotions you're feeling. Gossip takes two to tango. It's when both of you are dumping on other people, cutting other people down, talking behind their backs, saying things that you wouldn't say to their face. We're talking about two different things here. Now, Amy's reading a great book that she was sharing with me and I thought this was really great advice. Maybe we'll even get the author on. The title of the book is, Wait, What? It teaches you to be more curious. And I thought one of the most impactful questions in this book was how can I help? So let's imagine Josh is in there steaming mad about the boss. He's ready to tell you all the negative things about the boss and his stupid car and his stupid house and everything else. Imagine disarming that with, hey, Josh, how can I help? We're not gossiping now. Nope. We're solving problems. We're moving on. How many of us have that within us to just say, hey, how can I help? It changes the frame instantly. I like it. It takes the attention off of the negative and it starts looking for solutions. And it's powerful too. Wow, how quickly it changes the whole discussion. Now there's one last thing we wanna wrap today with and this is something that I myself have struggled with especially in this last year. When life gets hard, whether it's work, family, life in general, we tend to go inward, close ourselves off, eat lunch alone, tell our friends we can't go out tonight, make reasons that we just wanna deal with it, shoulder this burden ourselves and just soldier on. What science shows is top performers do the exact opposite. When times are tough, that's when we need to be reaching out to our network for support. So much like your email, Johnny, hi, how are ya? Some of our fans just may have not been asked that question by the people that matter. And may be afraid much like myself this past year to ask for that help, to reach out to someone. So build your network in good times, share that positivity, look for other people who are sharing norms that you value. And in those rough times, reach out to your network for support. Don't shoulder it alone. You know, one of the things because of some of the venting that was set my way, of course, I wanted those people to know who wrote, you're probably not gonna read this, I wrote every one of those people back and I said, oh yeah, I'm reading it. And more than anything, I wanted to validate their venting and say that hey, you know, these things happen, I'm reading this, I feel for you, you know? And any hopes that they had found any sort of solace in being able to, hey, somebody heard me today. Now, I'm gonna toot our horn a little bit here. We've built a very supportive community of show fans, art of charm fans that you could join on Facebook. Meet people who share in your values, who share in your goals and who are trying to improve themselves. You can check it out at theartofcharm.com slash challenge. It's totally free. It's 10 days of social skills challenges and a network that's active on Facebook of people going through similar struggles, realizations and trying to find community that's supportive. And it's been incredible to watch this community grow, support one another and it's even fun. One of the challenges is submit a short video and it's amazing to see one video get submitted and the comments are like, wow, that was a great video. Now I'm finally gonna do mine. I'm finally gonna take the next step. And we're both on there. It's a really powerful way to connect with people through the dreaded social media Facebook that I know we bash. Now, we've covered a lot of ground. We talked about the science behind social networks from first degree connections that form your reference group to the influence of people that we don't even know. Friends of friends of friends and the impact that has on our happiness wellbeing and even our negative habits. We also took a look at norms and how they get transmitted through our network whether we agree with them or not. And the only way to control that transmission of norms is to consciously shape our network by strategically forging ties with some people in it and severing or weakening ties with those negative influences. And then we gave you a challenge this episode. Take some time. Think about the five people in your life that are influencing you. That is your reference group. Write them down. Think about their influence. And we can't wait to see you next week. Right on. See you later.