Mel Robbins: The TRUTH about friendship

if you have friends that make you wrong for changing your life for the better that's their issue it's not yours so this question from Alanna is one that we get a lot and it's all about friendships and when your life changes and your friendships change how to deal with it Alanna is working on herself she writes as I leave the old me behind I'm scared of the rejection I will face when I start making choices for the new me for example instead of going to happy hour to [ __ ] and moan about problems and having retail therapy session spending money I don't have I'll choose to go to the gym or go home to spend time on my project to fulfill my dreams how can I cope with losing friendships that the old me has you know what's interesting is that Alanna said in her opening sentence to me I'm scared of the rejection I will face when I start making choices for the new me you know I read something interesting and I want to tell you this before I forget it and then I'm gonna talk generally about friendship hoping that the way that I'm thinking about friendship will help you lose the guilt number one this kind this came from a book that my husband was reading about alcohol and it really what made me stop and think and that is this when you decide that you don't want to drink for whatever reason what's interesting about being somebody that doesn't drink at a party is that the only person that gives a what's in your glass is you nobody else typically cares but the thing that's interesting is that when somebody says to you would you like a drink and you say no I'm not drinking I'm not drinking for the month of January or no I'm sobered you know I don't feel like it what happens is the fact that you're turning down the alcohol it can actually magnify somebody else's struggle with their own decisions around it and so the first thing that I want to point out is if you have friends that make you wrong for changing your life for the better that's their issue it's not yours and so you got to untangle the fact that they have baggage about getting in shape or they have baggage about going to the ball that's theirs and it has nothing to do with the decisions that you're making so if your friends in general give you blowback for changing for the better what you need to say in the back of your mind is interesting they're obviously very conflicted about their choice to go to the bar and drink every night but that has nothing to do with me here's the other thing you can do if they start to make you wrong you can say well you want to go to plan a fit which was me instead it doesn't sound like you want to be at the bar so that said let me talk to you a little bit about friends friends are people that you care about and I have this test I call it the funeral test if somebody in your life were to die ask yourself would I go to their funeral if the answer is yes their friend of yours that's the test for whether or not in my opinion someone is a friend because it means you care about them now here's the other thing about friendship that I want you to understand you can care about somebody and not like hanging out with them and that's the situation that you're in right now that you have plenty of friends that you care about if they were to die you would go to their funeral if they needed you you would be there if you saw them you'd be happy to see them but you don't like to hang out with them the other thing that I want you to think about is that and that's okay that's like a normal part of friendship and the reason why that's a normal part of friendship is because one of the things that we know about life is that you're always going to be changing in the old pattern and the old chapter you had certain patterns right in the old chapter of your life you would go to the bar and drink you would go to the store and spend money you didn't have you're in a new chapter now and so you have different patterns when your life takes on different patterns whether it's you're no longer going to the bar you're going to the gym the pattern might even be that one of your kids is playing with a different soccer team or maybe you've moved to a different Street in your town when the patterns change so will your circle of friends it's a fact of life but that doesn't mean your old friends the ones that used to drink with aren't friends anymore it just means that you don't want to hang out with them you still care about them but you don't like doing what they do the patterns have changed for a long time I had a lot of drama around this until I realized that it's not personal it's not personal that you don't want to hang out with them patterns in your life have simply changed the final thing that I want to leave you with that they also help you is that remember I've given you the funeral test if you'd go to their funeral they're definitely a friend it means you care about them but you might not like hanging out with them that much and that's cool that's normal the other thing that I want you to think about when it comes to friendships is you can typically put friends into three buckets you got friends for a reason you got friends for a season and you have friends for a lifetime and one of the interesting things that I know about my own life is that as the patterns of my life change so do the friends that I hang out with more frequently and I also believe that as you change and the patterns in your life change people show up in your life for a reason the right people will show up when you start going to the gym the right people that you need for the pattern that you're in right now will start showing up when you're working on your project instead of shopping and it's exactly the kind of people that you need they're there for a reason and the friends of yours that are friends of yours for a lifetime I bet you don't hang out with them that much at all anyway but I bet they're the first person that you call when you need to talk to somebody about somebody important those are the friends for a lifetime and those folks that are still sitting at the bar and love to blow money that they don't have those were friends for a season so if you're wondering how to cope with feeling guilty about distancing yourself and if you're wondering how to stop feeling like a bad and unloyal friend understand this friendship it's really not about you it's about the category in which people fit in depending upon what pattern and what chapter of your life that you're in that's it like lose the drama about it the friends at the bar are friends for a season the people that are gonna show up when you start going to the gym are friends for a reason and the people that you need to call whenever you've got a problem they're friends for a lifetime and they're always going to be there [Music]

Channel: Mel Robbins

Views: 323,716

Rating: 4.951673 out of 5

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Id: gXAc6ln6xBs

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 19 2018