Tag: shasta nelson

Pillar 4 of Brain Health: Social Interaction

by standinlovejen, posted in Connection, Health & Wellness, Passion

 

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” – John Lennon

Welcome to Stand In Love!  If you are a first time connector, I am SO thrilled you joined us! 

Today, we are exploring Pillar 4 in our 6-part series on Brain Health.    To dive deep into this topic, I called up my girlfriend and friendship expert Shasta Nelson.  In case you missed the post featuring Shasta’s 3 core components of friendships, you can read it here.  So how does social connection promote brain health, and how can Shasta’s years of research on this subject benefit you? Read on!

Shasta’s personal mission: “Friendships can save the world!” 

Shasta Nelson, M.Div., is the Founder of GirlFriendCircles.com, a women’s friendship matching site in 65 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Her spirited and soulful voice for strong female relationships can be found in her books Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness and Friendships Don’t Just Happen! The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of GirlFriends.

Here’s our girlfriend chat!

Q:  Shasta,  in your book Frientimacy, you share the importance of positivity in the cultivation of friendships and social interactions,  What role does positivity play in connecting socially?
“Positive feelings are the foundation for every relationship we have!  At the end of any interaction, whether we are conscious of it, or not, we are determining how much we want to interact with that person again, and we’ll base it off of how we felt in their presence.  In fact, research shows us that for a relationship to stay healthy, our positivity-to-negativity ration has to be at least 5:1, meaning that we need five positive emotions for every negative one.  So while we can never do away with all negative qualities, life stressors, or relational disappointments; we can always add more positivity: more kindness, empathy, laughter, acts of service, affirmation, gratitude, pride, etc.”
Q:  According to your extensive research, what would you say is the biggest obstacle to social connection?  What would you say to someone who feels they just don’t have the energy or mood to connect socially? 
The most common self-reported obstacle is “lack of time.” I hear it repeatedly.  And unfortunately it’s a vicious cycle in that the less frequently we see our friends, the less meaningful it can often feel, and so then the less often we want to make the time to see them.  On the contrary, the more we spend time with each other— the more we feel like we know what’s going on in each other’s lives, the safer we feel sharing, the more we feel supported, and the more relaxed and positive we feel.
Consistent time and interaction is one of the three requirements of all relationships that I teach in my book Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness; and without interaction we can’t do the other two requirements: positivity and vulnerability. It is time together that provides us the chance to share our lives and feel supported.  So, while some friendships can survive less consistent interaction now if they have a history of time spent together, we simply cannot create new friendships without the gift of a lot of time together.
Q:  Let’s talk about the  “8 Vital Friends Role “ … a part of your book Frientimacy I really enjoyed!  What is the benefit of having friends who play different roles in our lives, and how does that help contribute to our ability to connect socially? 
Those 8 Vital Roles come from Tom Rath, author of Vital Friends, and I agree: they are so enlightening!  It reminds us that we all have different strengths and roles that we play for our friends which means that we can’t expect any one person to be all of those things.  One myth that we’ve had to slowly let go of is this belief that 1-2 relationships can do for us what our tribes and communities used to do for us.  When we have healthy expectations of who our friends are, and what primary role they can play in our lives, we then, for example, know whether to reach out to a Builder, Collaborator, Connector, or Energizer.
Q:  Everyone who has read your book and those who will want to read it (it’s SUCH a GREAT read) will want to know :   What are your favorite ways to connect?   And would you mind sharing a time when you connected with someone and it resulted in a deep, long-term friendship or relationship?  
My favorite ways to connect are through long conversations where both people are feeling seen— which means both people need to feel safe sharing (vulnerability) and feeling supported (positivity).  My temperament bonds through conversations, especially conversations about things like ideas, feelings, and psychology.  To feel close, I ultimately want to feel like I can say anything and that you will, too!  For some people, this would sound exhausting! ha!  But put me in my living room, with a glass of red wine, a couple of friends, and a long evening ahead of us— and I am one happy girl.
And in answer to your second question— the secret to that wasn’t having a long and meaningful conversation with someone as that can happen somewhat often, but what turned it into a long-term friendship was the fact that we repeated it, which helped give us the consistency needed to get the friendship off the ground.  For example, a couple of my more recent friendships come to mind and what helped them turn into friendships instead of a friendly interaction was that they were in some monthly group I was a part of which allowed us all to keep getting together and build some shared history.
Q:  If you were to leave us with a few lasting thoughts on why it is important for our brain health to connect socially, what would you share? 
The research is staggering on this but in a nutshell: feeling supported buffers our bodies from absorbing the impact of stress.  How we answer the question, “how loved and supported do I feel?” will tell us more about our future health than almost any other factor including our diet and exercise.  Our immune systems are stronger, we live longer, we recover from surgery and sickness faster, we feel more optimistic, and we report greater happiness when we feel connected to others.  The best thing we can do for brain and body health is make sure we develop supportive relationships.

Thank you Shasta for sharing your passion and expertise with the Stand In Love community! Let’s continue the conversation… please share in the comments any thoughts or feelings that arise when reading this interview!  Stand In Love is a welcome place for serving PEOPLE, inspiring IDEAS, and living your PURPOSE!  

Extra Credit Readers:  Check out this video on Ginger: The Oil of Courage!  Goes hand- in-hand for social connection!!!

Foundations of Friendship

by standinlovejen, posted in Connection, Female Entrepreneurship, Ideas, Passion, People, Purpose

Today, I had the honor of experiencing first hand the great work and services offered at the Veterans Transition Resource Center (VTRC), a nonprofit collaborative partnership between Life After Active Duty and Veterans Care Foundation, created to help fill the gap in Veteran Services in Las Vegas.

Our Mission ~ To be a beacon, for our Military, Veterans and their families around the world, to help navigate the challenging obstacles from military life back to civilian life.

At the invitation of a friend, I accepted an opportunity to hear insights from friendship expert, Shasta Nelson, author, speaker, and founder of Girlfriendcircles.com.  Shasta shared years of research on the subject of friendships and the impacts on our health, stating ” We are experiencing an epidemic of unacknowledged loneliness.  More than anything, people desire to feel loved and supported.   Research shows that disconnection is the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, even likened to the devastating effects suffered by those with addictions like alcohol.”  Point: loneliness, disconnection, and lack of a support network takes a toll on your mental and physical well-being.

This subject effects each and every one of us, not just veterans. Everyone needs friendships and support networks. What I appreciated most from her interactive talk with the group today, many of whom lost loved ones in active duty or are current care takers for loved ones, is that before we can learn how to be supported we must first understand what it means to be a friend.  Guys, this goes for you as well.

Three Components of Friendship

Friendship, she defined as:

Any relationship where two people feel satisfied, safe, and both people feel seen.

Shasta then drew a triangle on the white board in front of the group and shared the three most important components, requirements rather, for solid friendships to occur.

1. Positivity.

According to Shasta and her research, we should have a ratio of 5:1 for positive to negative interactions.    To be a good friend means sharing positively, impacting relationships in a healthy way.  This doesn’t mean we can’t share hurts and hangups in our lives with our friends, rather, it’s an opportunity for us to share where we are at to be truthful with our current situation and then offer something like, “I’m going through a rough time right now with work/ spouse/ (fill in the blank), but I’m so excited to be out meeting new people and building new friendships!”  Everyone likes to be around positive energy.

2. Consistency

We all know how hard it is to keep up with friends who live in different states, have different schedules, lifestyles, etc, but the key is connecting with regularity.  Even if it’s micro movements like calling each other at a set time each week or couple of weeks, or sending texts periodically, it’s keeping the contact consistent.   Shasta revealed that this is key for friendships, because consistency helps build trust between friends.  Helps instill the “safety” factor in the relationship.

She pointed out very keenly that this process of meeting people regularly happened as children when we were in school, and happens daily in the workplace.  There is a structure to the relationships, helping people bond more easily.  Things like deployments, church groups, university settings, and volunteerism place people in routines with consistent patterns, and naturally lead into the development of friendships.

3. Vulnerability

This is the component of friendship that Shasta says “makes us feel seen”.   Being vulnerable doesn’t necessarily mean we have to “vomit our vulnerability on new friends, rather, our level of vulnerability should increase incrementally with our consistency with that friend”.  As we see them more often and the friendship grows, we are able to increase our capacity to be vulnerable with them.

Vulnerability, according to Shasta, isn’t just sharing the hurting parts of our life, but can be translated as “initiating”.  When we ask someone to connect with us for a coffee, walk, or get together, we fear rejection and the very act of asking is being vulnerable.  It’s ok.  And it’s ok if we get a “no”.  That doesn’t mean we should feel rejected.

Self Assessment

At the conclusion of the session, Shasta challenged us to consider our friendships.  On a scale of 1-10, how supported do we feel in our friendships?  Are we putting too many expectations on the relationship and pushing that person away from us rather than drawing near?  What is missing in our friendships, and how can we improve ourselves to be better friends to someone else?

If positivity, consistency, and vulnerability are the three key ingredients to developing healthy friendships, what could I increase to improve the quality of my friendships?

My favorite takeaway was undoubtedly the following remark I believe hit home for every person in the audience.

Show up in beauty and light.

It’s not about finding the right person to be your friend, but fostering the right relationships you have.

Thank you Shasta Nelson for sharing your passion for friendships and connection with us today in the room.   Your heart emanates light and love.  I know I am not the only one who felt a connection with you.

To learn more about Shasta Nelson’s work, check out her published books on the subjects of friendship and connection.

What one word comes to your mind when you think of friendship?

Stand In Love,
Jennifer