The Importance of Friendship

(air fizzing) (button clicking) (bright resonant music) Headspace Studio. (warm music) (rain pattering) Hi, Sam here. Happy Friday and welcome to Radio Headspace. As you may know, I have a 14-year-old stepdaughter who is legitimately addicted to her phone. She's obsessed with keeping chat streaks going, and she even has anxiety about letting too much time lapse, like we're talking more than two minutes before she responds. In adolescence, we're trying to see if we can make it on our own, breaking away from our family of origin, nurturing friendships, and making connections. All this got me thinking about the power and importance of friendship. We all know that friendships bring fun, support, and deep meaning to our lives, but it's not always easy to make new friends or maintain old friendships. In a moment, I'll give you some tips on how to nurture friendships, but first let's see what science has to say about friendship and its effect on our health and wellbeing. Researchers at the University of Virginia looked at how friendship influences the way we approach challenges to daily life. In a study, they asked one group of students who were walking alone, and a second group who were with another person, to wear a heavy backpack and climb a hill. Before they climbed, the researchers asked them to gauge how steep the hill was and how hard they thought it would be to climb it. The students who were alone thought it would be harder to climb, and gave it higher levels of steepness than the participants who had a friend with them. The researchers found that the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared. Further studies showed that the mere presence of a friend in the room can lower our levels of stress in difficult situations, like medical procedures and high stakes moments. When reflecting on the quality of our friendships, we may recognize some friends who have been in our lives for so long that we'd never let that friendship go, and then we may have friends that we meet up with every couple of years. When we get clear on what we're looking for in a friendship, we feel more secure and confident in our choice to continue or discontinue a friendship. And there can be so much ambiguity when forming new friendships. For instance, how do we know when a work colleague relationship has crossed over into a friendship? Dr. Anna Akbari, a sociologist and speaker on friendship, offers these four questions to reflect upon when discerning the weaker from the stronger ties in your life. Whom do I learn from? Who challenges me? Whom can I confide in? And with whom do I find joy? We don't have to hastily discard friendships that don't meet all these criteria, but we can just begin to spend more time with the people in our lives who really inspire us, those whom we trust. So take a moment and...