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How to make more authentic friendships

Friendships

A week ago, sitting with a glass of wine in a little cobbled laneway in southern Spain with two women I’d only ever spent a couple of hours with in person, I began to cry.

I’d met Jo and Rachel four years previously when we’re all starting out in business, and joined a business mastermind to help us stay on track and survive the overwhelm and confusion that comes with starting a business.

Since then, Jo’s been travelling the world with her laptop, working on her successful business as productivity coach, and this year she decided to find a base and buy an apartment in Spain. Rachel decided to take her brilliant mindset and female empowerment coaching business over to visit Jo from the US. So on a whim, I flew over a week early for my holiday to join them too.

As we chatted over wine and tapas about our plans and fears and stuck points in our businesses, they asked me,

what do you think your next step is?

After a bit of silence where my mind freaked out, I said what I’d known for over a year but avoided for just as long –

“Running in-person events and meet-ups.

But,” I added,

“it scares the shit out of me.”

They kept asking questions until I started to cry.

And as I did, I pointed to my eyes and laughed (while also crying) “Look! You found it!!” They both cheered –

in just a few minutes of listening and asking, they’d found what had been keeping me stuck for the last year.

“See!”, I cry-laughed, “this is what the world needs more of, friendships where you can drop all the bullshit and be yourself and find your triggers and ridiculous thought patterns and laugh about them together!”

For 4 years now, I’ve had the pleasure of coaching hundreds of people from all over the world in how to tame their mind, we create space to be radically honest about where they’re at, and what they say is incredibly consistent.

We’re all craving deeper, more authentic connections with our mates, but we’re often caught in the spiral of pretending everything is great when it’s not,

thinking we’re the only one that’s negative and lost some days, people pleasing, and often, bitching.

We often feel lonely even when surrounded by friends. It’s more and more common for us to feel as though very few people (or none) actually SEE us anymore.

For a long time I’ve been saying that I want to help to facilitate more of these authentic connections so we can stop being fake to each other and hiding ourselves, it’s my main mission with Project Self.

But the truth is, for the same reason I think this is so important, I also feel scared to be seen, to put myself out there and risk people thinking

“Eh, Andrea was cooler before I met her!”

I was a socially awkward, inauthentic mess for most of my twenties, with various masks to protect myself. I now feel confident in most social situations these days thanks to mind-taming, but

I still harbour the deep seated fear that people will find me weird and annoying, and that everyone would rather be friends with everyone else except me.

From talking to hundreds of women about this, I know that I’m far from alone in these thoughts. Even the most popular, good looking, easy going people have revealed to me that they often feel like they’re an outsider that doesn’t fit in, or that they’re good at playing the part, so people think they’re super social and confident, but inside, they don’t know how to properly connect.

So, thanks to Rachel and Jo’s encouragement, I decided to dive in head first before I could chicken out, and at the end of my holiday in sunny Spain and Portugal, where I am now with Bloody Good Chap, I’m flying to London to visit family and run 4 meet-ups across the UK!

If you live near Leeds, Edinburgh, Bristol or London, come and join me and a bunch of like-minded legends in having real, honest conversations.

I’ll also teach you a few mind-taming tricks, so you’ll leave with some strategies for taming your self-doubt, increasing confidence, and a few bloody good new mates, too!

If you find the idea scary as all hell, all the more reason to join us – many others will be feeling the same, including me!

We’ve got you.

I’ll be using these events as a bit of a trial run which is why they’re super low priced, so if you’re in Australia or NZ or elsewhere in the world and you’re keen to join us, hang tight, the meet-ups will continue!

And meet-up or no meet-up – see if you can start experimenting with being honest with your mates about what you’re struggling with.

Goddamn vulnerability – I tried every other avenue I could to avoid it, until I finally gave in, gave it a shot, and discovered it gave me more power than anything ever has before.

Be real with people and let them be real with you – you’ll be surprised at just how wrong your mind can be about how things turn out.

Ps — To learn more about regulating your emotions like the kind of legend that doesn’t throw coke at me, head over here to check out Bloody Good Life, an unconventional mind-taming program for overthinkers.

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