[REPLAY] An Extensive Look at the Wheel of Connection

This whole podcast was only a dream a couple years ago, and here we are now with 100 episodes. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for sharing these conversations with your friends.

In this episode, I share some life updates and talk intensely about the Wheel of Connection (view this visual diagram!), which is a foundational concept to my work. I give an overview about each of the categories, and at the end of the episode, I talk about how to do a basic Wheel of Connection audit. 

You deserve Level 10 support, and hopefully this helps you to take more intentional action to develop the connections you need for this season of life. 

Want to go even deeper? Sign up for my newsletter to receive more information, including announcements about my forthcoming book and the Wheel of Connection audio guide.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Life updates regarding my health, two Taylor Swift concerts, and the major milestone of this episode
• The Wheel of Connection: why I made it, why it’s round, why it looks different for everyone
• How your own Wheel of Connection is constantly changing: people move between categories, and different categories grow and shrink depending on your needs
• Wheel of Connection components: family of origin; family of choice; formal community; acquaintance; and familiar/defined/present/historic friend
• How the Wheel of Connection and Roots Framework work together, and how to conduct a Wheel of Connection audit

Resources & Links:

Here are some visuals of the Wheel of Connection and my Roots framework. Want more? Sign up for my newsletter to receive more information, including announcements about my forthcoming book and the Wheel of Connection audio guide.

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Transcript

Podcast Intro/Outro: 1:26

All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship

Alex Alexander: 2:24

Hi, hello. How you doing? I love when we get to hang out just the two of us, which is exactly what we are doing today, just you, me and the wheel of connection before we dive into this episode, long overdue episode, by the way, talking about the wheel of connection, though, since it's Just the two of us hanging out here. I thought I would just check in with you a little bit. You know, I post over on Instagram, sometimes on TikTok, but mainly Instagram, kind of my more frequent updates, life updates and things, but sometimes with guests and things like that, I don't always share them here, so if you want a more timely update, follow along on social media. But there's a couple things I just wanted to mention, like three things to check in with you before we get started. The first one, I shared this on Instagram, but I haven't really shared it here, and I don't know, I guess I'm trying to be more honest, more vulnerable about it, but I have been having some health struggles this last year. Actually, I've been having health struggles for a long time, but it got really bad about a year ago, to the point where I was stuck in bed multiple days a week, like two, three days a week. It's kind of wild. If you go back and look at videos of me from this time last year, you may not be able to see it, or you might, and everyone was just kind and not bringing it up, but I was really struggling, like I would come on here to record an episode, and it was basically, I would have to muster up the energy to record that episode, and it would be like the only thing I could do all day, and then I'd have to go lay in bed. Now you might ask, like, why haven't you shared about this? Alex, few reasons. Number one, I have had some of these health struggles, like migraines and things, for basically my entire adult life, they've come and gone in intensity, but I don't know, about a year ago it was like the migraines and debilitating fatigue and insomnia and About 10 other symptoms, like it got kind of wild, and they just one symptom added onto another, so I didn't even know how bad it was getting. And quite frankly, I kind of got to this place where I was just so used to it. It wasn't until I started thinking about the fact that Michael basically just gets up every day and there's no concern about whether or not he's gonna be stuck in bed that I really started to think, like, hey, this isn't normal. You know, used to get like, one or two migraines a month, and now you're down for the count three to four days a week. So I didn't even know. And then I've basically spent the last year doing elimination diets, different testing, different things, like trying to get as much information as I can, because navigating the medical system is so much fun, and a lot of doctors just kind of brushed it off, to be honest with you. So it's not until recently that one, I think I've realized how serious this is, and two, that I've been talking about it. My friends like outside the podcast, outside of social media, they've known for a while, because, honestly, it's been kind of hard to hide, but I just haven't really talked about it here or on the internet. A big reason for that, I realized, is actually that I didn't want to bring the vibe down. You know, I try and show up here and be pretty positive and happy and encouraging, but I realized that, like, I deserve to exist as a full human on the internet. I don't need to show up happy all the time or positive. I. That's about it. I don't have some big update for you. I have basically, where I'm at right now is I'm trying to be more, I mean, honest with myself, but also honest with the people around me, which includes you, my primary care doctor has kind of a "I think it's this - here's a referral to a specialist." I also have thought that this is, it's the same diagnosis I thought I've had for about a year. Now. I'm going to see that specialist tomorrow. I know I haven't mentioned what it is that I think I have when I'm diagnosed, like when I know I'll talk about it if I have this. This is the other piece I've been on my own personal journey. I have been sitting with the fact that, like, this is a chronic illness. It's something I'll have to deal with for the rest of my life, which is not particularly exciting. The extreme version of this illness is pretty scary, to be quite honest with you. My symptoms are not that bad. I think I caught it on the earlier end and or I just don't have the most extreme version, it's still something I literally will have to modify for the rest of my life. So I'm just trying to open up about it a little bit more, like be honest about this piece of myself. I am feeling much better. I have figured out that, like, food is a huge piece of this. Now that I've cut a bunch of stuff out I am feeling better, but I still need to get to the core of this. So that's my health update for you. The other thing I want to update you on is that I mentioned this in my episode, actually, last week with James Richardson, but very randomly. Well, it's not random. It feels random because it's just like out of nowhere, this materialized, basically, my friend Kalin and I have wanted to go to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour for, gosh, I don't know, over a year now. We thought about flying to Europe. We've looked at all these things. Anyways, she had the opportunity to buy tickets, gosh, like three weeks ago now, and not only she get tickets to one concert, she got tickets to two concerts. We are now going to night one of New Orleans, for any of my Swifties out here who listen to the podcast, and night one of Indianapolis. The whole thing is wild. It's kind of one of those, like YOLO friend. Let's make some memories, like this whole thing is going to be so silly, and I cannot wait for it. Normally, I don't post that much about my friends on social media and whatnot, and that's mainly because my friends didn't sign up to be my content. And I just feel like, like they didn't signed up to have a camera in their face all the time. So I talked to Caitlin about it. She is all in we're gonna post all about this road trip. We've traveled together a dozen times, probably, but always in a group. We've never traveled to us, the two of us, so this is like a whole new friendship experience for us. And I'm gonna try and convince her to do an episode about it with me, just talking about, like, I don't know, the whole thing, whatever the mishaps, the weird moments, the moments we were tired of each other, like we are going to be traveling for 11 days, this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous when I say it out loud, but I think it's going to be really fun and just silly, ridiculous, like these moments as adults, where we just get to, like, we're going on a random road trip. We don't even know where we're going. In the middle, we have our hotels booked in Indianapolis and New Orleans. We have a car we leave eight days from today. We have two routes. We have not booked anything in the middle. I probably should do that this week, so stay tuned. Basically, is what I'm trying to tell you follow along and or wait for that episode. There you go. The final thing is that today is Episode 100 and I don't know how we got here. I don't know how we're at Episode 100 of the Friendship IRL Podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode, to any previous episode, thank you for sharing it with your friends, posting about it in groups, leaving reviews, whatever you've done, even if it's just hitting play today. Thank you so much for being here. This whole podcast was a dream a couple years ago, and now here we are with 100 episodes. That's so many episodes, so many episodes. Which brings me to today's episode. Today, we are going to talk about the wheel of connection. This is probably an episode that should have happened, like Episode 20, and it hasn't happened. And the reason it probably hasn't happened, even though it's such a foundational concept to all my work, is because I don't know how to boil this down into one episode, like I've really had to work hard to narrow this down. Today I'm not going to be able to cover it all at all, like not even a little bit. I am currently working on a, I guess, kind of like an audio guide to the wheel of connection, where I really, really, really dive deep into you. Each component of the wheel, connection, how to think about this, how you move people from one space to another, things like that. So if you want that, when it is released here soon, go sign up for the newsletter, because I will be announcing it to my email list first. And yeah, just sign up for the newsletter so you can find the deeper version of this, if you're at all interested. I also go very deep into this concept in my book, which is soon to come out. If you don't want to miss it again, sign up for my email list. I promise you don't get that many emails, but I don't want you to miss out. This concept is so important. It's so big. I cannot cover it all in one episode, but I'm going to try and give you as much of a primer as I can to start off, I think it just might be helpful for you to understand why I created the wheel of connection, and also for you to know like the wheel of connection is actually a diagram. It is linked in the show notes. It's on my website. It's going to be in the book. It is a visual thing, which is kind of hard on a podcast to describe to you. It's also on my social media, if you don't go look at the diagram, here's what you need to know. It is a circular diagram. It's a complete circle that's kind of like got pieces of the pie. They're all equal, goes all the way around. And the reason I created this is that so often I see two things happen with our friendships and our connections. The first one is that people kind of silo them off separately, right? So you have your romantic relationship, your family relationships, your friendships, they're all separate. We don't talk about how they interplay with each other. And you notice I didn't even mention community, because most people don't even put community on the chart. We just ignore that part nowadays. But they all are interconnected, and I think that's really important. The other thing is that all of these types of relationships make up your support system, right, your overall social wellness, how you feel on kind of the spectrum of loneliness. A lot of times when societally we talk about these relationships, I feel like certain ones are weighted as more important, right? Family is everything, or you just need to find a romantic partner, and that'll kind of solve all your problems. You just need a best friend, like certain ones are seen as more important. So the reason I created a round diagram is because I actually don't think certain ones are more important than others. I think that the most important thing here is that you create your own wheel of connection that feels good to you. However you make that up, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Yours could look completely different than somebody else's. There's no better or worse. There's only what's right for you. Like, I'm trying to flatten what is like, the relationships you need or don't need, or like, it doesn't matter, as long as it feels good to you. That's why I created this. So it's this round thing. It has pieces of the pie, and it has a variety of sections, right? It goes around. So you start off, I'm just going to list these off for you. I'm going to go deeper into them in the episode. But you start off with your family of origin, which are the people that were part of the house that you grew up in. I also extend that kind of extended family. This would, of course, include like caretakers, foster parents, things like that. Then you have your formal communities, so your neighborhoods, your schools, clubs, sports leagues, fan bases, things like that. Next, you have your acquaintances. These are the people that you see when you're out living your life. And it could be someone as simple as the person that you see at your bus stop all the time, but you really don't know anything about them. You just see them at the bus stop, you know. So they must kind of live near you. You maybe know what bus stop they get off at your level of familiarity, like, if suddenly they showed up in a meeting at work with you, you might look at them Be like, don't we get on the same bus stop together? So that's an acquaintance. The next four categories that the bottom of my wheel of connection are your friendships. So we have the first one I call familiar friends. These are friends of yours in places that you go. But they're not people you're like, actively engaging with. They're basically people that, again, make it feel familiar in a place where you would otherwise know no one. So this. This could be a coworker who works in a different department that you don't really know that well. But if you walked into a room or a meeting where you knew literally no one like you've never met these people before, it's just a bunch of people from another company, you might recognize this person and be like, Hey, I think we work at the same company, right? And maybe you chat it up. You have some familiarity. Another example I like to use for familiar friends is if you went to your kids concert, like holiday concert, you walked in and you had to wait before they let you into the auditorium, and you're looking around the room, it's just a sea of faces. You feel like you don't know a single person in there, and suddenly you see these people and you're like, isn't that those parents we met at the concert last year, and their daughter is in our daughter's class, and you'd go up to them and be like, Isn't your daughter in Miss Susie's class? Like so is ours. Maybe you know their name, but it's pretty basic. There's not much, but if you didn't recognize that you've met them before, you would know nobody at all. The next one are what I call defined friends. Normally, these are people that actually have a descriptor. That's why I call them defined friends. So it would be like your gym friends, your bar hopping friends, your yoga friends, your work friends. So these are people that you really are connected to them through one shared interest, experience, place. Then we have your present friends. A lot of people consider these kind of like your gold standard friends. They're your present friends because they are the people that you're living life with on the day-to-day, the friends that you're like doing things with regularly. For a lot of people, the easiest way to think of this one would be those like high school or college friends you have where you were literally doing life together. Now, if you're years out of college, like I am. I don't think that means that you need to be doing life together to the level you were in college when you were like, maybe roommates. I get you're probably not doing that with a lot of your friends, but these are people that you see pretty regularly. You're pretty connected in a variety of ways in your life, but you're not going so long between seeing each other that you have to do a ton of catching up, like most of your time together, is just living life together, because you are together so frequently. And then we have what I call historic friends. So these are friends that you maybe they were once defined friends or present friends, but the way that you spent time with them, you don't see them as regularly anymore, right? You were once college friends. Now you live on opposite sides of the country. They were once your closest work friend. You now work at different companies. They were once your neighbor, and you know that, like really close neighbor you spent a lot of time with, and now you no longer live near each other, these are people that we have really strong beliefs about. Like, they care about me, I care about them. We show up for each other, we support each other, we love each other. Care about each other, whatever your beliefs are, and you have a lot of history, like you know a lot about each other, even if it's in maybe one area of life. So maybe they are your closest friend, and you know a lot about them, but now they live across the country, so you just don't see each other as regularly, or they could be that old work friend that you worked together for a decade. You filled each other in on your lives everyday. You know everything about work. You don't work at the same company anymore. You call each other to catch up, or you want to get lunch, things like that. You they might be the person you call when you find out you got a big promotion, right? Because they understand that area of your life, but they aren't a part of it the same way they once were. And then our final category that's in the wheel, because there's one kind of on the side, but in the wheel is family of choice. And if you've heard me talk about this one before, it's very important to me, it's the people that are choosing to love and show up for you. And who you choose and love and show up for them. These are kind of these people that you feel like are your core people, the first line of defense, the people you trust. If you call them, they will come and for me, just because of my background, which you can go listen to in Episode 17, if you haven't done that before, I have the chosen family in there. Now, this could be friends, but I also, I personally believe that some people will put their family of origin in there, right like you feel like your family of origin is so. Supportive that it is your chosen family. Other people may not feel that way, and their chosen family, their first line of defense might be way more community or friends. It might be a mix. There's no right or wrong way. I just think it's important for us to think about that. And then off to the side is kind of this past friends category, which is broken down into three things, paused friendships, mourning, as in grieving, like friendships, you're grieving, and past friendships, and those are off to the side. They're there. I know that they they're done, they're over. We've moved on. But at the end of the day, I think that they kind of just like float off and exist on the side of your wheel of connection. Like they may not be people you really consider your people anymore, but at one point they were those people. The other thing is, like, you never know you could reconnect with them. It would be often easier to reconnect with them because you know some facts about them, that it is a complete stranger, although it could also be harder because you know some facts about them. They might have broken your trust, but they are people that have you have familiarity with that, like if you walk into a room, they're not a face in the crowd. In fact, they probably flood you with memories. Now, as I've mentioned, there is this, like it's a circle. I would encourage you to go look at it, but hopefully I did a decent enough idea, like a decent enough way of describing it. It's a circle with these sectioned out pieces, some things for you to just think about when you are thinking about the wheel of connection. Is the idea is, it's meant to create this holistic view of your overall social wellness, like we can't just look at our friends without looking at our family and our community and our chosen family. They all work together, and how your diagram looks will be different than other people's. The other thing is that, and I'm not going into this today, this would be like the audio guide or my book, this entire framework, if you've listened to my episode on my roots of friendship framework, the other framework I have. You can go listen to that in episode 12. This is all interconnected. They work together, like I talk about how a certain type of connection will have more shared experience roots, but not many story roots. This all plays together, and when you see how they link, I've had people tell me, it really gives them a whole new insight in to their connections. The other thing when using this wheel of connection is it gives you, again, that holistic overview. So it can be really easy for people to just say, like, oh, well, I need new friends or my family doesn't show up for me how I want that may be the case. It may there. Also, once you lay this out and you look at it, you might be like, Oh, now I understand what's really going on here. Some examples of that might be that you really feel like you need to focus on finding friends. But when you lay this out, you might realize that what you actually need is formal community. This happens all the time with people. I can't tell you how many people have that exact finding. You might look at your wheel of connection and think about how you know you've been putting certain energy into very specific relationships in your life, like 90% of your energy into two to three relationships. And when you look at this, you might realize like, wow, those ones really aren't fulfilling. They don't feel very supportive. And I'm investing 90% of my energy there. Well, 90% of my wheel of connection is getting 10% of my energy. And wow, there are so many more fulfilling, supportive relationships there. You might look at your wheel of connection, and this happens to a lot of people. You might be feeling like your a certain friendship feels different than it did, and you don't understand why, and then you fill out your wheel of connection. You go through all these categories, and you realize that a friendship that was very important to you, that you were very present with a present friendship, probably, or maybe a defined friendship, has shifted into a historic friendship. And that's not a bad thing. It's not lesser than it's just different. And if you're putting the same expectations you have on a present friendship, on a historic friendship, it's going to cause a lot of problems, and that might be why you're struggling. Another thing I've seen when people do this wheel of connection exercise is they might realize that. They are really struggling with familial relationships, that those relationships really aren't providing the support that they need or that they expect. I know that personally like this is actually one of the reasons I created the wheel of connection for myself, was that I will never forget this therapist. But I went to see a therapist, I've never been shy about saying that my family of origin relationships don't provide that much support in my life, but I went to see a therapist I was talking about all the things that I was doing to try and basically help my familial relationships get to a place where they could be supportive to me, but like I was trying to force them to be a 10 out of 10, I was doing all this work, and this therapist just looked at me, and she goes, Hey, I really think you need to think about the fact that you want your familial relationships to be a 10. And their version of a 10, I think, is like a four. So if you can get to a four, they are providing all the support that they can as a four. You can't muscle them to a 10 like you need to stop doing that. It's exerting so much of your energy. But you deserve a 10 level support in your life, and I'm telling you this now, like you deserve a 10 level support in your life. Whatever doesn't have to be family. It could be anything, but you deserve that. And so she's like, where can you get the other six? And for me, it's more in that friend, chosen family section of the wheel of connection. But I don't think if I hadn't looked at all this holistically like one, I would have been probably continuing to try and force my familial relationships to show up in a way that they just haven't ever been able to provide. And two, let's say I accepted that they were going to be a four. It's like I deserve more than a four level support, but where am I going to get that? And for me, I can see like the whole view, but if you can't see the whole view, then you just end up allowing yourself to live in that four zone. And I don't want that for you. You deserve a 10, and we today are going to figure out how to get it for you. This has been a long introduction to this episode, but here's what we're doing for the rest of the episode. I'm going to give you a few more things to think about with this overall wheel of connection diagram. Then I'm going to go through each of the categories again. This will not be the deepest of dives. And then at the end, I'm going to give you an overview of how to do a basic wheel of connection audit. I can't run you through like the deepest of audits, but you can take this episode, you can sit down, you can write all this out, and you can start to do this for yourself and see. And if you want to go deeper, I have places for you to do that. So with that, hopefully I've given you some intro. Why this matters, what it looks like. I hope you can go find the graphic, because I really do think that would help you. But let's talk about the wheel of connection overall, some things to remember that I have seen a lot of people struggle with. The number one is that I mentioned this already, that everyone's wheel of connection will look different. My version and your version might look completely different. There's no better one, no worse one. All that matters is that it's right for you and it's right for me. That's it, that I feel good and supported and strong and so do you. Now, my example of this is, again, I don't have super strong familial support, so that section for me is not particularly hopping, but my friendship one is like overflowing, right? It's a lot. I have really built that up. I have invested there. I've made up my six points that I needed to find the support that I need, but you might maybe have super amazing familial support in your life, and I love that for you. And you may be super involved with your family, doing all sorts of things. They may really be your present friends kind of thing, and you may not need as many friends to feel supported and connected, and that's great. There's no right or wrong version. It is just what feels right to you. Which brings me to my second point, which is that what feels right to you right now might feel different in a different season of life, like our wheels are constantly changing all the time. They're not going to stay the same. I know that's what we want, and that would feel very comfortable, but that's not how it works. I do think that once you understand this concept, it makes the changes less scary, because you have some sense of what's happening here, instead of just feeling like everything's out of control and something's wrong with you and you're about. Person and a bad friend and people aren't showing up for you the way you want. When you dive into this, you can be like, Oh, it's because I'm leaning on, let's say, a newer connection that really, I haven't built that many beliefs with. Like, there's so many ways you'll start to see what is happening here. Again, more than I can do in this episode, but the deep dives are coming sign up for the newsletter. The other thing to remember about the wheel of connection is that people can move between categories like that's actually the whole point is that we meet people out in the world, whether that's a friend of a friend, somebody in a formal community with us, and then over time, right? We might get closer to them. We might not. They might just stay in our formal community acquaintance field, but we might become closer to them. And so people are going to move, and they're going to move in all directions, in all ways. They might hop, skip and a jump, a couple categories, very quickly. They might stay somewhere for years, and then suddenly you feel like they've kind of moved into a new category in your life. There is no right or wrong way, but people do move. That is the point. And then the final thing I want to tell you when you look at this is that people can be in more than one category, and this always trips people up. So an example of this would be if you and your brother are incredibly, incredibly close people like the he is one of your main support people. So he's part of your family of origin, so his name would go there. He's a very present, active part of your day-to-day life. So he'd probably go there, and he's one of your main support people, so he would probably be listed out in your chosen family category. He can be in multiple spaces, a friend in your like a work friend who's also one of your closest friends. Might be in your formal community. Kind of you wouldn't probably list their name, but like, where your workplace is in your formal community. So they come to mind there. They used to be a defined friend, but they have moved into the present friend category. You do all sorts of life things with them. You travel together, hang out outside of work, family, get togethers like this person has really become one of your closest friends, so they live in your present friend category, and then maybe, because they're really one of your closest friends, they're also somebody you would kind of consider part of your chosen family, and they can exist in those spaces and move between them. So it is this fluid, ever moving thing, and I know that right now this concept is like, whoa. This is a lot, but it's one of those things where once you start to see it, you can just like, quickly make these adjustments in your brain and the understanding of it on the fly. Like I actually had a friend recently who was saying to me, just out of nowhere, we were like talking. And it's always really sweet when my friends start using my frameworks in our Hangout conversations. She was telling me about this coworker of hers, and she was like, Yeah, I think she's kind of shifting into being a present friend. And when you start to see this, it also changes the way you act in your friendships. I think it takes away some of the uncertainty that holds people back. Because what she started telling me is, hey, I think she's starting to become more of a present friend, and so we are connecting outside of work in all these different ways. We are doing more things together. We're sharing more together, like we've just really integrated each other in our lives. She's like, so I feel more comfortable just like inviting her to do more things now, or reaching out to her when I need her, or just texting her randomly, she's like, I don't know if she's quite like a present friend yet. She's like, but I definitely feel like it's shifting. I'm like, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Sorry. I think it's really cool. I think that's so exciting that someone is starting is starting to, like, see this and look at the positive, like the value that is there in our connections, instead of being so panicked of you know, like, well, she's not my best friend. Like, does she even like me? Are we even friends? Is she just my work friend? All these things. No, she sees the value that is there. And I love that. And that's actually a huge piece of the wheel of connection, is that when we start to see the value of these people in our lives, even our simplest of connections, we are more likely to engage in them. I actually another one of you listeners messaged me a while ago. I'll share this last story, and then I'm going to I'm going to go back into my overview here. But you shared with me that now that you're starting to see all the parts of the wheel of connection, you feel like you move through your day and actually see the value of even your simple connections, like your coworkers or the neighbors or the people at your coffee shop, and you're more likely to engage even in simple ways. I'm not saying like engages and turn them into your best friend, but you appreciate the interactions more, and therefore you move through your day just feeling more connected. I love it. I love it so much. Okay, here is each category one more time with as much information as I can give you without this being a four hour episode again. The first category is your family of origin. These are the people that you were in, the house you grew up in, or your caretakers, your foster parents. I like to include some extended family in here, if you were close with them, but you, you know, like, didn't live in the same house, like, if they were kind of that original support system. For you personally, I include them in here. The reason your family of origin is really important to consider in your overall wheel of connection, it may has a few things. Number one, societally, we're really told that this is our support system, and I am so happy for you. If that your experience aligns with that, right? If you do feel supported by your family, some people do not. That's okay too. But they were your original, original, original support system, whether you felt supported by them or not, they were what you had as a kid. So they are on here. The other thing about our family of origin that I think we just don't think enough about is that our family of origin really sets the tone in the beginning for our wheel of connection. When you're little, your parents or your caretakers, they determine where you live, the formal communities you're a part of, the school that you go to, the friends you're allowed to hang out with, the neighborhoods you live in. So many of your connections are filtered by your family of origin. They have a huge impact. So if you are somebody who feels really aligned with these people that your family of origin chose to surround you with you probably are starting off with a bunch of people you feel supported by in your wheel if you are not, if, let's say, I'm gonna use an example of somebody who grew up in a religious community that you now as an adult, maybe have left. That means that you probably have taken not only that religious community, like the overall Church and the people and like the groups and whatever, but also people you maybe were your closest friends, the school you went to, like you might have a lot of people that have now moved into your past relationships and don't feel aligned with you, and You really may have to be in like a rebuilding phase. So we're all starting from different places here, which is why we need to acknowledge that it's got to go on the wheel of connection. The next one is our formal communities. So these are the people in our lives that we meet when we're out living our life, basically the places you go and the groups that you participate in. So some things to think about with formal communities is that these are people that come together around a common interest or goal, and most formal communities have some sort of structure, so they possibly have a leadership team or scheduled meetings, rules and regulations. Now, at first you may be like, Well, my neighborhood, it's like, Well, you do live in a place with laws and elections and city councils like that is a formal community you choose to live there within the common goal or interest, right of like safety, connection, whatever other things I can think about right now, like beliefs that your area is right, people move to different places in the world to be surrounded by formal communities that feel more aligned with them, that feel safer with them. Formal communities can also be virtual. Could be a group that you have joined around a common interest. Now, the thing about formal communities that makes them so important is that, over time, you develop this idea that you belong here. And my example for this is that, you know, I have talked about this before, like, I joined a Toastmasters group many years ago. It took me a while to go to my first meeting. Why? Because I didn't feel like I belonged there. I didn't not that overall, like I didn't think I wouldn't ever belong there. But in the beginning, it felt uncomfortable, like, how are the meetings structured? I didn't know anyone there. Over time, I started to feel like I knew people there. I knew the structure. I knew how to show up, right? I started to feel like I belong here. I feel comfortable here. And then it gets to the point where this is an international club. I could go anywhere in the world, and there are Toastmasters meetings. Not only do I feel like I belong in my meetings. Meeting here in Seattle, Washington. But if I traveled to France because there's the same structure and leadership and rules and regulations, I could go, and I'd probably feel pretty strongly that I belong there. I know how a meeting flows. I know any you show up like we start to feel comfortable, we can relax our nervous system. We're part of this group. It feels good to be there. That's very important in our lives. Some examples of formal communities, you know, schools, workplaces, places of worship, clubs like, say, a running club sports leagues, fandoms, networking groups, homeowners, communities, nonprofit organizations like there are so many examples in our lives of these places where we go, these groups that we connect with, where, over Time, we feel like we belong there. The next group are our acquaintances. So you meet acquaintances out in the world or in the virtual world, and you have some basic familiarity with these people. This is like the bus stop story I told earlier, where you see the same person at the bus stop. You don't really know their name, but you know, like the stop they get off at. Now, if suddenly you ran into this person at a club soccer league game, you might walk up to them and be like, don't we take the bus at the same time? These are just people that add some familiarity to our life, right? When you see the same person show up everyday and like kindly smile at you, it puts you at ease. The other thing about acquaintances, because I know acquaintances get kind of like they're not worth your time. There are so many reasons I don't have time to go into all the reasons why acquaintances are important, but the one I'm going to point out is, if you go back and you listen to the liking gap. episode of the Friendship IRL Podcast, we talk about how studies show that pleasant interactions with the people in our day, like the random person in front of you at the coffee shop line, when you have these positive interactions, it actually impacts your health, like your mental health and your physical health. It makes you feel happier and safer and have a calmer nervous system. Like our acquaintances actually matter. The other thing about acquaintances is, I know so many of us don't want to acknowledge this, but if you want more friends. You have to meet people somewhere. Like every friend you had was at one point in acquaintance. Even if they blew through that phase quickly, they still were an acquaintance at one point, they were just somebody you had basic familiarity with in a room. So don't completely ignore your acquaintances, is all I'm trying to say. Now, at the bottom of the wheel of connection, we again have those four types of friendship, the first one being familiar friends. I like to separate these out from acquaintances, right? Acquaintances are just kind of faces in the crowd. Familiar friends are people that when you see them, there's just like a little bit more familiarity with them. That's why they're called familiar friends. These are people that are like friends of friends, people in your workout class, coworkers. The example I have here is the one where you know you walk into your kid's holiday concert. You're waiting in the foyer. You haven't been let into the auditorium, yet you're scanning the room, wondering if you're gonna have to be a wallflower, or if there's anybody here you recognize. And then two faces stand out in the crowd and in a room that would otherwise be unfamiliar. You can walk up to these people and talk about how their your kids are in the same class, and find out that, oh, they live two neighborhoods down and you share a similar interest, or you work in a similar industry. There's not a lot required of these friendships, which I think is also a positive like these might just now that you've chatted with them, be the people that you talk to at your kids school function, and that's the only purpose they serve. You don't need to get closer with them, but you want to go and support your kid at all their school functions, and it's nice to have people to chat with that are familiar faces, instead of feeling awkward and alone and you're not connected. Nobody wants that. Our next type of friends are our defined friends. These are the ones that normally have a descriptor, right? So they are our gym friend, our work friend, the friend you travel with, your new mom friend, your hiking buddy, your bar hopping friend, yoga friend partners, friend's wife, that's a mouthful, or child's friend's parent, your neighbor. Friends, like you're talking to someone and you have kind of a descriptor of this person. They are probably a defined friend. Now, these friends again, a lot of us, it's like, oh, well, are they my friend? Like, what is the tipping point here? People want this black or white, they are my friend or they aren't my friend. And here's what I want to offer you. The thing about defined friends is they might just be someone that makes you feel connected to an activity or a place or a person. They could just be that gym friend, the one you go to and you chat about how you signed up for a marathon or the new running store you saw and how your weights routine is part of your training plan, right? They could just be casual conversation about an area of your life you care about. That's it. That's fine. That is valuable. Instead of being like, Oh, they're not really my closest friend. They have value, even if it's simple. But the other thing about defined friendships is that sometimes they're actually very vital parts of your support system. So an example would be, if you are a new parent, none of your other friends have kids yet you're the first one, and you have met a new mom friend. This person may not be your closest, longest, dearest friend, but you know what they are currently in this moment in your life, the most vital friend you have. They are the one that is also in the same situation, who understands why you're asking these questions, who gets why you're panicked. They could be such a vital part of your support system in your current season of life. So instead of being so concerned and being like, Oh well, they're not like my closest friend, right? Like they're just my mom friend. It's just my mom friend. You don't need to downplay it. They're really important to you right now, and they may not be forever, and you may never get close to them, but like in this season of life, they were a beacon. They were very important to you. So let's acknowledge that instead of trying to fit everybody into that closest, longest, deepest friendship is the only way they're valuable. Like no, no, no, we're not doing that anymore. The next type of friend are our present friends. And I call these present friends because they are the people that you are doing life with at the moment, they have ingrained themselves in the broader kind of picture of your life. There's a variety of ways that you connect. Like you could call them up to go for a walk, to come over and hang out at a barbecue. Maybe your parents are coming in town, and you're like, do you want to go to dinner with us? Doesn't have to be that close. But like Overall, these are people that you are doing life with. I think the easiest example for a lot of people, because, quite frankly, I think these are kind of like the gold standard friendship so many people want nowadays, but don't feel like they have. The example would then be for a lot of people, this is similar to, like, those college, high school friends that you did a lot of life together with you. Like, laid around on the couch, you ran errands together, you went to class together. You'd went out to the bars together. It doesn't need to be as all consuming as it was then it might be, but it doesn't need to be. It's just kind of that same idea of, like, it doesn't feel very risky to ask them if they want to do something new, because you're already doing so much together and you know each other in so many different areas of life. But like, what's another one kind of thing? The next type of friendship is what I call historic friends, and these are likely people you've been friends with for a long time. The real marker, I think, is these people where you say, like, Oh, I love that. We can just pick up where we left off. That's probably a historic friendship. Now, for some people, historic friendships are going to kind of be their gold standard, actually not present friendships. Historic friendships might be, and that's because, with your historic friends, you have built up all these story roots, which are your beliefs and expectations. You have strong beliefs, right? They care about me. They show up for me. They want to hear me share the mundane deals of my life. You have really good beliefs, and you have a lot of emotional intimacy roots, which are like our history, the things you know about each other and between our beliefs and the things we know about each other, that's kind of what's holding our friendship together. Another sign of this, actually, that you have a historic friend would be if every time you get together, you either catch up, right, like, oh, it's been so long, we gotta catch up. And you have to tell somebody, like, the last four months of your life, or four years, or these are friends where, when you get together, you kind of just talk about the past, like if they were your college friend. You spend a lot of time retelling stories from college and very little time. Um, you know, you might tell them some highlight details of your life right now, but you're, you're not really diving deep. You're kind of reliving it. Those are signs of historic friends, and that's because these are friendships that are really centered on the past, right? Like the history what we know about each other, and we aren't very integrated at the moment, at one point you were but you currently are not. Right now, I said that these are the gold standard of friendships for some people, because depending on what season of life you're in, you may not have time to invest in being like that present with some friends. An example of this would be if you are a doctor in your medical residency, from what I hear, because I'm not a doctor, and I actually don't have very many friends in the medical field, so if you're a medical field person, well, that's why I have a nurse friends. Okay, I don't have a lot of doctor friends. If you're a doctor, I don't really know what your experience of medical residency is like. Let's be friends. Okay, so I can understand your world, but from what I hear, it's very all consuming. That's what Grey's Anatomy tells me. So if that is currently your life, and you are just so focused on work, it is such a big piece of your time and energy, having really good historic friends where you can kind of drop off the face of the earth for months at a time, could be your current gold standard. It really could, and that's great for you. I don't see anything wrong with that. I love that for you. You might also decide a few years down the road, when life gets a little more stable, that you want to invest in either bringing some of these into a more present friend space, right? Because they can go both directions, or you want to build more present friendships in your life, but when you were in residency, you didn't have time for that. Something else to acknowledge just about historic friendships overall is that some people might find them as their gold standard. A lot of people come to me and they're very sad about their historic friendships, because what was a very present friendship, or like a defined friendship, where you saw somebody all the time at work or at the gym and they were really supportive of you for one reason or another, this friendship has shifted into something more historic, right? So this was like your neighbor that you saw all the time you were super close with you, like, swapped childcare and hung out in the front yard and did neighborhood trick or treat and all those things. And then these neighbors moved away, and you're not really as ingrained in the day-to-day life. They might have become more historic friends and people get sad because we don't have the language for this, because we just think about emotional closeness and not the amount of time we are spending in shared experiences and shared interests together, like present together. Now there's nothing wrong if a present friendship turns into a historic friendship. It's just different. And when we can acknowledge it, we can start appreciating what it is, instead of trying to force it back into what it was like. If your expectations are, you know to your friend that moved away like why don't you understand that the school pickup has just been a nightmare? It's like, well, they're not a part of it anymore. They used to be, but they aren't anymore. And people get frustrated when we don't acknowledge that it shifted. It's like, well, you're supposed to be my closest friend. You should just know this. It's like, no. Now we live on opposite sides of the country, and they can't possibly know this, because this isn't their day-to-day experience anymore. And when we can acknowledge that, then we can start to see the beauty of historic friendships again, these are not lesser than there's so much beauty in historic friendship. And one of the beautiful things, right, is that feeling of being able to tap back into a previous time in your life, or having somebody who just knows you so well because they have so much history. What else is beautiful? Somebody who have seen your growth kind of might have really not been that connected for a year or two, just staying in touch here and there. And you get together for a weekend together, and they're like, Wow, I'm so proud of you. It seems like you've really made strides in whatever area of your life you wanted to change, right? They can see the difference, because they've had the space like these might be some of your closest friends, the people you call first. You know, if you got a bad medical diagnosis, they might be the people you call they are beautiful, beautiful friendships. There's nothing lesser than about a historic friendship. It's just different, and the way that we need to approach them and appreciate them is different and acknowledging right if all of your friendships that you feel closest to have shifted into that historic friendship space and you're really frustrated. That might be a sign that you need to put some energy into developing other friendships in your wheel to be more present. There's so many dynamics here. If you send me your individual stories, I can. Normally explain to people, like, what's going on and why things feel a certain way. Using this framework and the roots of friendship framework, it really does bring a lot of understanding. Now the final category I'm just going to touch on here is that past friendships category that had three sections, paused friendships. I like to call this one out. I've talked about this before. I think a friendship pause can save a lot of friendships. I do. I think sometimes you just need a little distance, a little space, a little time to reflect on your own before you come through together and have a conversation and do the work. But as far as support goes, if they're paused, they're probably not someone you feel is supporting you right now. So that's why they kind of live like on the outskirts of our wheel of connection. The next one is that morning or grieving? Because every time I say morning, I think I'm talking about like waking up in the morning, but morning as in grieving friendships. And these are ones where they're on their way to past friendships, whether you chose to step away or they chose to step away, either way, if this was a vital part of your support system, there is grief here, like I talk about this in... gosh, Episode 25 with Patrice Pulitzer. We talk about Friendship Breakups, but there's a period of grief where you feel like there is a hole in your wheel of connection, and you deserve to acknowledge that, so that's why that's there. And the final one is just past friendships. I keep this on this outskirts of the wheel of connection, because even though they don't really exist in your wheel anymore, they aren't necessarily your support, maybe you've just outgrown that friendship, moved on. Maybe it was a bad friendship breakup. Whatever it is, these people do exist out there, and we never know, like somebody could boomerang back into your life, become a connection in your life again. I've had this happen, or they can just stay out there, but they are people that now like they're not just random faces in the crowd. You know, if you saw your past best friend walking down the street, they're not just another face, like you see them and you are flooded with memories, good or bad. So I don't want to pretend that they just don't exist anymore. They are out there on the outskirts of your wheel of connection. They are people that exist in your orbit. Ah, should we just all take a deep breath? That was a lot, and I really had to push through to not have this be like a three-hour episode. We're at the one hour mark. I gotta close this thing out. What are you going to do with all this information? Now, I keep laughing because I know it sounds wild that this has, you know, like 15 more layers to it, but it does so. I do think there's enough in this episode that if you want to sit down and do an audit, a wheel of connection audit, you can you might have some people in it that you're wondering where they go, and you don't know how to move people from one area to another, like all of that is going to be in the book and in the audio guide. I'm going to deep dive into all of it, but I think you can get started. So here's how you would do that. It's really pretty simple. It's just that we don't talk about doing it this way, but you're gonna sit down and I want you to just brain dump a list of people in your life, anybody, everybody. Could be the person you smile at in the coffee shop every morning, even though you don't know their name. Could be your closest friends, your college friends, your gym friends, people that you feel friendship energy with in your place of work, like literally anyone that comes to mind. Just put them in there. Brain Dump as much as you can. And then you're going to sit down, and you're going to use these categories, and you're going to try and place people in the categories they go in. It could be multiple categories. It could be like, maybe they're between these two categories again. When you get deeper into this info, I think people will, like, really fall into one or the other. They won't sit in the middle as much, but they might sit in a few right? They might be that family of origin, family of choice, present friend, like you might have some of those. But all I'm saying is, you start to write names in and again, people are going to move you might now pay more attention to a relationship and realize it goes somewhere different, like a lot of things can happen, but the whole point of this activity is really to sit with yourself and think about how you feel about this and how this is feeling in your life on the day to day, you might write this out and see that you have so much family support, you're feeling great there, and you have so many historic friends, but realize you don't really have a lot of pressure. Friends in your life, and that's something you wish you had, and that gives you an idea of where to focus your energy. You might realize that you have a ton of friends, and you feel really close to them. They're very supportive, but you don't have anyone for a really key interest in your life, like you're obsessed with this idea of underwater chess you gotta go join an underwater chess club immediate like nobody else wants to do this with you, and maybe you actually need formal community in that case, right? You need to go find an underwater chess club to join. You might realize that you have all these people in your life, but you really don't feel like you've ever had conversations with people about being that chosen family, and you really want that. And the way to do that would be to actually talk to people and be like, hey, I really feel like you're one of my core support people, and I want to be there for you. And I know that sounds kind of silly. Maybe go listen to Episode 16 about chosen family, but that's kind of how you do it, is you just talk about it, and then you act, of course, in ways that support this new belief you have. But maybe you feel like you need to do a little bit of that. There's so many possibilities here for how you might feel, and the entire point is to take more intentional action to develop the connections you feel like you need for this current season of your life. That's all it is. It'll give you some information on where to put your energy to build what you need. So with that, I want to remind you that if you want to dive deeper into this, go to the show notes and sign up for my newsletter. I don't send you a bunch of emails. I'm not spamming you here. It's really just for updates. I send, like a weekly email. That's kind of a story. Honestly, it's kind of an extension of the podcast. I talk about different topics, but if you like the podcast or like the newsletter, other than that, I just let you know when new things are coming. So I will be announcing the wheel of connection audio guide, and I will be announcing my book in the newsletter. If you don't want to miss out, that's where you got to go. I cannot wait to see the questions people have, the scenarios like send them my way. I will give you my thoughts. I'm always happy to do that. I'm just a DM or a voice memo away. So with that, I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.