How I Saved My Most Cherished Connections with a Simple Trick

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What if I told you that the secret to stronger, more fulfilling relationships isn't more love? But a Google calendar? Spoiler alert it's both, but mostly the calendar. Maintaining and nurturing relationships is really hard, whether it be with your family, your friends, your kids, your partner, your parents. It is a really, really hard thing to do, especially as you get older and older, things start to wear out, including your relationships.

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Personally, I don't want to die alone. I don't want to die old and alone. Swiping up and down, left and right for looking for connections and a cheap thrill. I dread that entire idea, and I know that I have a lot of good people in my circle, in my community. But the challenge has become for me, as I imagine it is for many others, is actually nurturing those relationships.

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So what can we do different? This is something that I made my problem because it was, and I wanted to find a solution. And the solution was right in my face. So first up, it begs the question, why does this even happen? I have the opinion I don't know about you, but I have the opinion that it comes down to convenience.

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The reason that a lot of relationships fall apart. Some probably because they needed to. You probably didn't have a real strong connection in the first place, but the reason that most others fall apart. Let's imagine your siblings, your brothers or sisters, even your family, your parents the reason that they fall apart is because it's no longer convenient. I think when it was when you were young and you all lived in the same house, you had a relationship, but it was convenient.

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You were in the same home, and when you went to school, you had friends there that you really connected with. But it was convenient. You had time every day to sit down and talk, play, go to the playground. Maybe you were in groups in high school. I didn't, I wasn't in anything. But a lot of people were really social there in sports and choir.

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My kids a choir, they did band. I didn't do any of that. But that schedule time together, there's a clue right there to schedule time together in the activity that they're doing together, allow them to connect and to really get to know each other. The problem becomes later in life when you do leave school, when you do leave the home, when you are no longer seeing each other, often outside of maybe family picnics, or if we're talking about family, family picnics or get togethers.

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It's no longer convenient. Perhaps you're not in the same home, you're not in the same school. And worse yet, you may not even be in the same city. Let me know if you're in the comments. If you still talk to anyone from high school or middle school. I personally, I think I have a couple that I talk to, but it's really, really minimal.

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I have one friend that goes back to high school and I have to zero before that, past that, before that. And it's I'm not mad at any of them, but we all have our lives and that's what it comes down to. We're all very, very busy. So what makes a strong relationship? I think for me, a strong relationship is a deep one, one in which both people or everyone can show up and be themselves and in which if I'm hanging out with you, which personally and we're in a situation where I can speak freely when I know that I don't have to just sit there and listen where I'm allowed to share my experiences, my

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life, those are, to me, are the most important ones where I know that I'm being seen, heard and allowed for being myself. Maybe even called out on my crap like, hey Teevee, you have a pattern. You know, coming from a close friend, this would mean a lot to me. But it goes on both both ways where the other person feels that they are actually being, they actually are able to speak without being interrupted, without feeling that they have to suppress their ideas because maybe you don't agree with them.

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They truly feel nurtured and loved. That is a strong relationship, but at least it is for me. Feel free to share in the comments if you personally feel that the definition of a deep, strong relationship is different. Share your definition with me now. The other. The big thing about building strong relationships is that they take real work. As I stated earlier, most of our older relationships, as it relates to family and friends and schoolmates, was more convenient.

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So when you had those and when you were kind of digging them and into each other, you had time together, you were nurturing them because of the the presence around each other. But as you grow older and you have kids and you have grandkids now, that becomes a lot more difficult. So it takes real work and intentional intentionality rather.

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So your relationships need to be nurtured. It's no longer convenient. So my solution is to have planned schedule get together calls. I call them dates you can do on zoom calls or in person, and actually have them on the calendar. So that goes back to the calendar component of this entire thing, as I stated at the very beginning.

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So what I recommend is doing one on ones and I stick pretty close to that, except in an instance with my sisters will I, which I will talk about here in a second. But one on one. This allows each person to truly speak freely. There's no rush to get airtime, to find moments, to try to get into the conversation and interject.

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If you have 3 or 4 people, excuse me, it starts to get a little more difficult to for individuals that really struggle to interject. It's not uncommon that in a family you have one person that tends to be more silent, quiet, and wait for their moment to speak. And then you have one other person who also. And sometimes that's me, and often that's me who just has a story after story after story and then doesn't allow for airtime for other individuals.

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So one on one, at the very least, it becomes easier to manage. That person can speak a little more easily, and everyone can feel heard because that's what we all want. We all want to share our stories and our experiences and what we're going through one on one allows you to do that and allows for transparency. And this is a very important topic.

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It allows for transparency. And this is very important for me because depending on who you're talking to or what you've been through, you might have some issues that you need to talk through. I did this with my sisters and it was very important for me because I needed to do a better job. When I first started hanging out with them, trying to kind of undo a lot of the bad stuff that has gone on in our lives that we haven't spoken about.

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So I sat down with them individually, and I apologized and we forgave. I apologized for anything and everything that I can think of that I may have done to them in years past, and vice versa. By being alone and being just one on one, it allows for that. Transparency allows for that, that vulnerability. It allows for that vulnerability to come through in a way that doing it in a group does not permit, or at the very least, it limits it depending on who's there, one on one, just you and the other person.

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So when I do have these one on ones, and when we are trying to break through some, some beef and some issues that we've had. My mantra is to be first. It's something I talk about a lot in so many contexts, but especially in this in if it's your first one together, be first, apologize first, share first, be vulnerable first, give first, whatever that 1st May be for you.

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Tell the joke first. Because that opens up the other person and lets them know that for you that you're you're it lets them know that you are in a space that lets them know that this is a safe space, and that if they want to share, they're free to share. But be first and don't expect. I guess on the other side is if you can ask and you can hope.

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But don't expect them to do so. But more than likely they will, because if you open up, that's the thing about vulnerability and transparency. And if we're being honest, and sharing of ourselves something that we may not be very proud of, it's going to open up the other person is just a natural result from opening up and sharing first.

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So who have I done this with? Who am I consistent with? I'll start with number one. My daughters, they're both they're both adults now. One is 22 once 20 one's a mother and has grown a family. The other one's in college in Indiana. I think from what I realize as I was getting older, is that I struggle to talk to my parents.

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And even when I try to sit down and talk to them, the conversations are real hard because they're not open to opening up. And this is a different generation, and I get that. But then me sharing becomes difficult because they know very little about me. They don't understand my story. And there hasn't been this ongoing conversation over the years to have them understand where I'm at, where I'm going.

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They're not able to jump into the story. So it's really challenging. And I thought that for me, I wanted to do something different. I thought that we could do something different. So for my older daughter, because she has a family, we have monthly dates scheduled. I think it's the third Sunday I forget, but it's on the calendar. It's recurring.

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She's invited. It happens unless something else comes into play, like holidays or something like that. But we have a scheduled and my with my other daughter, we have weekly calls. So every Thursday at 6:05 p.m. we always get confused with the time zones. We sit down, we do a zoom call, and we catch up. And sometimes it seems like as if we're not going to talk about much, but then we get going and it blows up.

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Sometimes it goes an hour and a half or two hours, the schedule for one. But it's a beautiful thing because we are connecting. I feel that if we continue to do this as we get older, as we both get older, it'll be easier to connect with each other, or rather to stay connected, that the disconnection won't happen. And I feel like that's what happened with my parents and it's enough through no fault of their own, because it's just not how they're wired.

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I do not know my parents. My daughters wouldn't know me. And these weekly calls, it'll probably go to monthly here soon after she graduates and she starts her career and whatnot. But at the very least for right now, it's every single week and I look forward to it. She looks forward to it. She she wants to show what she's got going on a school, what degree she now what what, crazy story she has going on.

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What a grades higher grades are doing. Her her teacher loves her. How maybe she's having issues, but she's able to do that every single week. And I feel that I'm connected to her, that I'm right there kind of sorta right. So my daughters, I would encourage you to plan on doing that or just do it now. Reach out to your kids.

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Awesome. I actually look forward to this. As I mentioned a second ago, I don't hardly know my parents, and this is the truth by far. For the most part, I don't know much about them outside of the handful of stories that they've shared. Over the years outside of a handful of stories that they've shared repeatedly over the years that I don't know them, my goal is my vision.

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My goal is for my daughters to be able to each write a book about their father. I think that's that's fair, or at least coauthor one, and write the screenplay for the movie that would be made of my life and our life that's. I know I'm being stupid, but the point is, I want them to know me. And what better way to get to know your parents, your person, your father, your mother, than through conversations?

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Intentional, ongoing conversations as as you continue to live life, next person, next people that I've done this with, this with my sisters, my family, and I have other siblings, but unfortunately, due to other, unforeseen circumstances, having those conversations with those other individuals in my family are not possible at the moment. I hope one day that maybe we could we could hash out some stuff.

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But for now, I can't. But what I have been able to do, and I have to focus on that, is that my sisters, I've been able to do that. So every third Wednesday or so I meet with my sisters and we have dinner. This is 211 in this case is where I break the one on one thing. But because we are family and we, we hang out for like two hours, 2.5 hours, we're able to get each to get our time and speak, without being interrupted.

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But because there is more than one on one, there's actually three. There is more people. I have asked them and, added some structure to it. I've asked them to bring to the meeting, to the dinner, bring things that they want to talk about, things that are important to them, things that happen, maybe things they want to ask the group about and help each other out as, as siblings and, old farts.

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And it works is work. They look forward to it. It's once again, no siblings, no partners. It is just us speaking freely enabled event. We all need that space to vent. So for us, that's that's what that serves is a space event freely without judgment and that we all understand each other stories. We've we're obviously siblings. We've been so our entire lives.

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So it's it's become a really incredibly fulfilling experience every single month when I meet with them, I just feel happier. I'm their big brother, so it makes me happy to to be a part of this and to be able to reconnect and be together again. They were my baby sisters. It makes me super happy. And I'll tell you, a side benefit at the end of the video of what has come as a result of us hanging out every single month, one of the big payoffs.

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So for the most part, as it relates to my parent and my sisters, rather we just hang out and we share stories about what's going on, family issues, issues with each other, kids, whatever. But one of the ideas that I do want to interject into the next meeting or two to just kind of keep it fun and different is to kind of remix it.

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And what I'm going to do is put it on my phone, go online and ask and, go on the internet and try to find questions to ask, just random questions. So at the end of the day, it's just about engaging with each other and trying to find out more about each other. Just get into each other's heads a little bit.

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I might just even ask, I like, hey ChatGPT, I what question would be great to ask my sibling who I've been, who's whose big brother I am, right? Anything like that. So just keep it fun. And that's if you feel like it for me. Like, just to keep it different, keep it lively and maybe make them laugh.

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Because at the end of the day, it has to be fun. It has to be. Has to be fun and engaging. Otherwise everyone's going to tune out. I hope that that's not the case, but I'm already anticipating like boredom or redundancy. But and for and for that reason I'm going to start even might even bring a joke. I might even bring a book that I have.

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I might even bring one of the books on questions that I have. I have like 4 or 5, like 100 questions to do this or a hundred questions for that. So I might even do that. Point being is keep it fresh, keep alive. And I thought I'd drop that in here. In case you're wondering, like, where do I ask them?

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Although I think for the most part, if you just hang out, sit tight and let the, let each, ask questions about each other and what they've been up to. You should fill up a good hour easily. Next, I have dates with close friends. Now, please know that this platonic. This is good friends. Close friends that that I love and respect, male and female.

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So what I do here, is. Is hang out with those individuals that I truly love and respect and who was especially see having lifelong relationships with individuals who who I have a lot in common with or who I have enough in common with and enough different with, that it it keeps everything kind of fresh and light. And at the end of day, the structure is similar to with my sisters and my my, my kids.

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It's just to catch up, to see what we've been up to and to really push the depth of the relationship in terms of what you talk about, it's very much the same. It's just, what are you up to? What are you doing? What are you worried about? What are your concerns? What do you dreaming about? What are your new Year's resolutions?

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That's a good one right now, since this December 31st, when I'm recording this or anything like what's happening in your life and vice versa, then sharing your stuff, sharing openly, maybe getting an opinion on things going on in your life. There's so much that can be talked about. If you're not being interrupted by other people. And I think that's something that, if I haven't already said, is when you're in big groups, when you're at parties or social events or networking, you might run into these individuals, the challenges that you're not going to go really deep with them at those events because there's so much going on, and the only way to do it is by

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devoting one on one time with them to be able to get to know them better, or to continue to know them better and continue to stay tapped into what's going on in their life. The key point about all of this is, remembering that you to make this work, you have to have a healthy respect for each other, maybe a love for each other, love as a friend, love as a family member.

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If there is absolute bitterness and resentment is already there, and there's no desire to at least get past it and have a respect for each other, then obviously this is not going to work. This is for the people that you already like and just want to get to know better or continue to know better. That, and these are individuals that you want to get past that surface level with.

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Maybe you just met someone. We have a friend that we met in dance community as an example. She seemed really cool, absolutely cool. And both me and Carla decided, this is my partner, my girlfriend, my fiancee. Right. Sorry. I always forget about the girlfriend thing. It's nothing we like. We both agreed that she seemed really cool and we wanted to get to know her, so we invited her over for dinner.

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We wanted to get past that surface level of the surface level pleasantries of it all, and get to know who she was. And since then, she has gone on to become one of her closest friends. Period. It sounds crazy that even with your friends that you should go out on dates with, or potential friends, go on a date with them, find out more about them.

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Who are you? What are you about? What's your what's your story, dude? You'd be surprised as to what you can create if you're more intentional with it. And there's a worldwide epidemic of loneliness, but there's billions of people out there in the world, at least millions in your given city, if not hundreds of thousands. I don't know where you're at, you know.

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Pardon me, but the the problem with loneliness. We have to start with ourselves. We have to be first. We have to go out. And we have to at least, at least nurture the relationships that you already have so that they don't become fragmented. And ultimately you don't have friendships. Or as it relates to my my kids, I don't ever want to look up one day like, my kids never come talk to me or check in on me.

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Like that's something I never want to say about them, but it only has. It's I'm only able to avoid that. I think if we're talking now, if we're having conversations today, having conversations in 10 or 20 years will be easy because we've been doing it all our lives. Going back to my parents, we didn't talk, so talking to them is very difficult.

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How are you going to build on something that hasn't been established? You can obviously, I'm not a complete jerk, I get it. But it's really, really, really, really hard. So the absolute most essential thing about all of this is to put it on your calendar. If you've already established that you want to do this, you've asked them to to go on a date with you or to just hang out.

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Whatever you want to call you don't. You don't have to be scandalous about it. Put it on your calendar, put it on your calendar. Do not just talk about it. Too many people say, hey, we should get together sometime. Hahaha. We haven't seen each other in years and never ever take it past that. And I think part of it might be intentional, so that way you can avoid it.

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But if you really mean it, pull out the calendar. I did this the other day with my nephew. He's he asked me, he said, hey, we should get together. And I said, I agree. So instead of just putting it off, I pulled out my calendar and found people. It's on our phone. So I pulled it out, looked at the calendar.

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I said, actually, hold on, let me get back to you because I got to confirm a couple of things, but let's look at planning on this week. There's no better time than now, and at the very least, put it on the calendar for a month now, two months from now, three months from now, whenever possible, to be able to move it forward.

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Otherwise, you're lying to them and you're lying to yourself. And that's that's not good. You want to be known as that individual. Now there's this this law, Dunbar's law that states that a person can only have about 150 relationships, which they can keep and manage, 150 relationships and I don't know, I I'm not going to tell you the full science of it, but it makes sense in that we cannot mentally keep up with more than 150 people before the relationships start to be, thinner.

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The strength between those relationships are thinner and weaker and weaker and weaker. So, you know, having a million friends on Facebook or Instagram, they're not friends. They're just. Yeah, they're just random internet connections, but 150 friends connections and relationships. I think it's still a lot to actually do this with. So don't even consider that for me. Maybe about 20 I will be able to do this.

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And if we're being honest, it's probably closer to 5 to 10. My family, some my siblings, my kids, some of my close friends. That's about right. You can't do this with everyone because this thing will fall. Fall apart, you'll break. And now it's a job. You don't want that either. So be mindful of that. So I invite you to try this with a friend or a family member.

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Be first. This is all of my life that I, I, I, I try to live up to. If there's something that I believe should be beat, this should be done. If I believe that somebody should be doing this or should be doing that, I ask myself, am I doing it? And if not, then that means I'm a joke.

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And then I should be first. So be first. Try first. Invite someone out. Invite them, even if it's a zoom call or a phone call, actually put it on the calendar. So that way you can start to push that, relationship and nurture that relationship a little deeper. So I was I told you about a pay off, from my sisters get together a couple days ago, we got together for our Christmas party.

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It was actually, like the 30th or 29th. Whatever. But we got together, and it was just my sisters and all, essentially all the all the cousins. And there was, I don't know, ten, 12 of us, 12 them. We had the absolute best time ever. All the, the trauma, the drama, the believe the issues had been resolved. So they weren't under the the surface bubbling up.

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You know, everybody's trying to keep the peace. Everyone. We were all getting along and the siblings were getting along too. Regardless of the personalities in the room. People were laughing, loving, hugging, joking, dancing. It was a beautiful time. And, it absolutely convinced that that wouldn't have happened if we haven't hadn't been meeting for these eight, nine months before that, because we were able to hash through that and work through our stuff.

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We could hang out and not dread it too many times. And we just went through a Christmas and, Thanksgiving. Too many times those issues haunt us. And then we show up at these family events, and because we haven't resolved them, they're there. The energy is there and the the event and the hang out with those individuals at those parties becomes kind of blah.

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And you're eager to leave. Everyone's eager for you. Leave, whatever it may be. I was absolutely thrilled. I'm so happy that we were able to do that, and that we as siblings have decided to do better and to to hang out. And I think in the day it's just a good time. What's wrong with that? Like, that's a good time.

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It's not work. It's fun to give it a shot. Invite your friends and family on a date. Please note and this is an important, important note, sometimes the significant others of the individual that you're inviting might have an issue with them going on this date or this hanging out with you. Hopefully not. But if they do and they want to come after your call.

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But me personally, I try to insist that they not come unless you're planning a double date or something like that, which is different, that structure that is different this year. It's up to you to design. And like I mentioned earlier, I actually did that. It was my my girlfriend and I hosted our friend, our new friend, and we became super friends.

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That's different. But if you're trying to do the one on one thing, it's hard to do that when the partner's right there hovering. It becomes complicated, it becomes hard. And I think there's value and importance. And that individual being able to speak freely without the partner might. I feel free to disagree, in the comments if you like.

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But that's how I feel about that. All right. So thank you for tuning in. I appreciate your attention. This has been fun is something I wanted to share because it's something that I do and I encourage every one of my friends to do so. I thought I'd share with you good people of YouTube and podcasting world. So thank you.

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If you like this video, then check out the video right here where I share how I was able to teach my kids the value of money and prevent them from being entitled little jerks in the process. Hit the link and until then, see you in the next video. Bye bye.