Episode 53 - Finding Smart Friends

Are you happy with your circle of friends? Or is there room for more people in your life? 

If it’s the latter - as it is for probably 90% of gifted adults, this podcast is for you. 

You will learn:

1. Why navigating friendships is different for smart humans;
2. The things that can trip you up when trying to meet new people as well as maintain friendships;
3. The Smart Friendship Pyramid that you need to start building if you want more fun people in your life. 

Resources mentioned in this Episode:

Episode 3 - People Pleasing
Episode 12 - Black and White Thinking - Part 1
Episode 34 - Perfectionism

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Transcript

Episode 53 - Finding Smart Friends

Welcome to this episode of the managing the smart mind podcast with Master Certified Coach Else Kramer, a.k.a. Coach Kramer. 

Aloha smart human!

Are you happy with your circle of friends? Or is there room for more people in your life? 

If it’s the latter - as it is for probably 90% of smart humans, this podcast is for you. 

I’m going to talk about 

1. Why navigating friendships is different for smart humans;
2. The things that can trip you up when trying to meet new people as well as maintain friendships;
3. The Smart Friendship Pyramid that you need to start building if you want more fun people in your life. 

But first, let me tell you about what friendship looks like for me personally, because I think it’s quite a bit different from the mainstream concept. 

As you may know, if you’re a regular listener, I need a LOT of alone time. And I also have a family, and a business to run. Not to mention that I like to spend plenty of hours every week walking, and reading all kinds of books. And then there’s the autism, which isn’t conducive to getting out and meeting people either. 

So when it comes to ‘hanging out with friends’ I don’t have a lot of time or headspace or even desire to do that. 

Does that mean I have no friends? 

Nope. It just means that I’m super selective about who I play with - and that I also have a lot of friends all over the world that I mostly connect with virtually. 

I am telling you this to normalise these types of friendships (and, if you’re a parent of a smart child, to normalise it for your children). 

For example: 

I have a wonderful friend who lives only a mile away from me who I love to bits and only see once or twice a year. 

I have a very dear friend who lives in the UK and whom I’ve never even met in real life. 

I have the most amazing peer friend in Iceland, whom I’ve only seen once and catch up with regularly to talk about our businesses and how to make them even better and bigger. 

And then I have a super fun, smart friend here in Rotterdam who enjoys reading fiction and then talking about it with a nice glass of wine and some great food as much as I do - and we meet around once every six weeks. 

There are many more amazing people in my life, but no such thing as a ‘BFF’ or group of friends, or someone I share ALL my crazy interests with. 

Let’s be honest: most of my ‘friendships’ wouldn’t be considered ‘real’ or ‘legit’ by the mainstream (or, if you will, my mum). 

But they are perfect for me - and they work with my brain and how I’ve organised my life. And I guess it works for my friends too because otherwise, we wouldn’t still be talking. 

Friendships are different for smart humans

Why? Well, here’s a list, which is by no means complete. 

Smart humans can:

• Get bored very quickly;
• Come across as intense or hypersensitive;
• Be impatient; 
• Go too fast or too deep.

Add to that the fact that they usually need a lot more alone time (check out Episode 19 for more on this) and you can see that it’s going to be harder than average to find friends.

If you’re smart, people may also be intimidated by you, or jealous - or both. 

You may even be very successful in your field and not sure whether people are a ‘fan’ or a true friend. 

And on the flip side you as a smart human may have had bad experiences with other people, for example being bullied or teased, which may make you hesitate about even bothering to find and make friends. 

I think the hardest thing for more ‘normal’ people can be coming to terms with the fact that though you may really like or even love them, you are also completely fine on your own. 

You don’t need them. 

And that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. 

Smart humans can be held back by a lot of ‘smart people problems’ when trying to make - and keep - friends. 

What used to trip me up a lot when it came to friendships was black-and-white thinking (more on this in Episode 12 and 13). 

Either someone met my incredibly high standards for the full 100%, or they were a completely useless friend. 

There was zero middle ground in my mind - but this is of course ridiculous and unworkable. I’m not a 100% perfect friend either, such a thing doesn’t even exist. 

People who are accustomed to a lot of black-and-white thinking tend to put people on pedestals, which makes it even harder for them to live up to their expectations. 

And then there’s the perfectionism (more on that in Episode 34) which makes all the interactions incredibly tense and anxiety-inducing. 

I used to get very upset when my dates with either my partner or friends didn’t completely go according to plan (and I don’t just mean in an autistic ‘stick to the schedule’ kind of way). 

I’d be devastated if, for example, a waiter would accidentally knock over a glass of water. It shattered my perfectionist fantasy of what this date should look like, and it was very hard for me to enjoy it after something like that happened. 

Still on the topic of high expectations but in a ocmpletely different arena: our heightened sense of justice and fairness also doesn’t help in lowering the bar.

So black and white thinking, perfectionism, being perceived as scary all interfere with our friend-making - but there’s more. 

Smart people often have what are called special interests (feel like talking about LEGO or Emily Dickinson’s poetry for an hour, anyone?). BTW I think the term is ridiculous but that’s another discussion for another time.

There can be a lack of common cultural references (that is often the case for me, I haven’t watched TV since age 17 and only found out who Bruce Springsteen was in my 40s).

Add to that social anxiety, the rejection sensitivity that often comes with ADHD, awkwardness (hi!), being highly sensitive to sounds, scents, etc. and having an extreme sense of and need for fairness or justice, and you can probably see why finding and keeping friends tends to be harder for smart humans. 

In all honesty, I have thought many a time when I was engaging in a social activity that I found incredibly boring “I could have been reading a book right now”. 

This leads me to another reason why smart humans have trouble with friendships: people-pleasing (more on this in Episode 3). 

Many of us have become people pleasers as a coping strategy, which means we end up in situations we really don’t WANT to be in, simply because we’re trying to please someone else. And then we not only get to waste a lot of time - we often get disappointed when they don’t reciprocate. Because not everybody else uses people-pleasing as a coping strategy. 

So the biggest hurdles to finding and keeping new friends are:

• Perfectionism/impossible standards both as a selection criterion as well as when evaluating the friendship;
• Black and white thinking ‘if you’re my friend, you can’t….’
• Feeling unsafe or insecure in a lot of social situations;
• People pleasing (even though this may seem a great strategy to your brain, this will only get you to exhaust yourself and hate people rather than befriend them);
• There simply not being a lot of people who are interested in the same things as you are and who are not intimidated by you. 

Yet…it is totally possible to have friends. 

How? 

You build a pyramid. How fun!

The Friendship pyramid. 

One of the biggest thought errors I see smart people make is heaping every potential friend in the same bucket. The bucket of ‘perfect friend’ - which then often turns out to be a poor fit: they don’t live up to the expectations, the smart person is massively disappointed and throws them out of their life. 

I want you to start thinking about friendship in different levels of intensity, or, in pyramid terms, elevation. 

At the bottom we have what I call ‘play partners’ - people who want to do the same thing as you and don’t need much else. 

These could be people you literally play with - whether tennis, or boardgames, or whatever game takes your fancy. But more generally speaking these are the humans who enjoy the same activities as you do.

• Going to the movies.
• Working in the garden. 
• Open water swimming. 
• Making music or going to concerts.
• Knitting, or simply visiting bookshops together and then sitting down together to read. 

There is zero need for your ‘play partners’ to be very similar to you - in fact, it can be a lot of fun if they aren’t, you might learn a thing or two. 

They can be a completely different age, or socioeconomic status, not be as smart as you, be a dog person when you prefer cast - and you can still have a wonderful time together. 

As long as you don’t expect more than that, and neither does your play mate. 

This is also how deeper friendships often start: you pursue an interest and then meet someone else who is also obsessed with feminist crocheting and you hit it off and become fast friends. 

But that is not at all necessary - you can just keep enjoying your shared activity and not see each other outside of that bubble container. 

Then there’s the next layer or level of the pyramid: someone you like to chat with and who likes to chat with you; who is interested in similar things. 

Let’s call them your chat chum. 

You can have a whole bunch of these around lots of different topics: work, special interests, life, philosophy, etc. 

There will probably be some things you enjoy DOING together (level 1) AND there are things you enjoy TALKING about and sharing. 

Then we get to the 3rd level: that of intimacy and empathy: the ‘feeling friends’. 

These are the people you share stuff with that you deeply care about - and who reciprocate. They care about you and your experiences, thoughts, and feelings. And you care about theirs. You support and encourage each other. 

And then there’s the 4th and final level, the top of the pyramid: what is sometimes termed the ‘sure shelter’. 

This is someone you trust to always have your back, that you can call in the middle of the night if shit happens, that you know is there for you. 

Now here’s the thing: most people will only tick one or two of these boxes. 

They may be super fun to talk to, but not so much to hang out with - and vice versa. 

This is where you as a smart human have to manage your expectations. 

Don’t demand from someone you have just met at a woodworking workshop to tick all those four boxes. 

Be open to it, be curious, for sure - but for now simpy be delighted that you have found a new friend to practice woodworking with. 

Don’t expect them to listen to you pontificating on the dire state of primary schools, or to come pick you up when your car has run out of petrol, or to encourage you and cheer you on in your business or career. 

They may - and that’s super fun, but they also may not - and that is NOT a problem.

It doesn’t disqualify them from being your friend. 

So, if you’re a smart human who wants more friends, you’re probably thinking this is all very well, but HOW THE HELL DO YOU MEET MORE INTERESTING PEOPLE?

I promise I’ll get to that - but first you’ll have to let go of your crazy high expectations. 

OK? 

OK. 

Second: accept that you’ll have to work a bit harder to find people you like, because you have a rather exclusive taste. 

Not everybody is going to be your friend - and that’s OK. 

So go to places, join clubs and spaces that tend to attract an above-average number of smart people. 

Think about these in all areas of your life: career, business, sports, nature, games, creativity, etc. 

What things do you enjoy that historically a lot of smart people have enjoyed? Go find a group doing that.

Also: don’t give up after your first try. Don’t immediately decide that everyone else is stupid. Or that if they haven’t asked you for your number they must not be interested. 

Some people (like me) are shy, or socially inept, or completely overwhelmed - and often a combination of the above. 

If you think someone would be an amazing friend give it a couple of tries to meet up with them for a first cup of coffee or play date. 

Give them the benefit of the doubt. 

And then when they do that first thing that ‘disappoints’ you, check in with yourself. 

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Are you the perfect friend? 

And then, but only then, decide whether you need to reevaluate the friendship. 

But before you start any of this, I want you to do something else. 

Get clear on all the underlying beliefs and rules you have around friendships. 

Write them all down. 

These could include things like:

•  ‘friends never talk about friends behind their back’ (which for me is non-negotiable, but feel free to decide otherwise);
• ‘Friends always want to hang out with each other’ (no comment);
• ‘Friends never forget about my birthday (which would preclude me from being your friend); to 
• Friends should message me back within 12 hours.

Get honest with yourself and make your list. 

And then take a good, honest look at it. 

Are ALL of these necessary? Or do they only apply to the top level of the friendship pyramid? 

If so, which ones are you happy to let go of in your quest for more friends?

Make that list, and create some room and flexibility in the way you consider the whole concept of friendships. 

And then go find some new, fun friends, whether virtually or in real life! 

Have a fabulous, friend-filled week, 

Else a.k.a. Coach Kramer

Are you ready to stop feeling unfocused, overstretched and disconnected? Then I can help. DM me on LinkedIn, or Instagram to learn how you can work with me, or email me via podcast@elsekramer.com. 

Thank you for listening to the Managing the Smart Mind Podcast, I love that at 

the time of recording this, there are smart humans listening in 93 countries! I really appreciate you - do send me any questions or requests for topics you have. And if you enjoy the podcast I’d love for you to give it a five-star review so other smart humans can find it - thank you!