The Art of Making Friends with Connection Feast Founder Alex Friedman

Making friends can be scary, especially as an adult.

This is why I love Connection Feast, a social wellness company that hosts events to help create community and facilitate meet-ups between people over a shared meal. Connection Feast was founded by today’s guest, Alexandra Friedman, who envisioned the company after realizing that meetups weren’t working – the connections she made at them weren’t deep enough. Finally, she decided to take control of her situation.

I attended a Connection Feast event themed on “emotional intelligence.” And I came home like, whoa. I have 10 new things to consider about myself. Whether you meet someone or not, you’re going to come home with something. These are deep events.

One reason I love talking about friendship so much is because every time I think I know a good amount about friendship, I am utterly humbled by these relationships. There’s always new things to learn from and be surprised by. You’re going to LOVE this marathon of a conversation between Alex and I (and stay tuned for part 2!)

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• How structure can help adults be more playful, and thus, make deeper connections with new acquaintances
• The emotional intimacy and vulnerability it takes to make friends as adults
• The danger of expecting reciprocity, and how that can set us up to be disappointed, especially if our friends are in different places in their lives
• When people come into our lives for short periods of time, that doesn’t make it insignificant – sometimes short friendships can offer valuable gifts
• The evolution of “big friendships” – they evolve over time, day-by-day, over sometimes mundane things

Resources & Links

Follow Alexandra on Instagram. Be sure to check out her events if you’re local to Seattle, and tune in next time to hear the rest of our marathon of a conversation about friendship!

Also, I strongly recommend the book we talked about, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram!

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!