Why it pays to get out of your comfort zone

04/09/24 • 11 min

3 Listeners

In Class 2 of our course on friendship, you’ll learn how to get out of your comfort zone when it comes to fostering new friendships and resuscitating old ones. Cristina talks to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax about doable ways to make real-life connections at a time when technology makes that seem hard. Friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson makes the case that spending time with friends can be as simple as some shared errands. And Bob Waldinger is back to explain how we don’t always know what we actually want from interactions with other people. It turns out, we might surprise ourselves.

For more advice on how to navigate all sorts of relationships, read columns by The Post’s Carolyn Hax.

Subscribe to The Washington Post and connect your subscription in Apple Podcasts.

For more advice on how to navigate all sorts of relationships, read columns by The Post’s Carolyn Hax.

Subscribe to The Washington Post and connect your subscription in Apple Podcasts.

Previous Episode

Are you socially fit?

In the first class of our course on making the most of your friendships, host Cristina Quinn learns what it means to be socially fit — and why it’s never too late to start getting those reps in. Cristina talks to Bob Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development — the longest longitudinal study on human happiness — about why friendships matter for our health and what we can do to assess our connections. He gives practical advice for how to take stock of, reinvest in or rethink our relationships, with exercises that can work as an ongoing social fitness regimen.

You can learn more about the Harvard Study of Adult Development here. Waldinger and his colleague wrote a book, “The Good Life,” that includes more tips for finding satisfaction in human relationships.

Subscribe to The Washington Post and connect your subscription in Apple Podcasts.

Next Episode

When to call it quits

In the third and final class of our course on how to make the most of your friendships, we offer guidance for what to do when things go wrong. Making friendships work requires adjusting expectations, having difficult conversations and sometimes deciding when parting ways is for the best. This class unpacks practical tips for doing each of these things, with guidance from Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax and friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson.

For more advice on how to navigate all sorts of relationships, read columns by The Post’s Carolyn Hax. Find Danielle Bayard Jackson’s podcast, Friend Forward, here.

Subscribe to The Washington Post and connect your subscription in Apple Podcasts.