Remember the movie A Few Good Men? Well, this has absolutely nothing to do with that, except the similarity in the title. But the message was too obvious not to borrow.
Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Worse yet, you wake up too early, go back to sleep, and the second time you wake up you feel like you got hit by a tractor-trailer? It was one of those mornings.
Everything felt like shit. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing but problems and zero joy. I couldn’t bring myself out of it with any of the various techniques I know so well I could probably teach them. None of them were working. I felt like I was at the bottom of a 100-foot well and couldn’t even see the daylight.
And then one of my favorite people called.
More precisely, he was on a long drive home and I was at home, figuratively sitting under a pile of shit at the bottom of that well.
We talked about everything, like we always do. We shared what we were up to. He was going to see a surgeon about a potential hip replacement. I told him about my recovery from a torn meniscus using self-administered Emsculpt to strengthen the muscles around my knee rather than having surgery. He told me about avoiding what was supposed to be shoulder surgery by trying acupuncture instead. Three years later, his shoulder is still doing great, and despite the tear still showing on my MRI, so is my knee. In both cases, surgery had been recommended, and in both cases we found something else that worked for us.
We compared notes, shared what we’d learned, talked about what we were working on and tried to help each other. It was so much fun just sharing our experiences that I could practically cry thinking about it.
And you know what we didn’t spend even one minute talking about? My shitty mood.
I mentioned it for about one second when I first picked up the phone. He asked how I was doing. I said, “Yeah, great. Not really.” And that was pretty much the end of it. We moved right on to talking about things that actually mattered to us.
Nobody analyzed my mood. Nobody tried to fix me. Nobody felt sorry for me. There was no pity party and no discussion about how terrible everything was. We just started sharing experiences that might actually help each other physically, talking about what we had learned and what we were doing with our lives.
And somewhere along the way, without either of us even trying, my mood lifted.
That’s the part that struck me. Feeling better wasn’t the subject of the conversation. It was the side effect of the conversation.
And here’s the point of all this: I’m now on track for a great day. What did it take?
A few good friends.
And maybe that’s worth thinking about. A good friend doesn’t necessarily feel sorry for you or join your pity party. Sometimes a good friend simply reminds you, without even trying, that there are interesting things to talk about, problems to solve, experiences to share and things still worth looking forward to.
So take a look at the people in your life. Pay attention to how you feel after you talk to them. Cherish the ones who lift you, and make sure you’re doing the same for them. Because whatever this strange journey called life actually is, it’s a hell of a lot better with a few good friends.
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