Ep 001: Intro to Social the podcast
Show Notes:
Welcome to our Podcast. Here at Social we explore ways to connect and develop relationships.
To Review and buy the book This Link will take you to Amazon.
Brené Brown and her TED talk on vulnerability
Johann Hari and his TED talk on addiction
Addiction and the Rat Park experiments
Transcription:
Josh: Hello and welcome to Social, the power of Relationships podcast. Today we want to introduce the podcast and the purpose of the podcast. Jason wrote a fantastic book called Social: The Power Of Relationships, and that’s what this podcast is based on.
0:44 Jason: What do we want to accomplish with the podcast? The first thing is we want to help people understand how to network and why social can be so powerful in your relationships and in your life.
Josh: We’re trying to present to everyone the power that can be found in relationships, and therefore, why you should be seeking relationships, and furthermore how to do that; how to build those relationships.
1:50 Josh: What is the power of a relationship? I think the power is love and it’s connection. But what does that do for us in our lives?
Jason: It brings us fulfillment. And it brings us opportunities. When you have a relationship with someone, you’re able to be open with them and network and connect and help each other pursue whatever it is you want to fulfill in your life.
2:20 Jason: I went backpacking around the world for nine months with less than $3,000. That was one of the hardest things I had ever done, but the only way I was able to accomplish that feat was connecting with other people. Building relationships and networking. I spent most of that time painting houses, managing clothing stores, milking cows on a farm, taking care of horses on a horse farm, and hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking is another one of those major ones where you have to really know people and be able to build that rapport quickly.
Josh: So do you feel like you learned most of that while backpacking or did you already know how to do these things before you left?
3:30 Jason: I had a pretty good idea before I left and the trip was a way for me to practice and hone my skills. Before, I struggled a lot as a child trying to make friends and connect with people. I grew up as a homeschooler in the backwoods of Virginia. I loved my childhood, but it really made me kind of disconnected from reality in a sense. I really didn’t know how to make friends, and my interests were really different from normal people. I loved camping out in the woods with just a pocket knife. I loved playing pretend, which is similar to other kids, but I took it to another level.
Josh: You can find a group of people that are interested in anything that you are interested in.
5:10 Jason: I first started making connections when I served a proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for two years. During that time I learned one of the key principles that has led me, and that was really serving other people, and committing my life to really loving and helping someone. On my mission that was helping the strangers that we came across on the street. At one point I completely put aside the idea of trying to share my faith verbally because people don’t always accept that well. But people do accept service. And I found that you share what you believe by how you live your life. And I spent most of that time serving, helping other people. And these strangers that I could find, helping them any way I could, whether they needed someone to talk to, or helping them with their gardens and things, and that started me on this path of really understanding how to build these relationships.
Josh: Because you were getting something from that experience. What was it that you were getting from building these relationships in this way that you’re describing that you weren’t getting anywhere else?
Jason: I was getting fulfillment. I found purpose. And peace. That’s what I found most of all.
6:50 Josh: I’ve done a lot of research into addictions over the years, and one of my favorite authors and researchers is a woman named Brene Brown. She’s just brilliant. Another one is Johann Hari, who did a Ted Talk about the real cause of addiction, which is really fascinating. He says that basically the root cause of addiction is disconnection. And what we need to heal addiction is connection. Genuine, deep, vulnerable connection.
7:50 Josh: Over in Portugal they had a really big drug problem for years, and they were putting all this money into fighting the drug war. Which we have here in America. And we’re experiencing the same thing they were, which is they were losing. Majorly losing. They were fighting and arresting and doing raids and trying to blow up these drug cartels. And they were losing big time. And what they finally did, back in the early 2000’s, they said we’re going to decriminalize the use of all drugs, and then we’re going to spend the money that we were using on fighting the drug dealers and such on drug rehab facilities where we help people learn how to reconnect into society. And so instead of arresting people for using drugs, they would get them into these facilities and help them connect with other people, and their drug usage rates have dropped dramatically over the last decade or so. And that is the power of relationships.
9:12 Jason: Another one that comes to mind is this other [experiment] on lab rats where they had placed these lab rats by themselves and gave them two options: they could drink water or they could drink water laced with a really addictive drug. And the rats would drink the addictive drug to death. And then a few years down the line they decided to try the experiment again, but this time instead of having the rats be alone, they put them in basically “rat heaven” where they had all these other rats that they could associate with and they had toys there. Things that these rats could enjoy. And they still placed those two options of the water or the laced water. And very few of the rats went for the addictive drug. A few of them would drink occasionally, but they would never kill themselves with it.
Josh: Rats are social creatures like we are. They need connection. They need other rats to connect to. And they also had a lot of toys and things to play with so they had lots of ways to engage in their world.
11:15 Josh: So I think that moving forward in this podcast, what you can learn from us is to learn the skills to be able to develop relationships in your life that will bring this kind of fulfilling power into your life that will help you in many ways to be able to find joy, happiness, peace. To be able to find help overcoming addictions. To be able to find help with depression or anxiety or anything like that.
Jason: Helping with networking. Not only having the concepts in mind of how to be social but also how to find the right people to connect with. With the type of interests that you have. The type of strengths that you have. And when you get to those places where those people hang out, then know how to interact with them. What to say, and how to be yourself.
Josh: Because the book goes into some detail about the mechanics of what to do. We like to talk about how we need relationships, but we don’t know how to do it. And that’s one thing that I really liked about reading your book. It goes into some detail and it gives some practical examples and practical skills to be able to form a party or go to a place where you don’t know anybody and fit in.
Jason: How do you deal with those anxieties when you come into a crowd with hundreds of people?
Josh: Yeah. And the book goes into some depth on that. So that’s what you can expect from us in this conversation and we are so thrilled to have you on board. And hope that we can make connections with you through this podcast and help you learn how to make more connections and deepen the ones that you already have.
Jason: Come with us on this journey as we explore the concept of being social. And thanks so much for listening today guys, and as we go throughout this podcast we will share all the different things in the book, but if you’d like to get ahold of those things right away you can go to SocialThePower.com and sign up for our emailing list or you can buy the book there or on Amazon.com.
—–
Subscribe to our emailing list
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram
