The Friendship Experiment: 36 Questions That Create Deep Female Friendships (Pt. 1/3)

0:00...by asking a series of 36 very specific personal questions in three sets of kind of stages. So stage one being easy, stage two being a little bit deeper, stage three being pretty deep and pretty personal. In the spirit of launching FSC 2.0 and our friendship circle and private group chat, I am really interested in exploring how we can create female friendships within FSC and how we can create friendships and new connections as women in our 30s. So I want to get this line right, But one of the main patterns the original study found linked to closeness between people is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.

0:55So basically, the more real and honest you get with each other, the closer you get. and we're not going to do this but in the study they the two people who would be asking and answering the questions with each other you then stare into each other's eyes for four minutes at the end which I don't know if you've done that kind of thing but it's really intense I did this thing called Landmark back in like, I'm going to say 2015, 2014, maybe. And one of the exercises that they get you to do with, you know, a hundred strangers in a room is line up and you have to stare into a stranger's eyes. I think they do it for a minute or something.

1:44And it is like so deeply confronting as someone who like I look all over the shop I'm kind of like not someone that's great at like continued deep eye staring um it's really full-on and you can feel a lot of emotion from the other person you can feel if they're nervous or if they're becoming emotional or I don't know anyway they do that in the experiment we're not going to do that we're aiming for friendships. And you know what could be cool though, as a side thought is if we did IRL events and we did the eye staring, mama, that could be interesting. Okay. Where are we? My notes. Yes. So I don't know if you feel like this, but I definitely feel like this as we get older.

2:37and you know when I compare like my 20s to my 30s friendships become harder to make it becomes harder to find people who have you know similar spirit or shared interests or kind of like the time overlap you know we're so busy everyone has so many commitments and family and friends and the gym and you know all these things going on that it can be kind of tricky to to go out and meet new people and create friendships because there's often you know work networking events or there's like fitness type clubs but like there's this like in between bit where I think there's an opportunity to bring people together for soft socializing and fun and discussion centered around friendship and female friendship so we're going to do the friendship experiment we're going to do it online we're going to do it IRL as well with events and we're going to do this as a three-part mini series where I'm going to go through the sets of questions.

3:55I actually haven't read them like with my answers prepped. I'm going to do it on the fly and like see how it goes. But I'm going to do three sets and then we're going to do the same in the group chat. So if you're a fangirl, if you're an FSC fangirl, please come join us. The link is in the show notes below or wherever you're listening. Check out the description and come hang, come do the friendship experiment with us. I'm excited. Before we jump into today's episode, I just want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors, OmniSend, who are the best ever and are making this episode possible.

4:41So thank you, OmniSend. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at OmniSend. If you're an e-com founder, you're probably paying premium prices for features you've never even touched. But OmniSend gives you the same power, email, SMS, segmentation, advanced automation, for up to 35 % less than the big names. And their customers generate$79 back for every dollar they spend. And that's not some standard marketing claim, that's their actual data. Experts trust it, rookies love it, and if you're switching from another platform, their team handles the whole migration process for free. Use code FSC for 30 % off your first three months by going to omnisend.com forward slash FSC or clicking the link in the show notes below.

5:29All right, questions. Here we go. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest? I find these questions so interesting because I'm like okay but would it actually be someone that I like am answering but then I'm worried about like the judgment of what my answer is am I meant to be like thinking about this in terms of someone that I can no longer have dinner with anymore like my grandma or is it someone who's like who I admire that like I would never actually get to have dinner with okay let's think about this who would I want to have dinner with I would want to have dinner with my grandma she was the best god I actually can't talk about it without crying but we would cook apricot chicken and we would say grace and I would love that.

6:32All right. Question number two, would you like to be famous in what way? Hell yeah, I would want to be famous in another life. I'm a K-pop star. I love, I love performing. I wouldn't want to be like, you know, a superstar because I think that life looks really hard and I don't have that talent clearly but I love music and dancing and I wish I had that talent I wouldn't want to be like an actor I don't I just I could never but I do love performing even though I'm shy and introverted I would love it I would love the costumes you know like the outfits I really just when I look at chicks who are so cool dancing around the stage in their rhinestone outfits and cool makeup I'm like that looks so much fun even if it didn't mean like fame but it meant like that you got to do that I feel like when you're singing and dancing you're always just having the best time

7:54so yeah maybe it's not fame though maybe it's no maybe it is fame that's an interesting one

8:07that's a hard one to answer because I feel like if you say yes to fame then you're kind of like vain or something that's a tough one I feel like I'm going to want to answer these again once I've had more time to noodle on them I should have prepped my answers oh well okay question number three before making a telephone call do you ever rehearse what you're going to say and why

8:47I don't really make telephone calls because I hate talking on the phone I'm much more of a texter because I do like to prep what I'm going to say. I don't like phone calls that take me by surprise because I don't know what's about to happen on the other side. And I think like, for example, for the podcast, it's kind of similar, I guess, to a telephone call because you're preparing to say something out loud and I do prepare and I do have notes. So yes, I rehearsed that in my head as well. I rehearse it in my head and then I'm quite nervous when I'm sitting down, like I'm nervous now. I don't know why.

9:39Even though I had kind of rehearsed this in my head. But yeah, telephone calls. I don't tend to talk on the phone a lot. and I do rehearse and I do rehearse if I send a voice note yes I do I do rehearse why why do I rehearse gosh it's tough trying to think of these on the spot I rehearse because I think I have like a disconnect between my like inner self dialogue and my outer self dialogue and the two different types of conversations I have. So I kind of like to be very prepared to try and like line them up. And also because I'm prone to a tangent and rambling and I can forget where I'm going with the conversation or where I started, I do need a little bit of rehearsal.

10:37I'm just not good at winging it basically. Question number four, what would constitute a perfect day for you? I I know the perfect day for me because my husband and I have worked really hard to make the average Tuesday the best day and that obviously involved moving back to Australia but the perfect day for me is like I wake up I don't have anything immediately in the diary I'm able to kind of just cruise into my morning vibe. I love being comfy in bed. We bring in sweetie, our little dog. We're just like snuggling her. We're cuddling each other. It's a slow morning. It's a slow wake up. Then it is having a cup of tea or like making breakfast.

11:36At the moment, I'm really into making porridge since it's winter and taking sweetie out into the grass. Again, slow morning, not rushed, letting my brain warm up, not looking at my phone. Then my perfect day is anything involving the ocean. so whether we're going to icebergs and we're going to the gym looking out watching the whales or watching the dolphins or going for a swim in a sauna in the pool or just going down to the beach and having a dip in the boogie hole that to me is just like it never gets old even if I'm not getting in the water and I'm just looking at the water I'm in like my happy place of just heaven like it's always heaven the very first time I moved to Sydney in 2011 end of 2011 I just remember being so in love with living by the beach and I thought that I would have the same feeling when I moved to the UK I thought that I would fall in love with moving to London and like the city vibe and it couldn't be further from the reality of what happened and moving back to Sydney at the end of 2022 I fell back into that like just bliss bubble of being able to be like near the water and near nature every single day so that is part of the perfect day is seeing the ocean being in the ocean ideally sometimes like during summer I'm in there twice a day that is the perfect day what else is a perfect day reading I love to read I read religiously I'm an avid reader I love chick lit smut I love a love story I love escapism in books I'm not like a business book reader I read for pleasure I love a biography or you know a juicy story one of my favorite books is called the spy and the traitor and it's about Russian intelligence and British intelligence and it's like I think it spans maybe six decades and it's a true it's a true story by Ben McIntyre highly recommend it amazing so reading that definitely would be part of my perfect day and it is part of my perfect day.

14:15Have to read every night. What else is part of my perfect day? I guess it's kind of like the small things, like the tiny things. I really love to cook. I love homemade food that's like healthy, but cozy and like feels like it's giving you a hug. I love home-cooked meals. That's definitely part of my perfect day. What else? I love a coffee ritual. I love going to the coffee shop and like having the coffee moment and having the coffee cup and just like sipping on a coffee. I feel like for me, the perfect day is like the basics. I do bring in joy into my days. It's not something that I do every day, but the days that I do this, I love it.

15:08So the days that I do like a swim and sauna with a friend, I have a ritual in my week with that. I love those days. I do singing lessons for joy. I love doing that. I build a kind of like a lot of small rituals and small habits around things that make me feel good. and usually they're pretty simple, and that's a perfect day for me. I'm going to bed early. Actually, you know what else is a perfect day? My husband and I stopped watching Netflix and TV and screens at nighttime and put our phones away, and instead of, you know, binging a show or something, we play a game. So we love Monopoly Deal and Harry Potter edition Monopoly Deal, and we just started playing Scrabble.

16:02I win often. I'm very competitive. But it is just the perfect way to finish the day with like a cup of tea. We end up laughing, connecting instead of kind of like sitting on the couch, zombies not interacting with each other after just interacting with a screen all day. so yeah the perfect day for me is like the simple things and the simple things that you can do you know in your week or every day that's my perfect day oh okay we're only up to five I feel like I'm rambling in all of these oh so when I said I hadn't read these through like I actually haven't read them through so I'm reading these for the first time and answering for the first time.

16:55And I feel like we are going to have to do a repeat with some more prepped answers. But for now, this is a good one. Five. When did you last sing to yourself and to someone else? So I started doing singing lessons about a year ago. And I sing to myself all the time. I sing to PA all the time. I sing to the Uber driver. I will serenade anyone, especially if I've had a couple of glasses of wine, but I am singing to myself a lot because I'm working on my kind of vocab development for my throat. I get a lot of, you know, sore throat kind of vibes, but I just love to sing. I'm someone that loves karaoke, even though I'm absolutely just the worst singer of all time.

17:43But I have these exercises that my singing coach gives me and I do them at the moment I'm singing Noah Cyrus to myself her song called July is what we're learning at the moment um and I highly recommend it singing to yourself PA doesn't sing out loud he's not like a I mean we've gotten him to sing a couple of times just to me but it's few and far between I love it when he does though six if you are able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30 year old for the last 60 years of your life which would you want oh that's such a tough one my grandpa's 91 at the moment and I feel like his mind is just like sharper than ever he can tell me stories from when he was six years old which I love stories just you know make the world brighter um stories shape everything the stories we tell ourselves the stories we tell the world people around us community stories are so important so memory I think is important and language is important and words are important he physically I'm trying to compare like where he is to then to then get to my own answer he is moving slower now at 91 he had a fall about a year ago

19:31which has made things more tricky would I prefer mind or body I think I would prefer mind I think I would prefer mind I spent a lot of time thinking and oh gosh the last 60 years of my life well I guess I'm in the last 60 years of my life which is depressing to think about I think mind I think this is what I'm gonna have to circle back to I want to think about this more more deeply because if you have a young spirit you know actually I've asked my grandpa and my mother-in-law and you know my family how old they feel. And oftentimes everyone, like the pattern is that everyone feels younger than they are like in their body.

20:31But the pattern is actually like kind of 20 years ish younger, if not more. So, you know, my mom, she still feels like she's in her thirties. My mother-in-law feels like she's in her fifties. My grandpa just feels that he is a younger man in spirit. And I actually also feel like I'm probably still mentally in my 20s. Like I still feel like I'm in my 20s because that's my spirit. So maybe, yeah, I think I would choose mind. That's a tough one. Seven. Oh, Jesus. This is morbid. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? I have never thought about that.

21:26I always feel like I'm going to live like a full life. I don't feel like I'm gonna like, you know, tragically die young. I can't believe I made it through my 20s. As an official party girl, well, retired party girl, do I have a secret hunch about how I will die? No. I feel like my grandparents on my mom's side, they also lived a really long life into the 80s and late 80s. And then on my paternal side, my grandpa is 91. My grandma died in her 80s. I feel like we've just got like, you know, good genes. So maybe yeah the answer is no I don't have a secret hunch and I feel like genetically I'm gonna live a long life number eight name three things you and your partner appear to have in common oh hmm well I think both in terms of spirit we both have kind of drive and desire for personal growth and development like spiritual development and I don't mean spiritual like woo-woo but I just mean like understanding ourselves better understanding the world better kind of that perspective or outlook in the world I think we also have in common that we're both lifelong learners we're people who we can change our perspective when we are presented with different facts or perspectives we are people who are open-minded open-minded to seeing things differently changing the way that we see the world and our world view and what else do we have in common

23:57epicureans eat well drink well and we both like to read we both read a lot which is new by the way I didn't read when I was little he I think only read his first book like in 2021 or 2020 no maybe 2021 and then became obsessed and I think I became more obsessed with reading when I discovered what I liked about reading when I understood myself better and when I learned how great Kindle is, to be honest. Nine. Okay, we nearly finished the first set. This is deep. For stage one, I'm kind of nervous for stage two. I'm not going to pre-look at them before we do stage two. So who knows where we're going to go then.

24:55Question number nine. for what in your life do you feel most grateful? Oh my God. Is it lame to say my dog, sweetie? I am so grateful for my dog. My husband and I talk about it every single day, like without fail, every single day. Sweetie is like the little love of my life. She changed my life. She makes my life so great. She is just such an uncomplicated love. It is the absolute best. And I am so grateful for that. I just feel like dogs are the absolute best. And I know I'm not meant to say that. And you know, I don't understand because I don't have kids and yada, yada, yada, but I am just so obsessed with my dog and I'm so grateful for her.

25:53Question number 10, if you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Oh, that feels deep. That triggers a little something in my psyche. I wouldn't change the way that I was raised because I definitely spent most of my life being embarrassed about my childhood, probably until my 20s. No, sorry, probably until my 30s. And because of the podcast, it wasn't until then that I came to appreciate my upbringing and how special it was. but if I could change anything I mean when you're a kid you're not not in control really are you but I guess if you could change anything I feel like it's just too deep I guess safety protection section.

27:08I'm not going to elaborate. That's it. That's it. That's what I would change.

27:1611. Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, this one, I forgot to tweak. Well, obviously because I didn't read it. But the question is, take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. I'm going to set a timer. We're going to do this in four minutes. And obviously I'm not telling my partner, I'm telling you, my new friend. Let's see. Four minutes. Okay. All right. If I've got four minutes, I'm going to break it up into sections of like stage. stage and I'm going to do it in four stages. So early childhood life, I grew up being raised by a single mom and being her only daughter.

28:07We grew up in the middle of the bush on the side of a mountain, you know, by a Creek. We lived off the land. We ate our own veggies. We killed our own chickens. I am still very scarred by a memory of plucking the feathers out of the chickens. But we had like a really beautiful, free, playful life. There was lots of freedom and independence and imagination, I guess. I was never bored. I was always, you know, off somewhere with my dog, blue boy and probably naked with no shoes on walking up the river or the creek rather. So that was my early childhood life. Then I would say, you know, that kind of beginning to my world was also, you know, that's the good side of it.

29:08There's also a dark side of it. And it absolutely shapes who I am and what I care about and why I am the way that I am. Oh my God, we're already at two and a half minutes. Okay. Way too long there. The next phase of my life, I'm going to do it in three phases. The next phase of my life is kind of like moving so that I could be more socialized with more kids and then going to boarding school, I guess you would say. So kind of the rest of my schooling years, which I would sum up as such a roller coaster. Going to boarding school in grade 11 and 12 quite literally changed my life and the direction of my life.

29:54I don't think I would have finished school if I hadn't gone to boarding school. I was such a wild child and such a handful for my mom. And my paternal grandparents on my dad's side gave me that opportunity. And that definitely changed the course of my life and and who I am. That was a pivot moment. And I think that that also kind of was the contrast to my early childhood, which was confusing to navigate as a teenager and an early adult. So my life story, God, this is hard. Honestly, I've got one minute left. My life story, I would say my life story is very different now to how it started and has given me a varied worldview on how the world operates for women, the power of money and education.

31:05and god I don't even know where to go with this this is tricky life story what is your life story how do you even answer that as a question I have too many thoughts I don't know how we're going to do this one I don't know how I'm going to finish it my life story I feel like I want to pause for one second I'm going to pause my thing 20 seconds no okay we're pausing that my life story in as much detail as possible

31:41okay I'm going again I feel like

31:48yeah I don't even know how to finish the life story I'm gonna have to circle back to that four minutes to tell your partner your whole life story or my new friends my whole life story is very short and it's making me nervous and that's a circle back moment. Oh, that's my alarm. That's the four minutes. Oh gosh. Okay. Question number 12. I feel like this has been deeper than I expected. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Singing for sure. I wish I had the voice of an angel. I absolutely don't. I know that I will not even with practice, but that's okay.

32:33But I wish that I could sing. I wish I had like natural talent that was like the natural talent that I admire in other people and singing and dancing is definitely that. Oh my gosh. Okay. That's the 12 questions. That was surprisingly difficult. I don't even know how I feel. I've got to process how we just, what just happened here and what I've said and make sure that this episode still goes live. If you want to be part of the friendship experiment, click the link in the show notes below. Come join the group chat. Come hang out with us. I want to ask you these questions. I want to get to know you and I want to see what you think.

33:26If you like this episode, obviously tell me, obviously comment or review or tell me in the group chat. If you hate this episode, you can tell me. It will hurt my heart a little bit, but I need to know if you hate it. I guess I don't need to know, but I kind of want to know if you hate it. I just want to know what you think, basically. Let me know. Come to the group chat. And I'll see you in part two.