💌 Issue 002: What are "super friends" & how to make friends as an adult, the secret to success, & more.

Welcome to the second issue of miribel.co newsletter! 👯‍♀️ The bite-sized newsletter that helps ambitious women design and shape the life that they want. Was this email forwarded to you by someone awesome? You need your own — subscribe here for free.

🔍 Today at a glance:

Length: 5 min | Readability: Grade 7 | Word Count: 1387

• "Super Friends" and how people with secure attachments win at friendships.

• Practical tactic: 6 ways to grow friendships as an adult.

• Getting an edge in life. How to succeed at something that others have tried.

• Weekly round-up of interesting articles, podcasts, and more.

🧠 "Super Friends"

It's National Friendship Month in September 👯‍♀️! The Atlantic released an article about how people who have a "secure" attachment style have a better job initiating and maintaining friendships. (BTW, if you're curious on what your attachment style is, you can learning by taking a free quiz here.)

Why does this matter? Studies find that people with this trait have better mental health; they’re more satisfied at work, more open to new ideas, and less prejudicial. Research suggests that they feel less regret; that during typically stressful events, like math tests or public-speaking engagements, they keep calm; and that they are less likely to have physical ailments such as heart attacks, headaches, ulcers, and inflammation.

One of the key practical takeaways (and most important secret!) to getting over the hurdle of taking that initiative in growing your friendships is to: Assume that people like you ❣️ The more positively we feel about ourselves, the more likely we are to assume that others like us. In both romantic and platonic relationships, too, how we think others view us isn’t necessarily fact.

When secure people assume that others like them, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy termed “the acceptance prophecy.” Danu Anthony Stinson, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, hypothesized with her colleagues that “if people expect acceptance, they will behave warmly, which in turn will lead other people to accept them; if they expect rejection, they will behave coldly, which will lead to less acceptance.”

Tempted to ask a gym friend if they want to become a happy-hour friend? Assume they do. Want to reconnect with a friend you’ve fallen out of touch with? Take that leap of faith.

♟ Practical Tactics

To learn more about practical tips on how to initiate and grow friendships, especially if you've just moved to a new city or are in a new environment (I'm in the midst of a move as I am writing this!), here are 6 ways to grow friendships as an adult.

TL;DR of the article: Ask them if they want to go on walks, try a conversation deck, ask for their help on something, connect around food, invite them into your home, and don't be afraid to be the one who cares the most.

If you want a professional perspective on how to initiate and maintain connections and friendships at work, here is a great Women in Product talk from my dear friend, Kalia Aragon, on how to make and maintain meaningful professional connections.

👀 Get an Edge in Life

Chances are, you’re probably playing it safe in your life.

It’s ok. We all kind of are.

I wanted to share this podcast that I recently listened to, and I really hope it resonates with you as much as it did for me.

The question that was asked in this podcast was:

What do you think you did differently that allowed you to succeed when other people who had similar circumstances to you did not? Where did you succeed where they did not?

To level set a bit, what is “success?”

Success means something that’s entirely different to everyone, but to simplify it, I found that the concept of “ikigai,” which literally means “your reason for being” in Japanese really encapsulates what Shaan in this podcast is describing.

How do you accomplish ikigai: essentially the concept of what you love doing, are good at, can get paid for, and what the world needs?

There are so many different perspectives I’ve heard around how to find one’s sense of “ikigai” but here are a few key points from the podcast that may be helpful:

• Luck and hard work are not the key determining factors to becoming a successful person.

• A “safe path” (e.g. defined path that is homogeneous to the common belief) is good if you want that outcome. Safe is awesome if you can get the outcome that you want with the least amount of risk taken. And it’s even better if you enjoy the process to get to that outcome. Examples often include: becoming a doctor, lawyer, consultant, etc.

• However, what if you don’t want those outcomes? Well here’s what Shaan proposes:

Get extremely clear on the life that you want. Work backwards from the outcome that you want in your life.

I would go even further to ask yourself the following questions:

• What kind of lifestyle do you want? i.e. What is the size of the prize?

• What are the tradeoffs that you are willing to make? i.e. What is your likelihood to accomplish that prize?

• What kind of work do you enjoy (or are willing to tolerate)? i.e. What is the day to day life that you would enjoy?

• What seems fun to you but might be considered work for others?

You can also get clear on the life that you want by getting clear on the life that you don’t want.

• Gather data by shadowing and chatting with the top 1% of people in the field whose lives you are curious about. See if you would want their daily lives and schedules.

To recap:

• What is the size of the prize, your likelihood to accomplish that prize, and the day-to-day life that you want?

The last point he emphasizes is:

• A “safe path” is actually risky if it doesn’t get you the outcome that you want. Choose wisely.

Hope this podcast made you think as much it did for me.

👀 Weekly Finds:

• 🧘🏻‍♀️ Self-care during dark times. Brooke Devard shares how she maintains her self-care regimen as a working mom, host of "Naked Beauty" podcast, and creator marketing lead at Instagram.

• 📈 In defense of radical self betterment. When we think about self-change, we tend to think of it as something incremental. We may be able to budge our tendencies slightly one way or the other, but on the whole, our personalities are more or less fixed. But UT Austin Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Gena Gorlin argues that more dramatic transformation is more attainable than we think.

• 🏝 Take more extended vacation. The not-so-obvious benefits of why leaders and teams should take more extended vacations to become better, more resilient, creative, and resourceful individuals. What is the experiencing vs narrating self and how can it help you in your life? Listen to find out. Spoiler: it gets really good at 23:23 - if you're rushed for time, I would start listening from there until the end!

• ✍🏼 How to carve a career path on your own terms. When embarking on an unchartered career path you are taking the road less travelled (risk) for a greater sense of fulfillment (reward). Use these 6 steps to get the process right.

• 🗣 How to actually communicate your ideas and present to executives. Figuring out how to best communicate and persuade people in a quick amount of time can be stressful. Read this article to learn how to consistently frame and approach conversations and presentations with stakeholders.

• 🎨 The art of doing nothing. Jenny Odell, an artist and the author of the book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, provides strategies for training our attention away from devices and toward the world. "You can actually perceive more sometimes by doing less. If you're silent, then you can actually hear what's around you."

Hope this week's newsletter helped and please reply to this email or submit here if you have any feedback! I'm always looking to improve and make these newsletters more useful for everyone.

That’s it for today! See you next week 💌