Showing Up
How I stopped flaking on my friends.
A few years ago, I decided to be a better friend.
I don’t know whether it was my love for my friends or my fear of losing them that motivated me to pursue this goal. Whatever the reason, I knew that my actions did not reflect my values; I valued friendship, but I was accustomed to canceling last-minute, or “flaking,” on my friends.
Work stress, introversion, and the lack of palpable consequences for my absenteeism perpetuated my flakiness. It had become a bad habit.
To be a better friend, I set a new intention for myself. I was going to show up. I was determined to break the cycle.
Challenges
Time Scarcity
I was a victim of time scarcity. I worked as an Engineering Manager at a growth-stage company. I had many reports, attended many meetings, and pressured myself to do more, faster. I lost the ability to zoom out and consider my real priorities.
“I’m so sorry, I have so much work left to do tonight. Can we reschedule?” was something I said often.
While in the throes of scarcity, you lose the ability to make rational decisions; your choices will involuntarily skew towards solving the scarcity problem. When you’re hungry, your mind searches for food. When you’re short on time, your mind searches for time. I flaked because it seemed irresponsible not to.
Consequence-Based Decision Making
If I skipped work meetings my team would notice and we would fall behind — an unacceptable consequence. If I skipped dinner with friends, they would forgive me — an acceptable consequence?
This consequence-based way of thinking had two drawbacks:
- It left no room for a thoughtful evaluation of priorities. Friendship was more valuable to me than work. It deserved at least as much time and effort.
- It overlooked any long-term damage caused by consistently flaking. My friends may forgive me now, but they might stop calling me in the future.
Ego
Before a gathering, I’d compute the ROI for my time: “What would make me happy right now — staying home in my sweats and watching Community, or getting up, getting dressed, and socializing with a bunch of people?” I frequently chose complacency and alone-time. I convinced myself that no one would notice if I didn’t attend.
I failed to factor friendship into my calculus. I thought about what would make me happy, not what would make my friend happy. I also conveniently overlooked my hypocrisy in assuming my friends wouldn’t notice my absence. I always noticed when my friends came to my gatherings and missed them when they didn’t.
Rewards
My intention to show up wasn’t a moonshot idea. It simply meant showing up at a predetermined place and time.
I needed to swap my habit of flaking with the new habit of showing up. Replacing an old habit is hard, but the rewards from this new habit abounded and fueled its progress.
Conversations with friends provided a reprieve from work stress.
Meetings with friends allowed me to move from a place of scarcity and stress to a place of support and security. Stepping away to meet a friend whom I felt safe around reminded me that my life, despite my work stress, provided plenty to be thankful for.
Conversations with friends and breaks from my work lifted the dark veil of time scarcity and exposed the facts: most of my work tasks were non-urgent, and I needed to relax more. No houses were on fire, and no walls were caving in.
Keeping commitments with my friends improved my time management.
I started viewing my appointments with friends as immovable and planned my work around them. This extra constraint led to more innovation in how I managed my time: I scrutinized the priorities of my work tasks, delegated the tasks that I didn’t need to do, and closed the tasks that nobody needed to do.
Treating my friend-dates as set in stone dispelled the illusion that I didn’t have enough time to spare on friendship and resulted in an unintended benefit — it made me a better manager.
Gatherings became opportunities to create deeper bonds with my friends.
When I viewed gatherings from a place of ego and complacency, they appeared bothersome because they meant changing out of my sweats. When I viewed them through the lens of friendship, they became opportunities to support my friends and create deeper bonds with them.
Some gatherings proved more fruitful for my friendships than one-on-one meetings did. Seeing my friends around their other friends revealed sides of them that I hadn’t yet been exposed to. My friends became more vibrant and multi-dimensional before my very eyes.
I never regretted attending a gathering. And though I sometimes made a deal with myself to leave early, I rarely did.
Conclusion
To successfully show up, I needed to remind myself how much I valued friendship. “Friendship is important to me,” and “I am showing up because I care about my friends,” became my mantras. If I didn’t care about my friendships, I would not have been successful at showing up.
I was surprised to learn that it didn’t matter whether my friends noticed or reciprocated my efforts to show up more. Showing up for my friends and living by my values has been gratifying in itself.
It feels good to be a good friend.
Thank you to my rockstar friends who’ve served as my inspiration by showing me how to show up. Thank you to other friends who’ve called me out for my flakiness and demanded more from me. See you soon!
Thank you, Dilan, Amitt, and Compound Writing for the helpful reviews!
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