In our previous lesson, we learned about the formula of friendship which are the four factors that determine how deep our relationships with others go.

However, if all you do is employ these four factors, you are not guaranteed to befriend others.

This is because there is one rule that you have to stick to.

In order to make sure that you are developing friendships and not making enemies instead, it's called the golden rule of friendship.

Now, a couple of years ago I hung out with this girl. Let's call her Stacey who told me that she struggled with making long-lasting relationships.

Stacey didn't have any childhood friends,

She didn't have any high-school buddies and even her co-workers rarely asked her to hang out.

she always felt like the people she befriended did not stay loyal to her.

And at the time, I didn't know what she was doing wrong.

But after years of learning about social skills and thinking back to the way Stacey interacted around others,

I started to realize that it was because she always broke the golden rule of friendship.

The golden rule of friendship states that if you want people to like you you have to make them feel good.

If you make people feel good, they will want to be around you more.

But if you make them feel bad, they will avoid you.

It sounds pretty simple, but there are many, many ways that people accidentally break this rule

In fact, Stacey broke this rule in three different ways.

See, the thing is Stacey had what we New Yorkers call a resting bitchface.

It's a combination of a subtle frown combined with glazed over eyes plastered on your face 24/7.

It kind of looks something along the lines of this.

This was the first way that Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship - by having bad body language.

See the body language she portrayed made it seem like she wasn't interested in you, what you were saying, and that she was unhappy when you interacted with her.

When you speak to someone and they look unhappy and uninterested,

you think to yourself, "Oh, is what I'm saying boring? Is she even listening to me? Should I just leave?"

And if this happens over and over again, you will instinctively try to avoid them in the future

Nobody wants to talk to someone who seems uninterested in whatever they're saying.

Now you're probably wondering,

"Improvement Pill, what sort of body language should we be using to prevent something like this?

What are some examples of good body language? what are some examples of bad ones?"

Well, don't worry, because we're gonna dive deep into that with multiple videos in the next portion of the beefriend course.

But for now, let's talk about the second way Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship.

So I remember a specific interaction that I had with Stacy.

I was telling her story of how I did poorly in high school, how I didn't have a good social life,

but also how I was able to make changes and get out of rock bottom.

Now, this is a pretty personal story that I hold dear to my heart. It's a story that I'm very proud of, and it's a story that I seldom tell people.

But at around the halfway point, before I could finish my story, Stacey butted in and she started telling me a story about her struggles in high school.

How she had a harder time than me making friends and how her rock bottom was way worse than mine.

The second way that Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship was by making everything about herself

See the thing is the majority of people enjoy talking about themselves. It feels good to tell a story and have people listen to you

But when someone cuts you off and proceeds to tell their own story, they're doing two things.

Number one, they're telling you that they don't care about you or your story, which is a terrible feeling.

And number two, they're telling you that they want you to listen to them to make them feel good and not the other way around.

If you constantly redirect the conversation back to yourself, you're essentially asking everyone else to give you something without getting anything back in return.

I think this was actually the biggest reason as to why Stacy didn't have any long-lasting relationships, because she made everything about herself.

Now before we get into the third and final way Stacy screwed up, I do want to mention something really really fast.

We all know going through a course like the Beefriend course or the Tamed course is effective, but it's nowhere nearly as powerful as committing to a hands-on coaching program.

If you are interested in this and you're willing to invest money in yourself, please sign up for my mailing list, using the link in the description box below to receive future updates.

Now there are thousands of different things you can talk about when you hang out with someone else.

And the sort of topics you choose to discuss can have a huge impact on the overall interaction.

Stacy like to talk about her past; how she used to be skinnier, how she used to have nicer hair.

When we ate together, she liked to complain about the food and how the service that this one wasn't so great.

She was super critical of everything.

The third and final way Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship was by talking too much about negative things

Think about this, when you talk about something negative what sort of emotion are you bringing to the table?

While depending on what you're talking about it could be a wide variety of things such as anger, disgust, jealousy, sadness, etc.

But all of these emotions have one thing in common: they don't feel good.

When you talk about negative things, you're not only sharing the words and stories but also the emotions that go along with them

So if you tell a story about how your dog died people will feel your sadness.

If you tell a story about how your girlfriend cheated on you, people will feel some of your anger.

There's a time and place for stories like this, but you have to be very careful about these types of things,

especially if you've just started to get to know someone, because they make people feel bad.

And if you do this too often, they will start to associate you with all of those negative emotions and avoid you.

If you look at the formula of friendship, Stacey was doing all of the right things.

She would go partying with people quite often,

so she had good proximity, good frequency, good duration and good intensity.

However she did not employ the golden rule of friendship.

In fact, she broke the rule over and over again, which meant that she eventually made more enemies than friends.

People started hating her because she stuck to the formula friendship but made them feel bad at the same time.

Think of the golden rule of friendship as a plus or negative sign in front of our equation so far.

If you stick to it your friendships will grow, but if you break it, people will start to hate you.

It's a simple simple rule that you must keep inmind during all of your future interactions.

Now before we start talking about body language, there is one more foundational concept that I must teach you.

It's something so powerful that it can potentially two times, three times, heck even five times the speed of which you can befriend others and deepen your relationships with them.

It's the importance of value.

Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon because we're gonna cover that in our next lesson and I don't want you to miss it.

Besides that, guys, stay tuned.