Let's write a book about Social Fitness

I dunno, you got any better ideas?

Okay, so my book is officially out, it’s called Social Fitness: The Missing Reps for Building and Maintaining Connections in a Disconnected World, and you can get it on Amazon by clicking here is what I will be saying in the next year or two.

So thank you for coming along for the ride.

Making friends as adults is hard, mostly because we learned how to make friends as kids. Unfortunately, it’s no longer quite as easy as who’s near me → walk over → talk about the toy they’re playing with → best friends.

The process is not easy.

But the formula is simple.

For example, one of the skills you need to cultivate in order to make and strengthen deep connections with others is simply being yourself. But fuck if that’s not one of the hardest things to do—partly because we don’t even know who we are yet.

So let’s go off and discover who we are so we can then find our people?

No.

Because people are how we discover who we are. We have to build this bridge from both ends. We have to show the world the truest version of ourselves that we know. When we do, we attract our people. And our people help us dig deeper to uncover even truer versions of ourselves. Oftentimes that process results in us moving away from those people because that uncovering changes us and them—and now we show that new version, attracting our new people. And the cycle continues until you just slowly ascend into the heavens and become a saint or whatever I dunno I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Social Fitness is about your ability to build, maintain, and strengthen healthy, meaningful, and nourishing relationships over time. Some of the many questions I’m pondering:

• What would our lives look like if we treated our social health with the same intentionality we’ve learned to bring to our physical or mental health?

• What is a social rep?

• What is a social warm-up?

• How does the concept of “networking” work against us?

• How do we map this over physical fitness without it feeling unapproachable to people that aren’t familiar with the fitness world?

• What’s the smallest change you can make that gives you the biggest social result? Makes me think of Tim Ferriss talking about how if you could only do one exercise ever, he’d recommend the kettlebell swing.

• What’s the social equivalent of a five-minute walk?

• How does social media specifically fuck us?

• How did COVID quarantine specifically fuck us?

• What does rest look like? How do we know that balance?

• Do you have a question that I should be thinking about? Leave a comment below :)

I’d like Derek Thompson to write the foreword.

P.S. If you’re someone who genuinely enjoys people—but making new friends or strengthening the most important relationships in your life feels impossible or draining—book a 1:1 Social Fitness coaching session with me. Especially if connection sounds good in theory, but in practice you’re tired, busy, or not sure where to start. Click here to book.