How to be a Friend (In an Unfriendly World)

BARNET BAIN is a filmmaker, author, and former core faculty member at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University. He works with business leaders and individuals to achieve their full potential. Through his creativity workshops, Barnet expands his clients’ ideas of what’s possible for themselves and for the people they care about.

• Introduction xviiPrologue xxiiiPart I Separation 1Chapter 1 The Stories That Shape Our Relationships 3The First Story 6The Second Story 8The Walls Between Us 11Rethinking Self-Mastery 13Chapter 2 Competition Versus Connection 17The Cult of Crushing It 19The Dark Side of Competition 20               Exhausting Schadenfreude 21Chapter 3 Friendship as a Portal of Awakening 23The Awakening 26A Call to Aliveness 29Waking Up Inside the Second Story 31Where We’re Going Next 33Part II Healing 35Chapter 4 Becoming a Safe Harbor: Understanding State-Bound Experiences 37The Jägermeister Effect 39Signals That Tell Us We’ve Fallen Out of the Present 41The Gift of Understanding Our Patterns 44Seeing the Body in a New Light 46Why We Get Triggered So Quickly 47Chapter 5 Becoming a Friend to Our Hurts, Triggers, and Patterns 51Our Internal Protectors 54Choiceless Choices 56Outthinking Life: Our Personal Narratives Put to Use 60Venturing Out Beyond Limitation 61Through the Doorway of Vulnerability 62Chapter 6 Releasing the Pain Held in the Body 65The Gift of Remorse 68Holding Grief 68The Beauty in Our Brokenness 69The Moment of Forgiveness 71Chapter 7 The Embrace of Awareness 75The Freedom of Awareness 77Simple Tools to Soothe Your Nervous System 78Out Beyond the First and Second Stories 80Part III Revelation 83Chapter 8 The Nine Tools of Friending 85Friending Yourself: The Antidote to Ghosting 88Tool #1: Strive to Provide Safety for Another 90Tool #2: Strive to Reduce the Fear of Loss for Another 94Tool #3: Strive to Reduce the Fear of Humiliation and Shame 96Tool #4: Strive to Honor Where Another Is Coming From—and Where They Are Going 99Tool #5: Seek to Provide Pleasure to Another 101Tool #6: Seek to Listen Deeply to Another 102Tool #7: Strive to Prioritize a Friendship with Commitment, Time, and Space 104Tool #8: Seek to Forgive 106Tool #9: Seek to See Another More Clearly 108Compassion in Action 110Chapter 9 Alone, Not Abandoned 113Loneliness: The Uninvited Guest 114Solitude: The Choice to Turn Inward 115Self-Compassion and the Nine Tools 116Loneliness in the Digital Age 118Chapter 10 The Third Story 121The Heartened Hero 125Life Beyond Uncertainty— Making Friends with Flow 128The Dance of Pleasure and Mystery 129Chapter 11 Lucid Living 133Freedom Beyond the Mind 135Through the Eyes of Curiosity and Wonder 137“Everyone I See Is Me”: Opening to the Inconceivable 140From Lucid Dreaming to Lucid Living 143Atonement 145Chapter 12 Every Story Is a Love Story 147The End of Otherness 151Acknowledgments 157About the Author 159Index 161