Reading Time: < 1 minuteCall Your Friends and Nurture Your Connections
Simple Instructions:
- Each day this week, contact a good friend (or someone you’d like to be closer with) via phone call.
- You can choose an activity to do together, have a conversation, or just check in.
- Contact a new friend each day or a few friends multiple times, but strive to contact at least three different people over the course of the week.
Why Is This Practice Important?
Having a group of close friends (as little as two or three) is positively correlated with happiness and life satisfaction, yet many of us don’t put in the needed effort to maintain and cultivate our friendships.
Instead, we treat them as last priority, to be pursued only after work and family obligations.
This week, we’ll put friendship first, rekindling dormant relationships and getting the benefits of social connection — happiness, a sense of belonging, and a more complete lifestyle. In the process we’ll use the power of voice to cultivate our relationships, forgoing texts and emails in favor of a more personal medium of communication.
Jon Gilson is a coach and writer, and the former CEO of the Whole Life Challenge.
Previously, he founded Again Faster Equipment, a functional fitness equipment company created to serve the CrossFit community. Established in 2006, Jon took the Company global in 2012, twice landing on the Inc. 500/5000 list of America’s fastest growing private companies.
From 2007 to 2013, he served as a Senior Lecturer for CrossFit, Inc., training aspiring CrossFit trainers at over 100 seminars, including engagements in Iceland, Afghanistan, Moscow, Holland, the United States, and Canada. Jon also served on the CrossFit L1 Advisory Board, helping establish policy for the organization’s training efforts from 2011 to 2013.
He’s also done stints in state government, gym management, and consulting — and currently teaches classes at CrossFit City Line.
Jon graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2003, summa cum laude, with a B.A. in Psychology. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Finance and Control from the Harvard Extension School, 2006, and has completed coursework in data analytics.
Previously, he founded Again Faster Equipment, a functional fitness equipment company created to serve the CrossFit community. Established in 2006, Jon took the Company global in 2012, twice landing on the Inc. 500/5000 list of America’s fastest growing private companies.
From 2007 to 2013, he served as a Senior Lecturer for CrossFit, Inc., training aspiring CrossFit trainers at over 100 seminars, including engagements in Iceland, Afghanistan, Moscow, Holland, the United States, and Canada. Jon also served on the CrossFit L1 Advisory Board, helping establish policy for the organization’s training efforts from 2011 to 2013.
He’s also done stints in state government, gym management, and consulting — and currently teaches classes at CrossFit City Line.
Jon graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2003, summa cum laude, with a B.A. in Psychology. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Finance and Control from the Harvard Extension School, 2006, and has completed coursework in data analytics.
