The magical power of friendship resolutions
An activity to set intentions with your friends
Part of the inspiration behind Forevers is that we believe friendship deserves more intention in our lives. So, during this time of year that is traditionally used for goal setting, why not think beyond how you want to grow and also consider how you want your friendships to flourish? Better yet, why not do this alongside your closest friends?
Setting intentions with someone you love is nothing short of magical.
It's a moment for connection, for shared dreaming and affirming the ways you want each other in your lives. It creates a circle of accountability, a promise to someone who you care deeply about keeping promises to. And, it lightens the workload of actually making this intention a reality by splitting it in two!
We know firsthand how easy it is to fall into the "someday" trap of delaying one-on-one dreams with your friend. For example, though Sam and I visit each other often, we realized a few years ago that we had never taken a big, meet-each-other-somewhere-new-and-go-on-an-adventure vacation together. We had discussed the idea casually in years prior but never made any moves towards doing it.
Last year we got serious and set the intention to finally make it happen. Because of our shared commitment, we started bringing up ideas for locations during conversations, keeping the trip in mind as we were mapping out our calendars, and eventually divvying up responsibilities to solidify plans. In October, we spent a magical week in Colorado together, a trip that was a wellspring1 of some of my favorite memories from the year. (In fact, that’s where the vision for this business was born, but that’s a story for next week’s post…)
Your friendship intention doesn’t have to be this big to be impactful. I was catching up with my faraway friend Cristina recently and she shared how she’s making it a goal this year to stay in touch with friends more regularly. This opened up a conversation about how we could move from ad hoc, every-few-months-at-best phone calls to something more consistent. We decided to start by simply putting a monthly call on the calendar, and I’m so excited to have more frequent chats with her.
Like with any resolution, there’s no one-size-fits-all goal. Whether you’re dreaming big or thinking about staying connected in smaller ways, this activity is about getting explicit (and maybe a little vulnerable) with your friends about how you can better show up for and with each other.
To make this a little less daunting, we’ve put together our first-ever Forevers Focus: short bi-monthly activity prompts to do with your closest friends.
Your Forevers Focus: Set a friendship intention for this year.
Take some time with each of your dearest friends and agree on a shared focus or goal for the year.2 This can be as simple as sending a text to get the conversation flowing, or maybe you’d rather set aside dedicated time to dream about it together. The important thing is to do it!
Here are some questions you can talk through if you’re feeling stuck:
What’s something you wish we had more of in our friendship?
What’s something we used to love to do together that might be fun to try again now?
What’s something you’ve always wanted us to do together but never have?
What’s something you really value about our friendship? Are there ways we can foster that more?
If you used one word to describe your wish for our friendship this year, what would it be?
What were some of your favorite memories of us in the past year? How can we cultivate more of that?
If you want to get more playful, co-create a vision board or fill out one of those trending in/out lists or bingo cards for your friendship.
We’ll start: Our biggest intention for the year is to get Forevers off the ground so we can spend more time doing work we’re passionate about and doing it together. (Omg!!! We’re succeeding already!!3) But, since we don’t want our entire friendship to become about work, we also want to finally plan our matching tattoos.4
If you do this activity and are comfortable sharing, we’d love to hear your friendship resolutions in the comments!
Sam note: Pun intended, we drank from so many natural springs.
Sam note: If you struggle with the dissonance of deep dark winter alongside the pressure to sprout new goals and dreams, you aren’t alone. Bookmark this newsletter and schedule a hangout with your bestie on the first day of spring (March 20) instead.
Sam note: GO US! I’ll pop the champagne.
Sam note: Based on the embroidered jeans I wore the night we met.
The way my mouth dropped when I learned Sam painted that and it wasn't a random painting you found on ~the internets~. I've been thinking about friendship A LOT this past year, and even considered starting a friendship newsletter with my friend, too! So glad this is here. Welcome to Substack, Forevers.