A motivational speaker stunned his followers on social media with an eight-minute technique for helping your friends who might be struggling with life’s woes.
We all have our own ways of dealing with stress and fighting back the dreaded black dog. But sometimes, we have to reach out for a helping hand for mental health issues.
Helping your struggling friends
Simon Sinek is an author and inspirational speaker with 10 books and a viral TED talk with over 64 million views. When he’s not speaking in front of enormous crowds, Simon posts his speeches to flourishing social media accounts on Instagram, and YouTube.
Recently, the 50-year-old took to TikTok with a video that has since accumulated over 1.9 million views and 217k likes. In the clip, he shared a genius mental health technique for supporting your friends during hard times.
Simon explained that his friend Maria was going through a horrible time but hadn’t reached out for support. This frustrated him.
“I went to her house for dinner and she was telling me about this awful time that she had been going through,” he said. “I wanted to be sympathetic but I was really p****d off that she didn’t call me.”
When Simon asked Maria why she had not reached out, she returned served with a plethora of text messages she had earlier sent asking him to come over. Of course, these messages were along the lines of “Want to come over?”
Though Simon was unable to read between the lines and see that his friend needed help, they devised a technique for cutting through the noise.
“She read an article that said when somebody’s struggling, all they need is eight minutes of help or support from a friend,” he revealed. “So we came up with a code. We write ‘Do you have eight minutes?’ it means I need you.”
He finished off his monologue with the idea that anyone can find eight minutes to spend supporting a friend or family member.
Turns out it’s a popular technique
Shockingly, many of Simon’s followers confessed to already using the 8-minute technique to support their friends.
“I have adopted the ‘do you have 8 minutes?’ with my friend group as well, it’s working,” one person said.
A second person wrote: “I have a friend that calls me every day at 5:30 pm to see if I’m ok. she’s been doing this for 3 years now.”
“Speaking for myself, when you’re IN it, reaching out is SO, SO hard, and if you get rejected, exponentially, harder,” another said.
