130: Kira Asatryan

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This week we talk to Kira Astrayan about overcoming loneliness

Kira Asatryan is certified relationship coach, author, blogger, loneliness expert, and speaker. She loves to speak publicly on the topic of loneliness, as it’s a problem of epidemic proportions in our modern times. She maintains a private coaching practice in San Francisco where she helps couples, and individuals develop closeness – the antidote to loneliness – in their relationships.

She has struggled with loneliness her whole life and has come to find that there are many others out there like her.

She has spent her coaching career researching, pondering, and reflecting upon what specifically makes relationships feel good or bad.

In This Interview, Kira Asatryan and I Discuss…

• The One You Feed parable
• Her book, Stop Being Lonely; Three simple steps to developing close friendships and deep relationships
• The new type of loneliness in modern society
• How closeness means direct access to another person’s inner world
• How knowing and caring are the two things that create closeness
• The importance of seeing others from their perspective and letting them see you from your perspective
• The role of being interested in and invested in another’s well-being
• That instead of fostering closeness, that worrying about someone can sometimes push them away
• What it is about technology that can cause distance even when we’re around other people
• That love is not a reliable solution to loneliness
• That deep down, we’re all very much the same
• How if you share something about yourself that is a bit deeper than surface level, it can often prompt the other person to do the same
• The difference between questions that are “too hard” vs questions that are “too soft”
• The place for and power of posing the question “What does that get you?”
• The Want, Assume, Misunderstand cycle
• The importance of having an inviting mindset and true curiosity when asking someone a question
• What it means to separate the person from the problem
• The four skills we need to have in order to foster closeness

Kira Asatryan Links

A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other. 

One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.

The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”

The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feed

The Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable.

This parable goes by many names including:

The Tale of Two Wolves

The Parable of the Two Wolves

Two Wolves

Which Wolf Do You Feed

Which Wolf are You Feeding

Which Wolf Will You Feed

It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.