5 Lessons from Malaysian activist Hanis of RAD CULTURE 🇲🇾 on journaling rituals 📖 social media toxicity ☠️ & your capacity to love 💗 (40)

Don’t Be Strangers * Podcast Show Notes

xinyi @ don't be strangers
3 min readMay 19, 2023
  1. On Happiness ☺️ “I used to think that in order for you to be happy something big needs to happen. But it really doesn’t.”
  2. On Friendship 🫂 “I struggle of making friends as an adult, and I felt like oh that is because like I probably don’t even know myself that what are my hobbies.”
  3. On Love 💗 “People always look at love just between a woman or a man, between 2 persons. But now I feel like I look at [love] like the love I have for my siblings, for my nieces and nephew, for my work, [and] for myself. So just I hope I get to nurture those throughout the year yeah than just just like hyper focus on not getting that one person.”
  4. On Social Media 💬 “I’m looking at others, but then what they have is not necessarily what I want. So it becomes like this whole cycle of me chasing [what others present as success] and getting it but still feeling like ‘I don’t really want this.’.. Some people say social media is toxic. For me, it’s really how you use it. So now I have like a healthier relationship with social media.”
  5. On Slow Living 🌱 “It’s nice to be aware that I’m not glamorizing business. I’m not glamorizing the whole hustle culture.”

Welcome back to Don’t Be Strangers. Our mission is to create deeper conversations and more vulnerable connections by providing intentional resources, events, and community for curious and optimistic students-of-life to fight adult loneliness and the myth that “making friends is hard!” I’m your host XinYi, and I typically meet my co-hosts for the very first time while recording! If this sounds fun to you, please consider applying to co-host a future episode.

I recently launched my first book How to Talk to Anyone for Introverts where I share my insights on how to shift your identity and mindset for approaching conversations, how I start, flow, and exit chats, and my insights on friendship building which includes conflict resolution. There’s also a bonus 7-day challenge where I make it very actionable for you to take everything you learn and actually apply it! I’m on a mission to get to 100 reviews so if I’ve piqued your interest and you’d like a free copy in exchange for a review, you can visit our instagram @dontbestrangers where it will be linked in the bio OR you can visit our website: dontbestrangers.club/free-book ! I’m mentioning this because in this episode, which was recorded back in January while I was deep in the middle of working on this book, covers (by coincidence) the topic of adult friendships, making friends as an introvert, and friendship green flags.

So that’s a nice transition to introducing my co-host Hanis, whom I actually met in person when I was visiting KL Malaysia back in December. I still so clearly remember our dinner date conversation about her recent drastic changes in her adult life from a career pivot to letting go of friendships that didn’t serve her anymore… when she suggested that we record a podcast episode, of course I immediately said yes. Other topics we cover include…

  • our take on the idea of “new year, new me”
  • journaling practices
  • happiness via slow living
  • what is love?
  • is social media toxic?

With that, please meet Hanis…

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xinyi @ don't be strangers

musings of a creative chimera + nowhere girl🌙🐉 ✨ illustrator, videographer, whatev-er. 📍 somewhere between knowing & searching (host of @dontbestrangers pod)