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Top Tips For Making Friends

Hey guys! It’s Matt here. How are you all doing?

I thought I would try something a little different with this piece. An old uni contact kindly sent me a handout about the lovely (but maybe a bit scary) topic of: Making Friends!

So, today I’m going to share some tips with you about how to make some new pals. 

The thing is, we all need our alone time. Our quiet time. Our “me time”. Whatever you want to call it, it’s beneficial for your mental health, particularly if you have social anxiety. Whether you use that time to chill out and read a book, watch TV or just sit in your bedroom enjoying the silence. Alone time is good for us and allows us to relax, unwind and reflect in the company of our thoughts. 

Photo by Sofia Garza from Pexels
 
However, too much alone time will start to reduce our social skills and thus make it a little bit harder to meet people and make friends. Socialising is a skill, and the less time we spend practicing that skill, the more we decrease our ability to use it.

That’s why it’s important to spend time with people. Don’t worry, nobody is expecting you to go out and immediately be the life of the party – life just doesn’t work like that. Building your skills in any area of life is a gradual process and involves practice and confidence building. But it’s good to start small, and so spending time with anyone in your life is beneficial, even if it just means that you go downstairs and see what your parents are watching on TV.

Building your social confidence is about changing your thought process. If you’re shy, prefer to spend time on your own and fear any kind of social interaction then you need to find a way of breaking out of the negativity. You might have encountered thoughts such as 

“They won’t like me anyway” 

“If I go up to them, they might ignore me” 

“If I just don’t talk to anyone, nothing bad can happen”

But, the thing is, avoiding social situations completely can make you feel even more lonely, and intensify your fear of being ignored. So, are you ready to be brave?

The plan here is to take a risk. Picture the scene in your mind: You’ve arrived at work, a lecture or event early and there is only one person around. You briefly spoke to one another last week and they seemed friendly. 

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels 
 
But you feel afraid of saying hello. You’re wondering if they even remember you – maybe they didn’t say goodbye at the end, even though you thought you got along well.

Here’s some tips to help you take a risk and break the cycle:

Make eye contact and smile. Try standing near them, taking a few seconds to gather your thoughts and then say hello, with a smile. The positive vibes that you’re giving them are likely to receive a positive response, and right now they are probably thinking “oh, there’s that nice person I was working with last week”

Top tip: it doesn’t have to be a particularly long conversation. You don’t need to burst out with “so, what are your thoughts on rocket science?”, you’ve already got a common ground and you have even met before. So, just simply try asking them if they enjoyed the group activity last week, followed by “my name is such and such, by the way”. Starting off with a short conversation will give you a huge sense of satisfaction, and it’s also your first step on the progress ladder.

You can continue with your progress by talking to pretty much anyone – it doesn’t have to be a long conversation and you might not even see the person again – but it’s practice. Shop assistants in particular are trained in customer service and are used to talking to people. So trying your newfound skills at smiling and saying hello and you might just prompt a conversation.

“How are you? What time are you finishing today?”

Photo by Helena Lopes from Pexels
 
Shop assistants, or anyone working front of house, are used to asking people about their lives, and so having a customer take an interest (even if you’re not really that interested) in them will give them a nice boost. It’s only “small talk” and you might think it’s a bit tedious and boring, but it’s practice and the more you speak to people, the more you’ll improve. 

To build your progress and give you regular practice, try joining a club. Do you like board games? Sport? You will find all sorts of clubs if you look across social media, or ask around. And just remember, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it! 

Photo by bruce mars from Pexels
 
Anyway, I’ll leave that here for today. But stay tuned, and I’ll be back next time to share some tips about how to keep your friends once you’ve started making them (in fact, head over here if you want to read that one: https://stridiblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-tips-for-keeping-friends.html).

Ciao for now!
M
 

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