How to Make New Friends (and Keep Them)?

So you’re in this pub with great drink and music. You have your best attire on, and a lot of time to spare. Your drink is being served by an automated dispenser and music is hammering out of the giant speakers. But then you realize that there is no one for you to share that moment with. Would you be able to enjoy the experience there? Probably not.

Over the time people have discovered that it is hard to find a romantic pal that we want to spend the rest of our life. But then, it is even harder to find a pal that we can truly connect to. Making a friend and retaining them has been a major issue in the millennials. Although they have a lot of friends in their social media handles, failure to add up to their friendship circles and being abandoned from their old ones leads to the solitude and loneliness of the youngsters.

As the history has it, good relationships reduce stress and promote good health and longevity. There’s also been lots of evidence of weird benefits from close relationships. However, researches reveal that we are having substantially fewer friends than one would have at the 80s. One of the major reason for this is we meet fewer people. We avoid physical contact with people as much as we can. Pffft, put technology to blame. Over the time, priority of the people has faced a paradigm shift from “Social Life” to “Career Life”. Thus in most of our adult life, we care less for friends.

But then, money will come and go; career might fade; but a good friend is a great asset.

So, below are some ways in which you can make new friends, maintain the friendship and get them to reciprocate.

Set Little/No Criteria or Go Blind:

As we grow old, we build ourselves a cocoon that we want to wrap inside. We set a comfort zone and dare not cross that boundary. However, you can find friends where you least expect it. So, you should not have a lot of criteria when it comes to making new friends. You can also ask your friends to set you up to a blind friend date and meet random persons just to see if you bond together.

Initiate:

Make the first move. Smile. Make sure you look welcoming and open to make new friends. Sometimes even when two people want the same thing, when no one initiates, you lose a strong possibility of gaining a good friend.

Remember the Name:

As Dale Carnige states in his book, a person’s name is the sweetest sound to him in any possible language. If you remember a person’s name after first meeting, and address them by their name, you are more likely to attract the other person.

Be Yourself:

As long as you walk around with a mask, you’re going to earn friends for the mask, not for the one beneath the mask. Being yourself attracts like-minded people towards you for who you are. As long as you are pretentious and fake, your friends are bound to leave once the real you immerse out.

Get Up-close and Personal:

The most random, crazy experience sharing builds up a bond and closeness with the other person. Thus, open up a little bit as you go on building trust to your friend. Let them peek to the inside of your life and see how that turns out. As you go on getting to personal stuffs, you can already see the bond getting comfy and stronger.

Be Persistent but Not Pushy:

Make plans on catching up with the new and old friends. Show your efforts to make the friendship work but don’t try too hard. If you end up looking desperate instead of affirmative, you end up messing up the relationship. Thus, be persistent yet cool at the same time. This helps to give out positive signals from your side.

Set Goals and Action Plans:

If you really think you’re lagging behind socially, quantify your goals. Determine to make a number of new friends this year and act accordingly. Take actions quickly. Sometimes we look upon an email received from a friend and then think of giving a superb reply by putting some thoughts in it later and eventually forget about it. And next time you plan to approach him/her, it is going to be awkward as you haven’t responded to their last mail. Thus set achievable goals and action plans to follow.

Forgive and Forget:

The oldest tried and tested technique to maintain any kind of relationship is to forget and forgive. People you meet are going to be far from perfect. It is all about you and not them. Increase in your level of threshold for some harmless stupidity, unnecessary loudness and lots of hypocrite advice can save you quite a lot of relationships. Thus you may want to decrease your meter of narcissism, and increase your degree of forgiveness. Ting!

Virtual Presence:

Considering the obvious hectic “Work-life-balance” and the increase in dominance of technology in our daily life, your virtual presence in the social networking sites and interactions virtually can help you to keep the closeness even when your physical distances matter. The sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc. have played a major role in connecting to new and old friends as well. Thus why not use it for the benefit of the personal as well as social life.
As a child, we had much random and crazy friends, we used to sit with everyone during our lunch and had most unexpected friends. But as we grew up, we grew more choosy and judgmental and made less friends. Thus, we should start with an open mind and welcoming gesture to make friends and retain them. However, you should develop confidence, flexibility and patience to attain your friendship goals.

Thus, to know if someone is your cup of tea or not, you should first have a cup of tea with him/her.