You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
– Dale Carnegie
Positive relationships are the foundation of an interesting life.
Regular readers of my blog know that I advocate talking to strangers as a fantastic way of shaking up reality. But that’s not the whole story. If your interactional energy is misspent, you can end up in a repetitive cycle of drive-by friendships, random sexual adventures that are as fun as they are meaningless, and a general sense of wondering why you seem to always end up back where you started.
Making your own introductions is a life-changing force. But how do you channel this bravado into building relationships that last? How do you find friends that will raise the ceiling of your potential rather than criticize you for your passions? How do you meet girls that belong in your world and not just in your bedroom?
How do you get a life?
Love Being Alone
The prerequisite to building a healthy social life is, ironically, being comfortable by yourself. If you’re starting from zero, the reasons for this are obvious: you don’t have much choice. If you have a few friends but find that they drag you down, withdrawing from that crowd and starting anew will probably require staying in more frequently. Also, being too desperate for the company of others will hinder authentic interaction. You’ll be more worried about external validation instead of just letting it flow and being open to discovering connections.
Appreciating aloneness starts by consciously acknowledging the freedom it brings. When you enjoy your own company you can be flexible about who you choose to hang with, instead of letting the ego’s fear of being alone suck you into social scenes you don’t really like.
It also helps to have interests that can be pursued on your own. I’m fortunate to have many: reading, writing, cooking, software development, and online poker, among others. I’m just as happy staying in as going out, as long as I keep a good balance between the two. You can even use your alone time to apply the ideas in this article to help build your social life.
Start With Who You Already Know
Getting a life means becoming a person who initiates interactions, instead of always waiting for others to make the first move. A great place to start is with the people you already know. Most of us can probably think of one or more people that we’re horrible at keeping in touch with. These might be former acquaintances, people you met while travelling, someone you enjoyed working with in the past, old friends, or even current friends. When making this list, reach as far back into your past as you can, as long as you keep finding examples of people you wish you’d stayed in touch with.
Then contact them. I prefer email, especially when it’s someone I haven’t talked to in a while. If you don’t have the person’s email address, try Google. Alternatively, you might have a mutual friend who can put you in touch.
I did this several weeks ago. It was easy for me to think of many people with whom I’m horrible at keeping in touch. I ended up sending over a dozen emails to former coworkers I enjoyed working with, friends in other cities, and even local buddies who I don’t talk to nearly enough, often because I rely on them to always ping me.
I got responses from all but two people. I ended up going for lunch with one girl I’d never socialized with outside of a party setting. I reconnected with a former boss of mine from Quebec City who travels to Montreal frequently, and plan to have lunch with him next time he’s in town. And I reestablished contact with some friends I was starting to lose touch with.
The ROI on this simple gesture made me wonder: Why the fuck haven’t I been doing this all along?
Generosity Is Golden
It’s one thing to take the social initiative with people you already know, but what about with someone you’ve never met?
Sometimes I’ll get an email from a fellow blogger who wants to “network” with me. This is the greasiest way to introduce yourself to anyone. When making a new connection, start with generosity. Focus on how you can help the other person get where they’re going. This is an idea I got from Keith Ferrazzi’s excellent book, Never Eat Alone
.
Do you have information that may interest them? Do you know someone whom they could benefit from knowing too? Can you volunteer to help their cause?
For example, I recently moved into a coworking space in Montreal called Station C. It’s a group of independent consultants and entrepreneurs who don’t like working from home. I think Patrick and Dan have done a fantastic job setting it up. It’s an amazing workspace with a great mix of people.
One of the first things I did when I moved in was volunteer to help build the office’s scheduling application. I have a lot of respect for the project and, now that I’m involved as a member, it can only be a good use of my time to make it even better. I also introduced myself to most people in the office early on and asked them to show me what they were working on. I wanted to get a sense of what skills they had and consider ways in which I could give them more work. In showing my own interest, I found others naturally reciprocating. I’ve already been getting work offered in my direction.
One of the best investments you can make in yourself is to take a genuine interest in other people.
User Groups
The best places to plant the seeds that will improve your social life are user groups. A “user group” might be a professional association, a political party, an orchestra, a yoga class, or any other gathering of people who have a common passion.
To start down this road, make a list of keywords for everything you enjoy and every issue that matters to you. For example, mine looks like:
- personal growth
- spirituality
- private health care in canada
- cooking
- longboarding
- grassroots geek conferences
- design
- usability
- eco-friendly housing
- etc.
Do a complete brain dump. If you haven’t got at least 50 lines of output, you aren’t trying hard enough. When finished, head to Meetup.com and see what you can find. Alternatively, add the name of your city to each line and you’ve got a Google search query. This will help you find local user groups, bloggers, discussion forums, businesses, and other organizations related to these topics.
What if you can’t find a group that fits your needs? Organize it. This is exactly how I started a personal growth group in Montreal. The downside of being an organizer is that it takes a little more time and energy. The upside is everything else.
Finding a great group of people that like what you like may require some detective work, but it’s worth it. A shared interest is the active ingredient in building positive relationships.
Don’t Limit Yourself
When I was doing my 30-day trial on learning to cook, I took inspiration from Laura Calder’s show French Food at Home. I think she has a unique charm and her enthusiasm for cooking is contagious.
Then I thought: Why not email her?
So I did. And she replied.
Next thing you know, we’re exchanging email about The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle, spirituality, and general thoughts on the art of happiness.
Don’t limit yourself. Take a look at your bookshelf, for example, and ask yourself: Which of these authors might I like to get to know? Email them. Authors in particular seem to have more easily accessible email addresses than other public figures. It’s unlikely that you’ll meet or even get a personal response from most of the people you contact this way, but it’s still fun to make a connection with someone that inspires you.
I’ve turned this last one into a 30-day trial. Every day I email one person I want to know more about, whom I might normally consider out of reach. I find some of the most fun 30-day trials are the ones related to meeting new people. If you feel like you could use some help in the social arena, why not make now the time you choose to break out of your bubble?
mike i just turned 40 2 days ago and my life sucks so bad im unhappy in all areas i know i have what it takes to change but im doubting myself. im addicted to meth and im sick of all it has destroyed
In spirit of the article, and feeling the need to branch out myself – Kathy – send me an email. Perhaps we have a common ground (I suspect we might). I’m sorry to hear things aren’t great for you right now. They aren’t great for me either, but maybe together we could figure something out. :)
Hi,
I thought I would return to this site and add an update on how things are going for me. First of all though, I would like to say to Kathy that it is unreasonable to expect yourself to be able to move forward while you are currently living with an addiction. Nothing ever worth having is easy, yet without your sanity life can never change. My advice to you is to remove yourself from your situation entirely, place yourself in an enviroment where you are unable to feed your habits, go through what you must go through to be more than you are today. Life without hope is not only difficult to rise above but also has the potential to lead you into a never ending cycle of self abuse and forever to be the victim in so many different ways. It is my hope that you can find a way to make this happen for yourself, don’t listen to anybody who will try to hold you back, don’t make excuses as to why you are unable to do it, just realise that the path you are on is your responsibility and make it your own. I myself am finding life much better, I never really thought of myself as being capable of many of the things I enjoy these days. It amazes me how much more I now know my true self and how far away from my true self I have spent the majority of my life. Many of, what I would of considered, my fundamental beliefs have gone and have been replaced by a more accepting knowledge of my true nature. I feel as though I no longer wear a mask, that what I project is now who I am and is not based on my preconceptions or fears of what I can expect from others. There are still obstacles in my life, yet now they don’t seem as important or as crippling as they were not so long ago. This is my life, my life is what I make of it, I cannot spend the energy I once spent absorbed in my own definitions of reality, it is better spent elsewhere. I live in the moment and take what joy I can from each moment. I think I can honestly say that I am a happier person these days and this is what I now project upon others, this is why I now find myself knowing more people and involved in different activities, this is what attracts others into my world. I know myself, I accept myself, I do not try to be something I am not or thought that I was. Just this simple knowledge of my true nature has changed my reality in ways I cannot describe in this forum. Life is not perfect, life is not easy, life is about happiness, life is about acceptance, life is for living. Know that in simply searching for answers you have planted a seed in your own mind, water that seed with thought and let it grow.
Hey, thanks so much for what you are doing. Your website strikes a chord and gives me hope. I have been lonely for most of my life. I had a couple groups of friends whom I have been betrayed by or drifted from. My life has felt empty. Often times I tried to be what I thought other people wanted. I want friends who I am myself with. I took your advice and went outside my comfort zone and spent more time talking with a neighbor than I usually would have. I dont have a great new friend/s yet but when I do these things life is richer.
Generosity is golden, certainly, but what can de do when we are completely uninterested abouth their life ? Do we have to simulate ?
Answer me on my mail please.
sorry for the mistake: “what can WE do…”
and “about”…
ok! thus tis work for u well I’ll give it a try but me i dont think so i really really need a to get a life!
Hi,
We have all had moments in our lives where we have made a realisation of something obvious, its like something we knew the whole time but never were aware of it, or never acknowledged it. For me this entire experience is a bit like this, there is no general solution which will work for everyone, however, the solutions you seek are inside of you just as they were inside of me. Knowing myself is so much easier said than done, accepting my own limitations and embracing my fears as a “normal” thing is no simple task. I have found nothing harder in this life than to defy my own definitions of reality and to try, just to try to be who I want to be instead of who I am. Old sayings like “you can’t love anyone until you love yourself” are all based on truisms, simple truths of life. We have to roll with the punches, I used to think too much about things instead of keeping things simple. I would turn things over and over inside of my mind until they became something they never were, some of these things have had serious repercussions on my life and can never be changed. Such is life, I live with the choices I have made as we all must do. Do some of these choices make me a bad person? maybe.. but I am still here, I am still growing and still changing and hopefully will until the day I die. Does that mean I would make the same choices today as I would of back then? probably not.. I am more than I was, able to understand more and not so prone to just react to my enviroment. Is that ancient history part of who I am? yes it is.. It always will be, it contributes to my whole being as it is the choices I make who define who I am. Acceptance, understanding, self awareness, forgiveness, simple words for complicated people. Without feeling whole I was always perceived as something I am not by people who did not have the same problems in life which I had. These issues are behind me now, my life is not what it once was, I know in my heart that is it because of my acceptance of who I am, it is seen in the way I carry myself, in the way I interact with others, in the way I smile and laugh. I feel more normal now than I have in my entire life and although some people may not think that is a good thing, I can assure you that it is. People who I would of once said were “churchies” or “straight” I now know just to be normal people struggling with life as we all do. People who have found what they needed in their lifes to move forward, to grow, and they have their problems too. I am not better than them, maybe they are just more careful than me, maybe I should ask myself how that man who has lost everything he ever loved can smile and still be there for the people he cares about. How can you give until there is nothing left to give and then give more? How can someone else’s pain mean anything to you when you are drowning in your own? I am realising that this world is full of great people, people who care and love and cry and live. Maybe one day I will understand why I only ever seem to have met the nastier side of life and take responsibility for it, maybe one day I will accept the truth that they are minority, that the majority of people on this earth do care, do love, do cry and do live normal lives. No one has the solution to your life except you, no one can know you like you can know yourself, accept that people can perceive what we deny/negate about ourselves, accept that the reason you are where you are is because you have to become more than you are. I cannot blame anyone for my choices in life, I cannot blame anyone for what happened to me at anytime in my life, it is what it is, there are people out there who have suffered worse and there are people out there who have lost more. How can I look forward if my thoughts, my fears, my expectations are always on what is behind me. I will not accept life as something that just happens to me, this is my life and I can do anything I set my mind to.
I think peoople are right about knowing who you are before knowing someone else and thinking about what yuo should do and not anyone else and that’s how you get a life or that’s how you get confidence!
Mike,
You are wise beyond your relatively few years. You have already learned what it took me 45 years to understand. Good for you. Life is ahead not behind us. I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t made mistakes, some major. Once you understand that none of us is perfect, we’re all just trying to figure out the best way to live, things are easier. Live for now, live for the future. We all have extraordinary potential no matter where we are starting from. But you need to take that first step to change. Unfortunately, that is often the hardest step to take.
“random sexual adventures that are as fun as they are meaningless”
I think this is not meaning what you are thinking it is meaning.
Mike,
I think I understand what you mean. I have been struggling for sometime now with so many things. It’s almost as though I have been stamped with disaster. I experienced repeated childhood sexual abuse and have tried to live a normal life;one in which I fit in, but it hasn’t been working for me. I know it might sound crazy, but my repeated victimazations were not all by one or two people. It was like adults and older children somehow saw something in me that said I want to be abused. I must say….this subject is not talked about much….There haven’t been many lifetime movies about repeated victimazation….I suppose because eventually people would believe it was that person’s fault…..kind of like I believe of myself for so many years……I’m not writting this for pity. I have tried my entire life to not be a statistic…..These numbers told be because I was raped that I had to have children out of wedlock, be poor, uneducated, resort to drug usage, be promiscuous ect….I’ve worked so hard against that trying to prove that I have choices no matter who took away my choice or how many times it was taken away………..I never fit in and have felt so bad about myself over the years….even to the point of attempting suicide……..I didn’t because I think that may tomorrow will change and if I make a decision like that….I will never know. My relationships have failed over and over again…..I attracted to the wrong type of person………those that are unavailable to me emotionally among other things………I allowed the person that I thought I wanted my entire life to degrade me and to show me that I worth nothing….now after all that I have overcame……this has been the hardest record to break…….I have wasted 4years of my life trying to move on and see my worth only to have my whole foundation that once motivated me succeed crumble…..I feel like I cant get ahead anymore…..almost like I’ve given up…….I don’t know what else to do……..I wished I could start over…………despite how beautiful and smart people say I am……….I’ve never felt worthy or good about myself………any advice or suggestions……..or you can just tell me to shut-up and quit whinning.
Mike, you are so right in what you are saying..that we all have free will in the way we deal with what life throws at us. That is not to say that we always have control over what happens in our lives, that life is fair or that we are always responsible or deserved the bad things that happen to us. We all make mistakes and do things that we regret. I’d say that life is most definately quite random at times – some people have a lot more bad stuff to deal with than others but the way we deal with what happens in our lives is key. Life is also very beautiful too and though there may be times when you feel really low, you must find a way to work through it, try to channel those feelings into something else you enjoy doing. Know that you wont always feel like this, these feelings do pass. Love yourself, don’t give yourself too much of a hard time. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you have been hurt by the negative behaviour of others nor should you blame yourself for what others have done to you. Learn from these experiences, know that you deserve better, don’t put up with people that disrespect you or hurt you in any way. Look forward to the future to all that you may yet become, dare to dream…..
Jeff, I hope things turn around for you hun,
I have a regular life; friends, a good job, beautiful smart girlfriend, a car, I own a home and and looking to buy another soon…I am healthy by all accounts and live a peaceful and comfortable like.
Even with all this I find each and every day I struggle against myself to remain positive. I fight a battle in my mind between the part of me that says I am strong and capable person and the other part of me that picks out all my flaws – real or not – and magnifies them.
You want examples; hmmm let’s see… I think to myself I am ugly, I’m fat, I’m boring, I have nothing to say, I’m a loser, I am weak, I’m lazy – and I really believe all these things.
It’s all negative thoughts and if you look closely there are a lot of I’s…
The best thing we can all do to get a life is relax and stop worying. Thinking about ourselves too much (either positively or negatively) is destructive behavior.
I want to explore that world so bad I want to be able to talk and meet people, but I’m afraid not afraid mentally but physically because of appearance I think to myself if I had the perfect body and perfect face I wouldn’t be afraid to go out and just be free talk and converse with anyone that I could find interesting or meet my interests.
Journee, make the most that you can of your physical attributes. Be neat and clean, and then forget about it. No one has a perfect body and face. Even celebrities don’t look like their touched-up selves. It really is what’s inside that counts.
I don’t usually comment on websites either, but like others who have commented, I really have learned a lot from Brad’s posts and also from your comments. I have been trying very hard for two years to make new friends, with no success. I have been the pleasant, interested listener. By the hardest, I forced myself to extend two invitations, and I was refused both times. I had decided not to ever try again, because rejection really hurts, especially for someone with low self-esteem and no friends. However, I am going to take Brad’s advice and keep reaching out. With all the billions of people in the world, eventually, I am bound to meet a couple of people whose traits align with mine.
Thanks, Brad! I have learned so much here.
Best wishes to everyone in “Getting a Life.”
I guess if you are reading an article on ‘how to get a life’ you arent living it. Really this could be shortened to ‘get out there and meet people’ and contain a blank article. Thinking, structuring and contemplating life does not work, in my experience its just mental masturbation (which is a pastime in itself, but yet another article!).
And just to add some value as I realise the above comment will not help many people…when you start to come to terms that your life will be far removed from what you see, read and observe other peoples AMAZING (false) existence to be like, you can then start to appreciate your non-important (because your not that important so quit whining!) life for what it is. THE REALITY. That is dont have so many high expectations and dont aspire to be like other people or have material things to FIT IN (stop watching TV for a start).
This is not to say DONT HAVE AMBITION. Do be ambitious but follow your own purpose.
Finally, contemplate pragmatically that you are alone, broken, addicted etc. embrace your flaws and weaknesses and stop giving a damn what anyone else thinks…its your 80 years on this earth so be selfish with it.
Ironically people will be drawn to you if you follow these steps. It worked for me. Try it.