I have to agree with this. Going out and meeting people, getting rejected or feeling like you don’t fit in is very taxing. If you’re a widget salesman, and no one wants to buy your widgets, who cares? It’s not a personal judgment. When you try to sell yourself, and no one’s buying, it’s much more depressing.

‘Rather, this is meant to address people who feel themselves stuck in a social rut, and think that it’s “so hard to meet people.”’

It IS hard to meet people, even if we accept that it’s our own fault. I don’t sit around moping saying “it’s hard to meet people in this town”. I sit around moping saying “I wish I weren’t terrified of meeting people and knew how to create good friendships with them after I’ve met them”. I know it’s my fault, but I just don’t know how to behave in social situations.

What is fear ? Fear is leaving your comfort zone behind, doing stuff thats unknown.

How do you overcome it ? By doing it lots !

You will become an expert in building social networks my friend.

If you ever move to Belgium send me a mail :-)

cheers,

great post. even b4 i found your blog, past few months i was having the spontaneous urge to say ‘hi’ to strangers. i spent a few months in halifax where most strangers say ‘hello’. i was shocked to see that in vancouver many ppl would smirk even if you just smile at them.

anyway here’s what i wanted to know. how do you literally avoid “eating alone”. can you ask strangers to come join you at the lunch/coffee table? how?

I agree with Don Diego’s point as well though. It’s not worth compromising yourself just to make a few friends.

Also, I am willing to write a guest post for you if you are still taking the offer. I usually write about travel, finance, politics, or sports, but I can write just about anything you would like me to for that guest post.

-Must get out more-

I just wanted to say, that i hit it off with way more than 20% of people that i meet. Be that online or offline.

I think it comes down to a) having a genuine love for people and their welfare b) inspiring them to be the best person they can be and c) enthusiasm

;-)

From what I can tell, you’re refuting an argument that I didn’t make.

I’m not suggesting bending to other people’s wishes to get them to like you. You can find several articles in the archive where I promote quite the opposite of that. (Search for “social polarity” if you want to read those.)

Rather, this is meant to address people who feel themselves stuck in a social rut, and think that it’s “so hard to meet people.” I think the business analogy I gave in this article can help people who feel trapped in their loneliness to put things in perspective.

So you meet up with a bunch of random people, all of whom have their own agandas and are just as egocentric and self-centred as the rest of us? Great!

No, I say do your own thing, be happy on your own terms, then like-minded people will gravitate toward you. And if they don’t, who gives a fuck?

As Sartre said, ‘Hell is other people’. Be a man, stand by your own values and principles. NEVER compromise and lower yourself by playing the game of manipulation.

@Martin:

When I say that failure and rejection are competitive advantages, I mean that the more time you’re willing to spend in those zones, the better chance you have to win. Not mindless failure and rejection, mind you, but more the finding of 10,000 ways that don’t work, Edison style.

I wonder what you mean by gaining competitive advantage through failure/rejection. Having studied economics, I have spent some time with that topic. One definition of competitive advantage is that your product’s perceived value is bigger than that of the competition.
So how can you increase value by failing? Do you mean that by willing to expose yourself to rejection you are able to learn faster what works and what doesn’t?

I’m looking forward to read your experiences in my hometown Berlin ;)