How To Make Friends And Deepen Your Relationships, In 7 Steps
Many of the things we enjoy in our daily lives exist thanks to our ease of connecting emotionally with other people. Human beings are highly social, and that is why we tend to establish links between us constantly, whether formal or informal.
However, it’s not just the quantity that matters; The quality of these social ties must also be taken into account. Specifically, the possibility of having friends is one of the aspects that produce the most happiness and satisfaction. But this is not something that is easy for everyone. Therefore, in this article we will review some tips on how to make friends more easily
These guidelines to follow are not essential to find new friends, although having them as a reference in our daily lives will help achieve that goal. The fundamental thing is to be clear that each case is unique, and it is necessary to know how to adapt these steps to the context in which one lives.
1. Don’t listen to stereotypes
There are people whose main difficulty when it comes to making friends is that they feel rejection at the idea of being seen with the type of people for whom they feel an affinity It is easy, for example, that if you have grown up in a relatively homogeneous social environment, certain types of friendships may seem strange or even generate criticism, but submitting to these unwritten rules is almost always worse than breaking those rules based on misunderstanding and the stigmata.
Ultimately, what you achieve by going beyond this group pressure is having access to a much greater variety of possible friendships than you had before, and while this may have somewhat negative consequences on some personal relationships in the group which previously occupied most of our lives, the problem was already there long before, although not in an obvious way. If someone does not accept us because we are not in their schemes by showing us as we are, their friendship was very relative.
2. If you can use the Internet, do it
The use of the Internet is highly stigmatized, since there are people who mistakenly believe that the friendships and relationships that begin in this virtual environment are less sincere and “natural” than those that were formed decades ago, when computers did not exist or They had much more limited versatility.
But this doesn’t make any sense: the network of networks is a perfect place to break with many of the limitations of the material environment in which we have grown up or the one we are living in. For example, if we have developed a hobby that no one around us shares with us, it makes no sense to refuse to use the Internet to find more people with these tastes.
In fact, it is very easy to access forums and websites specialized in very specific topics, so we are guaranteed to be able to find potential friends with interests similar to those we have.
Looplan, for example, is an app that can help you find new friendships or deepen those more authentic relationships that we already have, because through the multiple activities that we will find available daily in this app we will always be able to discover new plans with which we can strengthen an organic way our friendship or possible long-term relationship. It is also important to highlight that this application can be downloaded today completely free of charge and that at the moment it offers its services on both IOS and Android.
There is nothing to maintain a good conversation like knowing a little about everything, having general knowledge. Even if what we know about a topic is very little, that can help develop an interesting dialogue in which doubts are resolved, for example, about the country our interlocutor comes from.
4. Take care of your non-verbal language
In this regard, the fundamental thing you should know is that it is good to follow two principles: look at the eyes and not having non-verbal language associated with tension and defensiveness. Furthermore, expressing your positive emotions always helps, since smiles are contagious (as long as they are not forced). One of the most useful tips to know how to make friends, since its effects are noticeable from the first moment.
5. Start to lose your fear of starting a conversation
This step is important to leave behind many of the limitations linked to shyness and the fear of giving a bad impression. It is something complex and requires weeks of work, but it can be learned.
The main idea behind this process is that the content matters much less than the forms, and that your attitude can make a seemingly absurd topic of conversation give a lot of play and not seem strange or out of context if it conveys confidence in one. same.
6. Boost your spontaneity
Avoid memorizing very detailed behavioral guidelines; It is preferable to keep in mind very basic and intuitive ideas about what to do, and do it without thinking too much. Thus, your attention will be focused on the real-time interaction with the other person and not in the “script” that you have prepared and which, by definition, is something that is outside the real dialogue.
Having friends does not mean being part of a large group of friends. This is something that is difficult to understand, especially when you are very young, because at certain ages the usual tendency is to socialize in “networks-2” of many people who know each other.
But having friends who don’t know each other is perfectly fine, so it’s not worth worrying about whether you like each other or don’t like each other. Trying to bring them together in a very forced way is usually counterproductive, especially if you have known these people for a relatively short time.
