How to make friends and create better social circles.

1. Welcome To My Course!: Whether you simply want to polish up your social circles and add a few more people to it, or you want to stop being one of them. Many people around the world were unhappy with their social life who lack real connections and our board or lonely. You've come to the right place. My name is TJ Thompson and I have been helping people around the world do these things for over a decade through my coaching. Making new friends and building new social circles tends to be one of the biggest social challenges for adults. For many, it seems that the older we get, the harder it becomes. And too many adults lack feelings of connections with others, which can also negatively affect the rest of their life significantly. It's been estimated that at least 20 percent, that's one out of five Americans feel lonely on a daily basis. And in a study, 12% said they had absolutely no one to spend their free time live or to go to for discussion. So we're conversations. And those numbers are not any lower and the rest of the world, in fact, they tend to be even higher in a lot of places. This course aims to not only show you how the process of making friends can be simple, but also help you have fun while doing it. In the course, you will learn tips and techniques and strategies for the whole process from where and how we can easily meet people who are also looking to connect with others to how we can start and maintain conversations with new people and nurture and build relationships from there. I've been teaching and coaching clients all over the world on this process for well over a decade now. And in all that time, my biggest focus has been on helping people create the social life that they dream of. I've also published books and courses and written articles and done TV and radio, and newspapers and magazines. But most importantly, I've walked side-by-side with people from all over the world while they went through this process. And I've watched them turn their whole life around. And before all that happened, I did it myself after my 25th birthday party where the only people I could get to show up, we're less than a handful of my friends who all lived in the same building as me. I said that enough was enough and I started learning, experimenting, and working on my life. Since then I've repeated this process in several cities in my home country of Norway, as well as in Los Angeles, and my now home city of Las Vegas. And my social life has never been better. This stuff works. Let me show you how. 2. Meet The "Likables": So we've both seen those people who always seem to have something going on, right? They're always on their layout. There are always hanging out with someone going to an event or this or the other. And what do we sometimes think when we hear about these people's lives? Oh, they must be so popular there, so lucky, I never get invited to half as many things as they do. Or maybe even a little worse, we get a little spiteful and annoyed. And we figured that people only invite them to things because they're attractive or rich or something along those lines. If you don't think any of these things, that's great, but most people do at least sometimes. But why do we think that all of these activities and invitations are always just given to them? Do we really believe that they do nothing except the fun are cute, and their popularity and invitations to things or just constantly handed to them by others. I bet if you think about it, you've known people who are neither fun, cute are very interesting at all. But who were still surrounded by friends basically all the time. So why do people keep wanting to spend time with them? Or some people just born lucky in that way. Well, no, that's not really how it works. While there are exceptions to this rule, the most socially active and popular adults are often not the ones who get the most invitations for friendship. They are the ones who give the most invitations. They are the people who make things happen, both for themselves and for others. And the world of both self-development, popular psychology and even spirituality, there tends to be the saying of you get what you get. And when it comes to building our social life, that could not be more spot on. There are certain people out there who have amazing social lives, not because they were born with some lucky attribute that makes other people want to be around them or because they've been popular since childhood. But who have created those lives themselves in adulthood through their own actions. These are the people I learned from and these are the people that we should be looking to for knowledge, inspiration, and guidance. In this course, I'm going to refer to these people as likable people or the linkables. So get used to that word. Now in this section of the course, we'll be focusing on how we can create, maintain, and extend the conversations that we're going to have with our potential new friends. And then in the next section, I'll share some great strategies for where, when, and how we can meet those new potential friends. And to kick it off. In the next video, I am going to share a simple but incredibly powerful technique that likeable is used to make it ten times easier for them to engage with new people. Then it tends to be for the rest of us. 3. Conversational Warm-Ups: One of the most challenging things for many people is to get a conversation started, especially with strangers. And while we can certainly become better friends with people that we already know and we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. A big part of making new friends and building new social circles is meeting strangers. We simply need a fresh supply of people if we want to succeed with this. As a communication kosher, I am constantly bombarded with questions about what to do to meet strangers. What should I say? How should I say it? When should I say it to whom should I say, and so on. And I have a frustratingly simple answer. Say whatever. However, whenever to whoever, just say something, at least to start out with, you see the easiest way to both get comfortable talking to strangers and to increase the likelihood that strangers will talk to us, is to do what we call warm-ups. A warm-up is any engagement with a stranger of any sort is usually very short, only a few seconds long, and doesn't put more pressure on performing. It can be something as simple as high or an excuse me, or good afternoon when passing somewhat industry or the market or a wave, a smile and nod. Literally anything where you do something to catch the attention of someone else and show them that you exist. For some people, this seems almost too easy. And if you're one of the people who already do this naturally, everyday, basically, no matter where you are, that's great. But whether or not you are, please pay attention to this tactic because there's a difference between the people who are okay with exchanging these pleasantries when necessary in their daily life. And the way the linkables uses wildly like bubbles will still do these things randomly as they go through their day. They pay extra attention to doing it when they know that they're going to be in situations where they might want to have an actual conversation with someone that they don't know. You see, a couple of things happen when we do these warm-ups. The first thing is that we get into the groove of speaking out loud, which will make it a lot easier to engage with a stranger than if we've just been in our head thinking to ourselves for last hour or two. The second thing is that we build our social confidence when we see that basically everyone out there are nice, pleasant people who will tend to respond to you with the same tone that you engage them with. When these two effects combined forces. And we do a dozen or two warm ups on our way to wherever we might meet and talk to strangers. Our subconscious relaxes a little and becomes more socially confident in, if only for a little bit. By the time you get to where you're meeting people, you've already interacted with so many on the way there that it will seem like a far less uncomfortable task to follow up the next warm-up with a question that might lead to a full on conversation. A likable rarely goes to a social event without warming up before getting there. No matter how confident or outgoing they usually are. It's so second nature to most likable by this point that most of them don't even think about the fact that they're doing it as they walked down the street or go to the store. And those of us who aren't that outgoing by nature, well, we can copy that same behavior and get the same effect. So here's your exercise. Spend the next week or however long you need for this to become easy for you. Warming up whenever you leave your house and you're among people you don't know, exchanged pleasantries, give them smiles and nods. And whenever you feel like it, ask them a question or give them a compliment. The more comfortable you become with this, the higher your social confidence will be. And as an extra bonus, you'll soon discover that more and more strangers will keep talking to you when you do a warm-up with them simply because they want to and you just open the door for them to do so. 4. Two Types of Conversation Starters: All right, so you've mastered the warm-up and it's time to get comfortable starting full conversations. The good news is, you already know how to do this, both because you've started plenty of conversations in your life so far, whether they were with friends or not doesn't matter so much. And because starting conversations is exactly what you've been doing when warming up, the only real difference between a warm-up and starting a full on conversation is that we keep engaging the stranger after the initial warm-up. So imagine that you're at a social event with plenty of people that you don't know. Maybe you're taking a dance class or some other type of class, a work or a school conference, or maybe someone invited you to dinner with them and some friends of their site you've never met before. Whatever it is, you are somewhere with people that you don't know. What do you do? It's a situations like these that we tend to be able to literally see the differences between those who have an easy time making friends and those who don't. And it's not what most people think. It has nothing to do with her looks or even the confidence. It mostly has to do with who they choose to talk to. Do they choose to only talk to the people they already know? Or does it make it a point to engage with the ones they don't know? Likable people, they do the latter. They see someone new and they want to know who that person is. And the way they tend to do that is to lead with an open-ended question. Generally speaking, we want to stay away from yes or no questions when we first talked to someone. Because if they turn out to be a little shy or distracted or whatever, we risk getting a short one-word answer and then lose them. So instead, we ask about something that requires them to give us a little more information and attention. One of the easiest examples of this is to ask them about how they came to be at the event. How do they know the host, what brings them to this conference, stuff like that. These questions are easy to come up with and you can even prepare before you go to an event by taking a moment to think about questions, I would make sense to ask the people who will be there. When you do this, you'll tend to get a little more information to go on so that you can move the conversation forward. If the strangers too shy to do it themselves. If they tell you, for example, that they went to school with the host, you can go with that. You can tell them how you know the host or ask a question about what the host was like back then, or whatever else sounds fun or interesting to you. Now, another simple way to engage people that tends to get them to invest time in you is to ask for their help or request something. A client of mine did this brilliantly. You once you went to a conference where she didn't know anyone, as the conference took a break for lunch, she just turned to the two people next to her and said, You know, I've never been here before. I have no idea where the cafeterias would you guys mind if I walk there with you? They of course, said that she could as all nice people would, and she ended up spending both lunch and the rest of the conference with them. So these are of course, only two of a million ways of starting conversations with people. But they are two very simple ones that are also among the most powerful ways of doing it. Now once you've started enough of these types of conversations with strangers, you will most likely find that you start comin up with your own conversational starters all on your own, that you feel work well for you personally. But until then, play with these two once you've watched the next couple of videos, after which I'll give you an exercise that will help you master all of this. And basically no time. 5. How Energy Levels Affect Connection: Here's another quick little thing to keep in mind when you're meeting new people in social situations, whether it's at a party or a bar or a conference during a course or a class, or to show or wherever else. As you approach people to start a conversation, be sure to match their energy or have a slightly higher energy level than them. Or alternatively, when you choose who to approach, choose the ones who seem to match your energy level the best. You see. People tend to assume that anyone with a lower energy level than themselves or having less fun than they are. And when people are having fun, they don't want to have less fun. Therefore, people often cut conversation short if the person talking to them seems to be lower energy than themselves. If the person talking to them is that their energy level or higher, however, it's more likely that they're seen as someone who will contribute to the fun rather than take away from it. So matching are going slightly above other people's energy levels as one of the skills mastered by those who seem to be able to talk to everyone around them wherever they go. Those who rarely get ignored or rejected from a conversation. It's one of those little secrets that few people know about and even fewer people think about. But that is incredibly helpful for those of us who do. So if you see someone talking about energy though like this, don't talk to them like this. All this requires is that you take a second to look at the people that you're about to talk to and then match the volume over their voices, the energy in their face and the amount of movement in their body. The good news is, you already know how to do this, even if you might not be consciously aware of it. Because this is what we all do, especially when we're with people that we're comfortable with. We naturally tend to match the energy levels over those so we're interacting with. So as soon as you start paying attention to this, as you engage new people, you'll start mastering it in no time and get better results. And it won't even feel like you're pretending or faking it because you won't be. 6. What Should We Talk About?: One of the skills as separate, those who tend to have an easy time getting to know people. And those who struggle a little with knowing what to say or talk about, is that the first group tends to be good at talking about people more than anything else. Likable, I rarely talk about the weather. Others are small talk. They tend to either talk about the person they're meeting to be curious and interested in getting to know them. Or they share things about themselves. And there's an art form to this. There's a way of both talking about others and ourselves that tends to come across as genuine, confident, charismatic and interesting. And even more importantly, talking about this in this way will help you quickly figure out who is a good fit for you and who is not. Too many people spend too much time and energy on incompatible friends simply because they stick to the same small talk that everyone else does, which effectively keeps us from finding out if we're going to get along well enough for a friendship to blossom over time. The good news is that this art form of genuinely connecting with others is not complicated to master, but you have to work on it. Way too many of the people that I coach think that this is so simple that they don't have to put much effort into it. And they're usually wrong. Because while this is simple, which here means uncomplicated, It's not always easy, which means requiring little effort. So what is it that the likable people do that's so special? Well, they focus a conversation on the things they are genuinely interested in. Most other people do almost the opposite. They keep wondering and guessing at what the other person might want to talk about. What the stranger might think is interesting. Since we need a lot of luck to guess that correctly, that's not a great strategy. And since we know that the stranger is likely wondering what we would enjoy talking about, since that's what most people do. Why don't we make it easy for them and simply shoulder. Likable people share their genuine interests, desires, passions, experiences, thoughts and values with others. They talk about the things that matter, not about the weather, but which of their interests and get to pursue in the current weather. Not about what they do for a living, but about why they do that for a living. And they ask about things that are genuinely interested in learning about the person that they're talking to. They focus on finding the characteristics, the values to interest and so on, that they know that they would value in a friend. If, for example, you value sense of adventure and a friend, well, then that's what you should be talking about. Adventure in whatever form you enjoy it. Traveled, trying new things, adrenaline activities, maybe intellectual adventures, whatever floats your boat. When we talk to strangers about the things that we're genuinely interested in. Not only do we immediately get to see whether or not we're a good match with this other person. But they also get to see a bit of who we are. And it's rare for two people who have just met to really see glimpses of the other person's true self. But likable people are great at doing this and they do it by following this simple rule. Talk about the things you're genuinely interested in because it will attract people who share those interests. These people tend to be a good match for you and much easier to build a friendship whether than others. And remember, this includes talking about the things that you are genuinely interested in knowing about the person you're talking to. There are few things that are as interesting to people as someone who's genuinely interested in them. So when you have a conversation with a stranger about what you're interested in knowing about them. Well, that's a win-win for both of you. You'll have more conversations that you truly enjoy. And soon enough, become someone that strangers love engaging with. This is the most powerful way of getting to know others that I have discovered in over a decade as a social coach and through my three university degrees in psychology and education before that. But this can be easier said than done if you haven't done the groundwork. You see, in order to master this, you have to truly know what your interests are. And you might be thinking right now that you do because it feels like you do. But do you really? Here's an exercise that will help you find out, right, two lists for yourself. One with things from your own life that you have a genuine interest and excitement for, that you would enjoy talking to others about. And one with qualities, interests and values and such on that you would appreciate in a friend. You're not trying to write a list of the perfect friend. You only exploring and getting more familiar with the things you appreciate. So don't worry if you come up with conflicting qualities. It is, for example, perfectly fine to both. Like people enjoyed quiet nights at home and people who loves to go on adventures all the time. See if you can get those lists to at least ten items each. And the more the merrier, it does easy for you, that's great. Go out and have these conversations. If it isn't, Don't worry, the list will start to grow AS and he just spend more time with new people and reflect on what you really enjoyed about them. 7. The Two Rules For Social Success: Through my now extensive experience, both as a coach and a student of communication and social skills. I've discovered what I call the two rules, which I share in nearly all my courses. The rules are very simple to understand, but if you want to experience the incredible effect they will have on your social life, you have to make an effort to remember and use them as often as you can. Rule number one is I should never ever talked to someone to try to show them that you are good enough for that. You should only ever talked to anyone to find out if they are interesting to you. The idea that we have to be good enough for someone that we don't even know. It doesn't make a lot of sense if you really think about it. After all, how do we know that they're even all that good themselves? How do we know that we'll get along with them when we get to know them any better. For all we know, we might learn something about them that could turn us completely off from wanting to get to know them more. And why then did we spend all that time and energy trying to live up to what we thought they were looking for. Furthermore, we will always be good enough for the people that we are a genuinely good match with. The people that were compatible with will always like us, ask the person we are, because that's what being compatible with someone means. So if we accept the fact that those who would be a good match for us in a friendship. Or also the kind of people who like us for who we are. We can simply stop trying to make others like us and instead focus on finding out if they're a good match for us. And the easiest way to do that is to explore if they're interesting to us through the kind of conversations that are recommended in last chapter. When you follow this rule, you will not only feel more confidence is you'll have far less to worry about when you're not there to impress anyone. But you'll also notice that you actually start to have different conversations and before. Because when you're focused on finding out if the other person is interesting to you, you'll naturally talk more about those topics that you find interesting. And the people you talk to will notice too. Because we humans can practically feel when someone is talking to us to try to make us like them. And when they are deciding how much they like us. Since people like being liked, they will tend to try to win you over by investing their time and attention in you when they noticed this. It also lets us stop worrying completely about the arrogant and stuck-up crowd. I'm assuming that you like me, don't really find those people very interesting. So the moment they show you that they are full of themselves type, well, you can move on is someone else without feeling bad about them not liking you. Because at this point, it is just as much about you and not wanting to waste your time on that. Now rule number two is even simpler. And you want giving you their attention, is interested in you. It doesn't mean that they're interested in being your best friend already or your lover or whatever. But it does mean that they are at least interested in you at the level of conversation that you are currently at. Think about that. How much more confident would you feel if you never worried about whether people were just being nice while talking to you? Well, the truth is that most people will rather leave a conversation that they're not enjoying them beanies for any extended period of time. Now the absolute truth is that sometimes this rule is wrong. Sometimes people are really just being nice or killing time. We're waiting for an opportunity to runaway. But it doesn't happen very often if we follow the other strategies in this course. And the good thing about following this rule and say you will never again miss out on those who are interested in you. And personally, I know that I'd much rather waste a few minutes here and there on people who weren't really interested in getting to know me in the first place, then miss out on an opportunity to find someone that I can have a great relationship with, Wouldn't you? When you combine these two rules, you'll end up having conversations with other people about topics you find interesting without having to worry about whether they liked you or not. And the only thing that you need to pay attention to is how much you like them. If they stick around long enough for you to discover who they are as a person and decide that you'd like them. Well, nine times out of 10, they like you just as much. Once you live by these two rules, all you need to do to solidify that new connection is to extend it past that first conversation and will soon cover how to do that. All right, so now it's time to really start using the things you've learned so far in this course. The exercise I want to suggest to you is to start practicing talking about those things on the list I asked you to make with us many people as possible, including those that you already know. Focus on the list of things that you'd appreciate and friends. That's the most powerful one. But to add some spice to it, get comfortable sharing the interesting things from your life that you would enjoy talking to others about. You can do this by simply bringing the topic or asking them what they know about it. We'll soon get to the part where I suggest several ways to go out and meet new people. But even before you do that, you should be doing this exercise every time you get the chance. Soon as this becomes second nature for you, building social circles will become child's play. 8. Exchanging Contact Info: The first conversation with strangers can be a lot of fun, but those aren't really the point. That's not really what we're after. We are after making new friends, not just talked to a bunch of people who don't know, right? And that means that we'll want to see the strangers that we find interesting again later on. The first step we have to take in order to be able to do that is to extend that first interaction into the future. And luckily, we have a ton of ways to do that. And most of us carry the most popular tool for doing it around in our pocket, namely our phones. The best way to extend the conversation is to exchange contact info. Now, exactly what kind of info you prefer exchanging vary depending on your location, your age, and individual preferences. Some places and people might prefer exchanging phone numbers. Others prefer to do the Facebook thing. Some like to communicate via Snapchat or Instagram or other such apps. It really doesn't matter which type of contact info you exchange. It only matters that you're able to easily reach each other. Now, there are many people who have a lot of ideas. So just how one should take this step. And to be honest, I roll my eyes and most of it, this really does not need to be very complicated. All we need to do is to suggest an exchange. I will say though, that it is generally better to do this as a suggestion rather than a question. People There's tend to respond more favorably to things that are suggested, then things they're asked to do. Simple example of this would be the difference between saying we should exchange contact info and grab a coffee later and asking, Would you like to exchange contact info and get a coffee sometime? Suggesting something. It's the same as taking the lead. And most people respond more positively to that. Because it feels like it takes a lot of the responsibility off of their shoulders. Not to mention that it just sounds more confident. So suggest exchanging contact info instead of asking for it and you'll get a positive apply more often and signal more confidence in your communication. The second thing to keep in mind is that it's a good idea to tell people why you're exchanging contact info with them. And the clearer your reason for this, the better. Just saying we should exchange contact info will get you a yes from those who are already thinking about suggesting that themselves. But adding a reason, we'll get a yes from a lot of people that hadn't even thought about it yet. They now won't have to think about why they should do it. They only have to think about whether or not they're comfortable doing it. The reason that you give them can be as simple as letting them know that you enjoyed the conversation and would like to do it again, or that you'd like to invite them to something in the future. Or it can be something more specific and based on the conversation you had with them. If for example, you discover that you both love hiking in the woods, then the reason to exchange contact info might be that you can go hiking together or maybe even just so that you can reach out to them for advice on where you should go hiking the next time you go out on your own. So the formula is simple. Suggest exchanging contact information and tell them why you're suggesting it. Your exercise for this chapter is to start practicing this right now. And not just with people that you've just met and their contact info. Practice suggesting rather than asking whenever you want to do anything with anyone, you'll notice that you'll get slightly more people saying yes, just for making this simple shift. Let's go to the movies night. I love watching comedies with you is more likely to go, yes. Would you like to come see a comedy Whitman tonight? It gives them a reason for why they should say yes, it's confident. And it will feel like it takes a lot of the responsibility for making decisions off of their shoulders. 9. Folllowing Up On Potential Friends: So you've met someone who seem like they might be a good fit for you socially. You even exchange contact information with them. Now what? Later in this course we'll get into events, hosting activities and other such happenings that will help you both have more things to invite people to and more places to meet people. So for now we're going to focus on the simple act of reaching out to your new friends. Because here's the thing. You have to follow up on them. It is your responsibility and no one else's. You see a huge reason adults around the world struggled to create new friendships is that they either hope that the friendships we will just happen on their own, or think that all it takes is to have a good conversation with the right person and then that person will take care of the rest. But that's not how things tend to work. Since most people do this, odds are that the person that you've met is going to fall into that group. That means that we can't rely on other people always being ready to give us what we want until the responsibility of getting it falls on us. And I know, I know you might be an introvert or shy or very busy, are very lazy. I am too, well, at least most of those things. But that doesn't matter. If you're interested enough and creating new friendships that you've signed up for this course. You have to make this a priority. Whether that means that you have to go outside of your comfort zone, change your schedule, stop being lazy. It doesn't matter either. There's simply no other way to create a friendship than to have conversations and spend time together. So if your friendship is what you want, you have to take on the responsibility of making those conversations happen. And in the beginning, might feel awkward or maybe even scary, or give me easy and fun and incredible. The truth is that we can never know what is going to be like for sure until we try. But the good news is that whenever we spent time with someone that we are compatible with, it won't take long until those potentially awkward feelings become a thing of the past. Something that makes us laugh when we think about how silly it was to have them in the first place. So will you promise right now that you'll make the effort that your challenge your comfort zone, that you will take control of your souls social life by not sitting around and hoping that someone else would reach out to you. But by being the person who reaches out to others, your answer is yes, you're going to do great at this. How do I know? Because I've asked people all over the world these questions and those who make that commitment and stick to it all tend to succeed. Back when we were younger, we spent enough time around other people through school and everything else that friendships built through that. Now it is up to us to create the time we spend with others for these friendships to blossom. Now let's move on and take a look at some tips and tricks so we can use during these conversations to build friendships faster and easier than ever before in our adult life. 10. Three Tricks To Move Forward: Extending the conversation is one of the easiest and most natural ways to follow up and create further conversation with someone that we've recently met. All we have to do is contact them about something that we did or talked about during that first meeting. In other words, we're extending the conversation though he already had the conversation that made us decide to keep in touch. This is usually pretty simple if you just give it a little bit of thought, all you have to do is come up with a follow-up question or comment, a story on experience or anything of that sort that's related to your original interaction. Let's say, for example, that you met someone at a class you took. And the two of you talked about how much you both love tacos. A few days later, you might reach out to them to let them know that you have not been able to stop thinking about Taco since die conversation to the point that you're making it your dinner for today and it's their vault. Or maybe you just reach out to them to ask for that taco recipe they mentioned or which drink it was. They said went so well with tacos. The example is somewhat simple. I know That's really how easy it is to extend and interaction from one conversation to the next. And you'll more often than not, find that people will be excited to hear from you because there'll be reminded of the conversation that was a very recent they enjoyed spending time with even the first place, which was what inspired them to exchange contact info with you to do it again, I find that way too many people obsess about what they should right before sending a message or say when making a phone call. And they think it has to be funny or interesting or cool or whatever. But the truth is that it's the simple and natural things that worked best. As we start to interact with our new friends outside of the place that we met them. And we should also expand on the number of topics that we talk about. This is called creating multiple storylines. Let's say you meet someone at a dance class and you decide to extend the conversation by messaging them a couple of days later to ask a question about dance or whatever, something they said during class. Now while it's nice to talk about our mutual interests of dance or that conversation. If we only do that, we risks that the conversation will becomes single-minded and a little boring. So we want to create multiple storylines. We want to have multiple things to talk about so that we can switch from topic to topic easily. And this is where your skills of finding out interesting things about them, as well as sharing the things that you are interested in with them, becomes incredibly helpful. If you did your job during that first meeting, you should already know a few more things about them than just the fact that they like to dance. So bring these things up, ask or comment on them, or share ideas and thoughts you had about those things since you last talk with them. There's nothing wrong with cheating a little bit here and writing a little list of what you know about someone after you first meet them. It can be hard to remember all of the different things that we learn about people, especially over time. And it can be extra hard if we get a little stressed and nervous the next time that we talk to them. But the more topics that you have to discuss with someone, the quicker the two of you will start feeling like old friends. So don't latch onto one topic and write it until it dies. Instead, jump from one to the other and explore multiple topics in the same conversation. It's actually better if we don't finish talking about a topic. Because having those open loops, as we call them, makes our subconscious think that we have a lot to talk about. It increases report drastically and makes it much more likely that the other person will start reaching out to YouTube. In show business, they say, always leave the audience wanting more. The idea there is that if you give someone a great show and make sure you ended on a high note and maybe even not do some of your best material, the audience is likely to come back for another one of your shows to see more. While that is useful in entertainment, it can be a bit manipulative towards potential friends. Not to mention that if you hold back on actually showing them who you are, you might be wasting your time since you won't really get to see if they are compatible with who you really are. So instead, I want to offer an alternative to this until that potential friend has turned into an actual friend. It can sometimes be smart to end the conversation when you still want more conversation. It's fairly normal that when we're enjoying a conversation with someone, we want to hold onto it for as long as possible. After all the more time we spend together, the better, right? Well, that's true to a certain extent. But we also don't want to overstay our welcome. And if we leave while we're having fun with someone, we are much more likely to be highly motivated and excited to reach out to them again and spend more time with them in the future. So leave wanting more simply means that instead of waiting until a conversation becomes stale, or you're both very tired, or you run out of things to say, don't be afraid to end it after a reasonable time while the interaction is at a high point, it will work wonders on our motivation. It will make sure we don't come off as clingy. And it will leave both of us with an urge to spend more time together soon. 11. How to Give Solid Invitations: So now we come to one of the major sticking points for a lot of people taking the initiative to meet someone again after that initial meeting. For some people, meeting a potential friend can be just as comfortable and sometimes even more as going on an actual date. The truth is that the two are fairly similar. They both work the same way. One of us has to extend an invitation to the other one. The other one accepts. We meet up, we spent time together, and if we both feel like it went well and we're compatible way you do it again. And then we do it again and again until our relationship has formed. The big difference is that when we're talking about friendship rather than romance, well, things become a lot less complicated. And friendship, all that matters is that we enjoy spending time together. It doesn't matter if we're single or not. Who's attractive or not, who's confident enough to go for that first kiss or any of that. Still, I am going to refer to meeting up with the potential friends as a friend date for simplicity sake. And because I kinda like saying friends date, there's a simple rule to giving out invitations. And it's this. All invitations should include a time, place and an activity. Asking someone would you like to hang out sometime is not an invitation. A vague question. That is almost always answered with our sugar or yes, but hardly ever followed up on saying, Hey, let's grab a coffee on Thursday, around six at cafe. What's his name? That is a solid invitation. However, if you get a sugar or yes to that now you have a friend day. There's no Moore's ifs and buts or planning necessary. I also recommend that you give an imitation essence suggestion rather than the question. So instead of asking, Would you like to do this at the time at that place, you suggest, Let's do this at that time, at that place. Again, suggestions are more powerful in questions as it puts in more of a leader position. It makes the other person feel like they don't have to be in charge. And many studies have shown that people are more likely to say yes to a suggestion than a question. Later in this course, I'm going to suggest a lot of ways for you to meet these potential friends that you go on these dates web. And a lot of those will be great things to invite people along too. But for now I'm going to servers simple rule with you that will help you figure out what to invite people to. I call it the comfort rule. And it goes like this. The more comfortable someone is with you, the higher the stress factor for the friend it can be. The stress factor is typically created by these three elements. How private and alone you'll be, how many distractions or activities are available, and how long the meter would be expected to last. Once you get used to thinking about activities in this way, you'll see that it's really easy to estimate how high the stress factor is on anything that you'd like to invite someone to. For example, inviting someone to your home where it'll be just the two of you to make dinner and watch a movie or something. We'll have a pretty high stress factor. You'll be completely alone. There aren't many distractions, at least not that the other person knows about. And making dinner and watching TV, that will typically take at least two to three hours. Meanwhile, inviting someone out for a drink of coffee will have more people around, more distractions and potential activities and not need to take more than an hour. Now, these are two simple examples, but take a moment to think about what you'd enjoy doing with new friends and try to put it in a low, medium or high stress factor. And if you have any trouble with us, please feel free to message me and I'll be happy to help you out and help you understand it better. So why is this comfort rule important? Well, because a lot of times when people turn down invitations, it isn't because they don't want to spend time with the person inviting them. It's simply that it's already a little stressful to spend time with someone that we don't know well. And so if the thing they're inviting us to is also stressful, will say no because of the stress, not because of disinterest. A lot of potential friendships where both people are interested in getting to know each other and spend time together. Fail because there's this little thing. So until you're confident that the other person is very comfortable around, you, keep the invitations to low or medium stress levels and you'll get more yeses. 12. The Art of Showing Interest: While it's great to know how to connect with people, how to start and carry on conversations, how to extend invitations and all that. There's something even simpler that we should be doing. It's something that for some people is so obvious that they don't even think about it. For others, it's a little uncomfortable or scary. When I'm talking about is showing our interests in others. Something as simple as letting someone know in no uncertain terms that we'd like to spend time with them. This can have a huge positive impact on our relationship with them. But still, most people never do it. The thought of saying using like fun, we should hang out to someone we just met seems to scare a lot of people. Some are afraid of rejection, which we'll discuss in another video soon. While others think that it sounds desperate or whatever. But take a moment to think about it. How upset would you be if someone told you that they'd like to spend time with you, even if you didn't want to spend time with them, I'm guessing that you'd still feel flattered by it. Expressing our interests in someone without feeling insecure about it is one of the most efficient ways to motivate them both to accept our future invitations and to extend invitations to us. You'd likely be surprised if you knew just how many people carry social insecurity is with them, that prevents them from actually connecting with someone new. Even many of those who seemed the most comfortable and confident still hesitate to initiate ongoing relationships with others unless they feel very sure that the other person genuinely likes them. This is another of the main reasons for why so many adults struggle to both create new friendships and new romantic relationships. So break the pattern. Become comfortable showing your appreciation for and interest in others. Practice letting people know what you like about them and that you'd like to get to know them better or spent time with them. It doesn't take more than one single sentence. And even at that sentence doesn't lead to an immediate new friendship. You've just given the person a huge compliment and who doesn't like to be liked. Everyone does. The most charismatic and likable people I know all do this very well. Whenever they notice something about someone that they like, they'll smile and tell them not to flatter them, not to suck up. Just to let them know. They don't dwell on it. They don't wait for a compliment or a comment back. This it simply say something on the lines of using really interesting, I loved know more about you. And then move on to the next question that they have. This is what we call a show of interest. And you can sprinkle them around in your life to anyone who deserves it. When you do, you'll soon find that more and more people are drawn to you. The more people accept the invitation to give them. And that more people extend invitations to you. 13. Pinging Acquaintances Into Friends: Okay, so far in this section we've focused almost exclusively on strangers. But for a lot of people, strangers are not the only ones they can create friendships with. Many you already have a network of people around them that they know, but maybe not very well for whatever reason. So in this chapter, we're going to look at how we can start to improve and deepen friendships with people that we already know. Whether we consider them a friend, just an acquaintance, or maybe they're even just someone that we met some time and we can hardly remember who they are when we see their face on their name on, on Facebook. There are several very simple ways of being grow those relationships. And two of the best ways to get the ball rolling is by using pinging. Are gluing. Pinging someone is the simple act of reaching out to someone in a way that doesn't force a large conversation, but just a simple exchange of information to remind each other that we exist. With today's social media, we can ping people in a myriad of ways. It can be something as simple as sending them a little message related to a status update, the hat, my story picture they posted or whatever else. And we can of course also ping people with a text message or even a quick phone call if that's what we prefer. Our goal isn't to have a full-on conversation. It's just to remind them that were there and let them know that we thought about them. The reason we do this is to bring ourselves to their attention, to make them think about us and to show them that we consider them a part of our life, even if it's a very small one for now. And we can do this with anyone no matter how rarely we see them or how long ago we last talked to them. Since we're not taking up more more than a few seconds of their day anyway. Sometimes the other person will extend the conversation by asking questions and showing an interest in us. In which case you can of course, feel free to engage with them fully other times. So I'll just give you a short little reply and you can leave it out for now. You see pinging is a long-term game. It's not something that we do once and then we magically have an friendship. But when you ping someone every now and then, over time, you will tend to notice that they start engaging more with you. They might even start pinging you back. And it's really not unusual that you suddenly up, end up getting invitations to meet up. One of my clients do this in a more structured way I've ever seen. He's written a list of names of the people that he wants to be closer with. And every nine days he sits down and he looks at that list and it pings at least half of it. Last I talked to him, it was six weeks into doing this. And he said that he now has more social interactions and invitations than ever before. You don't have to be that structured with your painting. But in order for it to have an effect, you will usually have to ping people several times. And here's the important part. The moment they either extend the conversation with you or you feel like their response to your ping gives you room to extend it with them. Do so. From there on, you simply run through the steps that we discussed in previous videos, but giving them annotations to meet face to face. This point, there'll be used to thinking about us, someone in their life. And many of them will be happy to spend time to go. 14. Multiplying Friends With Gluing: We often forget how big of a network we really have. Especially if we tend to spend our time with only a few people. But even if you only have one person in your life that you spend anytime with, your network is likely larger than you think. And this time I'm not talking about your social media friends. I am talking about the people that your people know. If you're one friend has five friends, then you have direct access to six people. If you have two friends with five friends, that's 12 people and so on. Now, some people protest when I say this and point out that those five friends of your friends aren't your friends. And that might be true, but they can easily become your friends. Many years ago when I moved to a new city after college, I knew a total of 11 people there, several of whom I've only met him passing on work trips or similar. During my first two weeks in town, I made a point of meeting up with as many of them as I could by inviting them out to meet for coffee, you drink, dinners or whatever else I wanted to do with them. And when I threw my house warming party at the end of those first two weeks, I had over 40 people show up. Now, how did that happen? Well, because whenever I plan to meet up with one of those people that I already knew a little bit. I suggested that they should bring along someone they knew that they thought that I should meet. And most of them did. I spent that time getting to know these new people and then invited them to my house warming party. And as I'll describe in a later chapter for that party, I also encourage people to bring someone along and many dead. In only two weeks in a new city. I had met 30 new acquaintances. Now, truth is, most of them stayed as acquaintances and some of them I never saw again. But a handful of them became friends that I value to this day. Gluing is about being the social glue that brings people together. Even when those people are one step outside of your reach. It's about making introductions and asking for introductions to be made. It's a very simple way to expand your existing social circle. And the new people that you meet will usually be eager to meet you because of your mutual friend. And since your mutual friend will be there to, the conversation will tend to flow easily and naturally. So your task for this chapter is to start pinging the people in your life that you don't talk too much, but that you like as they start to engage in conversations with you, extend an invitation to spend time together. And from now on when you go to meet someone that you know, suggests that they bring out someone else along, someone they think will enjoy the activity that you're doing, or someone that they think that you should meet. You'll soon see that your social circle will start to grow faster and faster. 15. The Fear of Rejection: Let's talk about another reason for why so many people have a hard time connecting with others. The fear of rejection. Rejection is one of many people's biggest fears were afraid to stand out, out of fear that people might not like us. We're afraid of talking to people because they might not want to talk to us. We're afraid to give someone an invitation because if they say no, it might mean that we're not good enough. But here's the thing about rejection. People who don't know you incredibly well can't reject you. And those that do know you very well tend not to reject you. That's how they've gotten to know you so well by accepting and loving who you are. And if you have people in your life that you've let get that close to you who do not love you. It's time to do something about that and replace them. But what do I mean when I say that people who don't know you can't reject you. For many people, this doesn't make sense at first. Tj, they argue, of course they can reject me. What if they think I'm not funny enough or smart enough for attractive enough, that's all about me, isn't it? Well, only if you're able to convey all your humor, intelligence, or attractiveness and the span of those few minutes that you spend with a stranger. And if you know how to do that, then please teach me how. The truth is that people who don't know you well, don't really know you. They only get to see that one side of you that's in front of them in those seconds or minutes where you first meet. And how often would you say that you are at your most genuine you and able to show off the depths of who you are as a person in such short meetings with people that you don't know. People don't reject people. People reject situations. Let me tell you a story to explain what I mean by that. Many years ago, I was sitting in a bar with some friends of mine eating burgers and having a drink or two. When I noticed two women that were sitting over by the bar, they look great, all dressed up with drinks by their side and they were talking and laughing with each other. And during the first hour or so that I spent eating with my friends, I saw four or five men walk up to these women to try to talk to. As far as I could tell, these men did everything correctly. They had good body language, their energy levels were good, their eye contact was in place. They engaged both women equally and so on. And they all did exactly what I would've done if I was going to approach this woman. But none of them lasted more than a minute before it was obvious that the women politely ask them to leave. Now, I wanted to test this theory of mind that people reject situations and not people. So I decided to walk over there and create a different situation. Now, keep in mind if I hadn't watched these men walk over the way they did and I wanted to talk to these women. I would've done the same thing and created the same situation. The situation of a man purposefully walking up to the women to get to know them. But instead of doing that, now I walked over the bar and I leaned against it behind one of the women as if I was to order a drink. When I did, I accidentally bumped gently into the woman that was sitting with it back to me. I smiled and apologized and she told me not to worry about it. I said at the bar avoiding eye contact with the bartenders so he wouldn't serve me for about a minute or so. Then I kinda turn my head and I looked over the woman that was sitting so that she was facing me. She looked up as we tend to do when we notice that someone is looking at us. And I said service been this lower night. She smiled and shook her head saying no, it was fun for them. I continued by replying with a smile that the Barton who was probably discriminating against me because I was a guy or girl laughter little her friends sitting with a back towards me now turned her head and join the conversation. I honestly can't remember what she said. It's been a few years. But at this point she is basically sitting like this. Turn back to talk to me. As I answer her, I move to stand with the two women in the same place that the other men had originally approached. While I moved, I said, let me just stand here so that you don't hurt your neck. And the two of you can help me get the bartenders attention while we chat. From there, I ended up spending the next five minutes in conversation with them. And when I told them that I really should get back to my food, they invited me to come back and join them when I was done eating. So what was the difference between me and those five other guys? From what I could see, I had neither been more fun or polite, had better energy, or been more engaging. I was certainly not any better dressed. I was wearing an old t-shirt and jeans. I was just out to eat. Nor was I anymore attractive in any traditional sense than the other guys. The only real thing that happened, the only really real thing that separated me from those guys was the situation that I created. While the element that created a situation of man wanting to flirt with women, I create a situation of demand that just happened to get into a conversation with them at the bar? How do I know that this was their experience? Well, because they told me during our conversation, I learned that the girls hadn't seen each other for a long time and that they run a girls night out. And the meeting man was something that they had specifically said they were not going to do tonight. When I pointed out that well, they were meeting me. They both laughed and they said, Well, yeah, but you didn't walk over to hit on us. So so that's different. If those other guys felt bad about themselves because these two women didn't want to talk to them. They felt bad about themselves for absolutely no reason. The rejection wasn't because the women thought that there was anything wrong with those guys. And it was simply because the situation that arose when the men approached the women was not the kind of situation the women wanted that night. That's it. So all we can do is learn how to create the best situations we can. And when someone doesn't want to engage with us, well, we have to remember that we the person we are, are only a very small part of the situation. Yes, we should be aware of such things as our energy levels, our eye contact, speaking clearly and loudly enough and so on. Since these things will influence the situation. But assuming that there's something wrong with us, that we're not good enough. Simply because someone that we don't really know aren't interested in connecting with us in that particular moment. Well, that's like thinking that there must be something wrong with the candy that you are offering to a stranger if they turned it down. And all of this goes for everyone we interact with who don't truly know us, not just strangers we met a few minutes ago. There's just no way that we can get to know someone completely in the span of a few meetings. So we must remember that the circumstances in both our life and the life of the other person plays a huge role in their decision about whether or not they want to engage with us, just like they do in our decision of whether or not we want to engage with them. As you work on getting more and more experienced starting conversations and extending invitations, you'll get better and better at creating the right situations in the moment. And see that more and more people become interested in connecting with you. But everyone gets a so-called rejection every now and then. The difference between the likable people and basically everyone else is that the likable people know that it does not mean anything bad about them. So they don't take it personally. And they move on to meet someone else who they might be more compatible with. Or we're better. Initial situation might occur. 16. Developing Abundance Mentality: Let's talk about a little something called abundance mentality. Abundance mentality is the attitude that there is an abundance of what we want or need around us, even if we don't have direct access to it right now. You might call it optimism if you'd like, but it's much more than just a state of mind or belief. It's an incredibly useful tool for getting what we want. You see when we develop true abundance mentality, meaning when we know that there's more than enough of what we want out, they're unimportant shift happens in our thinking. We rid ourselves of scarcity mindset because abundance and scarcity cannot exist simultaneously on the same thing. And while a scarcity mindset takes them, tends to make us stressed, pessimistic and oftentimes also desperate. Abundance mentality helps us to relax, see opportunities, and feel more confident. If we have social scarcity mindset, if we believe that there aren't any one out there for us or that so few people are compatible with us. That finding them is like looking for that famous needle in the haystack. We tend to either not even bother trying or get a little too eager and clingy if we happen to find someone who fits the bill. If we have an abundance mentality however, and know that as long as we make an effort to look around will find plenty of people that will enjoy spending time with, and they will enjoy spending time with us. We tend to relax more, will still be just as happy and excited when we meet someone interesting. But we'll be able to think more clearly. Our mind won't go into panic mode and insist that we do everything we can all the time to keep them around because it knows that even if it doesn't work out with this one, another opportunity will come along soon enough. We just keep an eye out for it. But how can we develop an abundance mentality if we don't already have one? Well, there are many thoughts on this. Most of them involving things like focusing on what you have rather than what you don't have. Writing gratitude journals about what you appreciate throughout your day and in your life. Observing your thoughts and ensuring and guiding them towards a more positive outlook and so on. And while these certainly can be useful tools in general, I prefer to take a much more practical approach to things, especially when we're talking about social dynamics. In my experience, the easiest way to develop an abundance mentality for our social lives is to meet a lot of people in a short period of time and pay attention to how many of them have any of the qualities that we appreciate. Let's say that you really appreciate colleague a, B, and C And people for simplicity sake. And that is important for you that a friend has all of those qualities. To develop your abundance mentality, you might go out and talk to 30 people paying attention to who has which of these three qualities? Maybe you find that ten of them have none of those qualities. You don't like those people at all. 10 more might have only one of them. Eight might have two of those qualities and only to have all three to varying degrees. Well, this will show you that the qualities aren't hard to find. After all, 20 or 30 people had one or more of them. And while finding someone who has all of them at once can still be somewhat rare. And even though it might not even work out with those two that you met, who did you still showing yourself that there are plenty of opportunities to find those qualities out there. There is an abundance of them. All you have to do is be patient until one of those 7% of people or so who possess all the qualities you're looking for also turns out to be available for friendship. I am, of course, oversimplifying, but I trust you understand what I mean. Keep an eye out for the qualities that you value in people. And you'll start to see them everywhere. Especially if you practice a conversational techniques that I suggested earlier in this course. And you focus your conversations on the things that you are truly interested in. The more often you meet people who have one or more of the qualities that you look for, the more abundance you'll start to feel. 17. Adult Friendship Challenges: Another common reason for why many adults have a hard time making new friends is because they don't have a lot of opportunity to. When we were younger, we'd meet our peers through school, after school programs and sports or other such activities. But most adults tend to have much less exposure to other people. Adults often have a set routine of doing the same things over and over again in the same place with the same people. We simply don't do as many things as we used to. To remedy this, we have to start creating some new habits and routines for ourselves. You see the people who have a lot of friends that always seem to be doing things, don't do these things because they have a lot of friends. They have a lot of friends because they do all these things. They participate in activities and events, they nurture the social connections that they have and they use their social connections to create new ones, often through the activities that they do. So in this part of the course, I'm going to break down the major things that the people who always seem to have a lot of friends and acquaintances tend to do with their time that the rest of the world doesn't. Now relax. If you enjoy being lazy at home or relaxing and you just want fence to do that with, you definitely can't. This is not about changing your lifestyle dramatically. It's about seeking out the environments, the activities, the event, and the people that will fit with what you're looking for, for your life. 18. Finding the Time and Energy: So how many different activities do you have on your schedule during an average week? Generally speaking, most adults only do a fraction of the things that kids do. We go to work, maybe we exercise, maybe we spend a little social time with friends and family and otherwise we watch TV, do our housework and get bored. Then there are the social kids, the ones that have a lot of friends and prefer socializing to staying at home. They tend to join various clubs, play sports, or play outside in the neighborhood with other kids, hang out at the mall or market. Whatever else, gets them out of the house. And that helps them meet others, stay engaged and have fun doing it. But as adults, we often don't have the time or energy for all of that. And I get it. I get that a can often feel like that it does for me too. I run my own business. I tried to work out regularly. I have a photography hobby that I like to nurture. I have a house to take care of and a wife and a couple of cats to spend time with. On top of that, I'm an introvert who is perfectly comfortable in my own company. And to be quite honest, I can also be kinda lazy. So sometimes I just don't feel like I have the energy to go to that next get-together. I would take that course or join that organization, go to that event. But then I do anyway, I take my shower, put my shoes on, and go out the door. Because I know one thing that too many people have forgotten, your energy will come back once you're enjoying yourself. It's no different for us adults than it is for the kid who moans and complains about not wanting to go outside when his parents are making him. But once it's out there, it doesn't take long before he's running around and enjoying his day. And this is a trick that so many likable people know. This is one of the primary things that made my own life go from that sad birthday and my late 20s to the life I live today where I sometimes feel like I almost have too much going on with too many people. I discovered that more often than not, energy would find me as long as I gave it a reason to. In fact, there was a study done by Columbia University in which they strap the research subjects into chairs, attached weights to their fingers and ask them to lift the weights as many times as they cook. When the research subjects said that they were unable to continue, the research, has told them that they would be paid $1 for every additional lift they can do. From now on. On average, the participants increase the results by 30 percent. And this is just a small example of how even our physical energy gets a boost once our motivation does, our energy finds those when we give it a good enough reason to? The only exception to this is if you're not taking well enough care of your basic needs such as food, water, and sleep. And for those who are introverted by nature, like me, and need some alone time to recharge your batteries, make sure you do. But Al-Azhar, that the reason that you're taking this course is because you sometimes have too much alone time. So don't let that be your excuse not to do something about this. Okay. Fine. So my clients say to me at this point, I'll assume that you're right and that if I go out and do things that I enjoy, the energy will find me. But I don't have time to do these things. And this is where I make one of my personal favorites among my many annoying replies. It's not about time as about priorities. The truth is that if you don't have time for something, It's simply means that you are prioritizing other things over it. And sometimes I make sense. It is, for example, smart to prioritize your job over having drinks with your friends every day if you want to keep that job. But other times these priorities are more habitual and the holders back without us even knowing. Let's take my client Raj as an example. Roger was one of the people who asked me that question. And when I gave him my answer, he shook his head and he told me that he had to do the things you were doing. There was no time in his day for extra activities. So we did the math. Raj, like everyone else has 24 hours in a day. He works for ten hours of that day, including his commute to and from work. He prefers to sleep for seven hours and we add an hour to get ready for bed and an hour to wake up and have breakfast totaling sleep time at nine hours. That's 19 hours, leaving five to play with, not even counting his weekends. He went on to say that, well, he did a 45 minute run two to three times a week, and otherwise, he enjoyed going to the movies, the park, what is favorite TV shows and read, and they didn't want to give that up. So let's take a look at those numbers. Not in terms of Raj having to do all those things, but in terms of which of those hours are being used for high priority activities. Now I'm the first to recommend that you get enough sleep. And I'm a big fan of people having an income. So we can immediately say that those first 19 hours are great priorities. I'm also a fan of staying in shape. So it's 45 minute run to the three times a week is great. But how about the rest? I asked them, Is it more important to you to watch movies or TV or read or go to the park then to have the social life that you've hired me to help you create Raj circuits head again. And if we average it out and say The Raj has five hours Monday through Friday to use for lower priority activities? Yes. Total of 25 out and 25 hours in those five days at his disposal. Even if we add another three hours a week for his run is left with 22 hours. So even with all the other things that show up in our life to distract us during the day, 22 hours and five days is a lot of time. And in this math problem, we're not even counting the 34 waking hours of the weekend, which brings his total 256 hours a week that he can prioritize however he wants. Now, your life might very well be Beziers and John Rogers, but is it really 56 hours a week busier? If it isn't, I do recommend you find a course on time management that as well and combine what you learn there, what you learn here. Of course, I am not suggesting that you should fill every minute of every day with activities. It's perfectly fine to start small when you're adding activities to your weekly calendar, especially if you're scheduled already busy. Don't overexerting yourself. It's okay to start with one new thing a week and then add another one once you've gotten used to the first one and so on. It might require some dedication and willpower. But if it's important enough for you that you're watching this course, well, it probably should we be important enough for you to prioritize over a lot of the things that you spend your time on by habit. 19. Creating an Active Lifestyle: How often do you do something new? That includes being around a lot of new people? If you're like most adults, the answer is probably not very often, or maybe even never. If you're one of the few adults that answer all the time, then this won't be the most important part of the course for you, but stick around anyway because I do have some great resources for you too. As I said in the introduction to this section of the course, the people with busy social lives who almost always seem to be doing things, aren't doing things because they have busy social lives. They have a business social lives because they are always doing things. Unless we actually leave our house and go out to spend time in settings where there are new people to meet. It becomes very hard to meet new friends. Living an active life is therefore one of the most important parts of making new friends. But what does it mean to live an active life? It simply means to participate in any activity that you might enjoy that takes place in a setting where there will be other people. The people you will meet will also tend to be people who don't just want to sit at home with the same friends they've had day after day after day. They want to go out and experience new things, which makes him very likely to also be open for new friendships. The people who seek out events where part of the activity is to socialize with other people. Tend to either be very social people or people who want to be more social. So all you need to do is choose activities that you will enjoy, that is done together with others. And that way you'll tend to meet people who enjoy those same things and are looking for new experiences. For some, these will be activities like sports or group exercise. For others is taking a course or a class on something for others, it's volunteer work or joining interests. Clubs are going to regional meetups are going to events like concerts or seminars or joining a book clubs and so on. The list goes on forever and includes pretty much anything that people tend to do together. So what are your interests? Many adults feel like they've lost touch with their interest. It was so easy when they were younger, had more time, had more energy and so on. And if you're one of these adults, don't worry, your interests are pretty easy to find. Again, all you have to do is think about what you might enjoy doing. What could be fun to try, or even what did you use to think could be fun to try. As you start making plans to try these things, you'll soon start noticing which feel right to explore and which don't. And Azar, that new ideas will pop up along the way. Over the years, I've explored all kinds of things in addition to go into a lot of different events and workshops, I've taken courses in photography, juggling, video editing, writing and so on. I volunteered and various social and humanitarian organizations. I've tried out various sports, taking dance classes, and even participated in online groups related to my local community and my interests. All of them have offered me plenty of opportunities to meet new people to connect with. All I need to do is use the steps in the previous sections of this course. So what are you gonna do? When I first answer that question for myself? I made a nice little list. I put the list on my wall next to my computer and did nothing. Then one day, a friend of mine who was one of the likable and most popular people that I knew, came to visit and told me, we're going to go to swing classes every Monday at seven PM for the next seven weeks because about 50 bucks and the classes in the College, Jim. Oh, I say. Okay. Swing dancing had been on that list of mine for several months, if not longer, but for some reason I never seem to get around to it. And suddenly I knew why. After that, first when class I sat down, I created this form. In column one, I wrote down the activity that I wanted to do. In column two, I wrote down where I could do it. In column three, I wrote down the deadline for signing up and the start date for the activity. And a column for I wrote down how much it would cost. This list was far more effective than my old one. Suddenly, I wasn't only thinking that I wanted to do these activities. I now had to make an active choice about whether or not I would do them every time one of those deadlines or start date starting to get a closer, I had to make an active choice. Do I actually want to do it and can I afford it? When he answer to those two questions was yes, it was a lot easier to go ahead and sign up and show up than it had ever been before. Before I created a forum, I'd like to information that I needed. I only knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know where, when and what it would require once I did, my activity level skyrocketed. So your exercise for this chapter, please, please do it, is to download a PDF form from the resources for this lecture and start filling it out right down the activities that you'd like to try, whatever they are. And then go online and research where, when and for how much you can do them in your area. I strongly recommend that you hang this form somewhere where you'll see it every day and make a habit out of checking those days. Or if you prefer, put those dates into your digital calendar and set it to remind you in time to sign up or participant. The ones among my client to do this not only finds it a lot easier to get to know new people, but they start having more social motivation and a lot more fun than they've had in years. And remember, when you're not used to going to things like these, it might feel stressful or even awkward or embarrassing at first. But that's just because it's new. And I promise that if you keep going and more activities while working on the rest of the skills in this course, those feelings will go away quickly and be replaced with excitement. 20. Online Resources: There's another way to expand your weekly activities that tend to require even less time on average throughout your week. But I must warn you, please don't rely solely on this to create an active life. It is easy to get tricked and feel like you're making an effort to create real-world friends while you're in reality, are making a little or no progress. What I'm talking about is online social resources. That is online forums or groups aimed at helping people connect with other people in their area. Facebook, for example, have made a huge push to popularize their Facebook groups. And there are a few areas in the world with even a small to medium-size population that doesn't have several Facebook groups dedicated to various interests. And you can find these groups by doing a simple Facebook search for the name of where you live and the name of an interest or activity that you enjoy. For example, if I do a search for hashtags hand, which is to say the name of my home town in Northern Norway with a population of about 20000 people, and the Norwegian word for dog. I find several groups dedicated to dog owners in that area that I can join. Several of them have meet-ups, teach dog training classes and so on. So if I'm a dedicated dog owner in that town, I can get access to a whole network of people interested in connecting with other dog owners in that town with a click of a button. But Facebook isn't the only resource for this. Another site you can try as meetup.com, whose entire goal is to help people find local groups to join so they can meet new people, try new things, or do more of what they love. Many towns and cities also have various social organizations or websites that keep track of local events and happenings. So since you're spending your time on a device with Internet access anyway, take some time to check out these resources and look around for what else you can find for your area. But again, please remember that the point of participating in these online groups is so that you'll actually the house and go out to meet these people in person. Don't let yourself get hypnotized by that screen and get stuck with a feeling that you're meeting people. While in reality, all you're really doing is typing on a keyboard. 21. How Hosting Can Change Everything: There's one thing that's more effective than anything else. If your goal is to increase the sheer number of people in your social circles. And that is to host events. When I suggested this on one of my live workshops, one of the participants immediately objected and said, if I had enough people in my life that I could host get-togethers, I wouldn't be at this workshop. I literally only spent time with one person, was nicer than that. But you get the point. And I understood what he meant because that's how I felt when I was starting out to the thing was we had both been wrong. Now, since he had already talked about being on Facebook, I asked him, Tell me how many Facebook friends do you have? Somewhere around 300 and said, Okay. And how many of them live in the same city as you do you think? Maybe half, probably a little less than that. All right. Let's say that it's a 100. How many of those would you say are in your age group? If figured, maybe not. Great. And how many of those do you not hate? He laughed and said, Well, most of them, I guess. Great. So if you'd like most of the 50 people on your list who are in your age group, that's 30 or 40, or maybe even more people that you can invite to get together. He rolled his eyes. Yeah, but I don't know them. A lot of them are just people I've met once or twice. Some are old colleagues or people from school that I haven't seen in years. It would be weird to invite them and no one would come anyway. And that what he said right there is what stopping most people from using the social networks they already have around them. We believe that other people are full of judgment. We believe that other people have these great social lives and no interest in expanding them. We think that other people spent a lot of time analyzing every invitation that yet. But the truth is that when most people get an invitation is something, the first consider whether or not the event is something they want to do. Then they might think about who invited them and then thirdly about who else might be going. And when someone gets an unexpected invitation from someone they haven't talked to in a long time? Well, they usually assume that the event is the kinda thing that the host is inviting all kinds of people too. That makes it feel a lot safer to go since they assume that it won't be the host close friends. And then the assumption is that this is a kind of event where they'll have the opportunity to meet a bunch of people who are also there to meet a bunch of people. Now how do I know this? Well, because since I finally started getting my social life up and running, I've been asking people questions about this constantly and the answers are almost unanimous. Like client decided to try to prove me wrong. He was convinced that if he threw a party and invited all those people that I suggested, no one would show up and he would get at least a few uncomfortable questions from people wondering why he was inviting them to something. On the night of his party, over 30 Guess showed up. It turns out that there were a lot of people who wanted to spend time with them. They had just always assumed that he had a lot going on and that they weren't someone that key would consider spending time. Now, granted, this client of mine was especially good case for most people, including myself. It can take time to make this happen. Personally took about four months before a lot of people started showing off to my events. For the first couple of months, I'd have four or five. Sometimes a little more people show up. They tended to be my closest people and a couple of others here and there. But over time as people got accustomed to getting invitations from me, and as more and more of my extended circle had to stop by once or twice before things suddenly started taking off. By the four month, fourth month, I suddenly had to start being strict with a guest list to make sure that not too many people showed up for events with limited space. But the amount of people coming to your event isn't the only thing that will change once you start hosting. You'll also most likely notice that the amount of invitations you receive will start to increase. You see, when people decide who to invite to their events, they tend to first invite their close friends and the people they like the most. And secondly, the people who invite them to things. In psychology, this is called the reciprocity principle. And it says that we don't like feeling like we owe something to anyone. And even the simple act of someone else offering us something makes us subconsciously want to offer them something back. So when someone is going through the friend list to send out invites to an event that they're having and they see your name, they're much more likely to click on it if they've received invitations from you recently, even if they haven't seen you in forever? Personally, I found that only a couple of months into MY hosting events, I was having trouble finding available dates for my events because I tended to be invited to things basically every weekend. The hardest part of this strategy is to keep doing it. Even if not a lot of people come to your first few events, it requires that we have faith in the process and that we keep at it. But in over 10 years of sharing this with people, I've yet to see anyone who didn't increase their social circles and the amount of invitations they received, if they just stuck to this strategy and did it for long enough. So my recommendation is that you start hosting events every two weeks or so. What kind of events you want to host is completely up to you. For some people, parties are great. For barbecues, are dinners, trips to the park or nearby lake or a beach. Some like going to museums or going to concerts. Some, some just get people together for lunch or coffee somewhere. If you can. Hosting your events at your home is often the easiest way to go. But there's nothing wrong with going out somewhere either. Now, there are a few more rules and guidelines on the art of inviting advice on how to use your events to meet new people and to different categories of events that will help you narrow down what kind of events you want to do and when. So let's move up, move on and talk about those. 22. Social Circle Builder Events: I operate with two categories of events depending on what our goal is. The first category is a social circle builder events. The second one is events meant for social circle design. Let's explore both. Social circle builder event is an event where we're aiming to increase the number of people in our social circles. These tend to be larger events when anything upwards of 15 people or more attending. To a certain extent, the bigger the better tends to be the key concept for these. The only real requirement for these kinds of events is that we have plenty of space so that we can fit everyone. Or I guess that it's the kind of event where it doesn't matter if it gets a little cramped. For these events. We basically invite everyone that we'd like to have as part of our active social circle. And we also give our guests the opportunity to bring along people that we don't know yet. In other words, when you're designing your guest list for this, all you're looking at is whether or not that person fits whatever requirement the event has, like living in your area and being of appropriate age, and that there's someone that you wouldn't mind having around. That's basically it. It doesn't matter if some of them live their life in front of a computer and those live at doing sports. It doesn't matter who knows each other, not in fact, mixing groups make events more interesting. And since one of your interests is to grow your social circles, you want to be surrounded by people who enjoy growing. There's, so the goal of this is both to get people from different groups together so that you can increase the likelihood of them both connecting with you and each other. And to send out an invitation to a large group of people so that more people will think of you. They are sending out their own invitations in the future. And as I mentioned, for these events, we will often also encouraged the people that we know to bring people that we don't know. This has to be done in a controlled way though, so that things don't get completely out of hand. But a very simple way to do this is to include in the invitation that if there's anyone that you want to bring along that you think that I would enjoy meeting, that would be great. But please reach out to me and ask first. A lot of people will have a friend that they would like to bring along. And when asked, will make sure to send you a text or call you to make sure it's okay before they do. This way, you control, control how many extra people show up. And you can also say yes or no depending on how much you trust the person who's asking to bring someone or how many they want to bring or stuff like that. For the event itself, we want to focus our time and attention primarily on the people that we know the least. It's often tempting to spend our time talking to the ones we're most comfortable with. But that's not really going to increase their social, social circles a lot. So make sure you're spending plenty of time talking with the people you don't know well or not at all. They will appreciate the you, the host is giving them attention and they will want to get along with you since you are the host, which makes it very easy to exchange contact info and contact them later. 23. Social Circle Design Events: A social circle design event is an event where you are targeting specific people to bring closer to you and whatever social group you might already have. These are smaller events, usually no more than five to ten people, where half the group or so are people that you already know fairly well, your core group. The rest of the people are those that you would like to have as part of your core group. When they participate, they'll not only get more time with you, but they'll also get to meet your friends, which basically doubles the amount of exposure they get to you and your life. This tends to help them feel like they're one of yours and increases the likelihood that you'll develop a personal connection with them much faster than you otherwise would. These events tend to be things where there aren't a lot of distractions, so that the interactions are all focused on the group that is getting together. In other words, go into a bar or somewhere where we can easily get distracted, we can end up stop talking to the people that we came with. It tends to be a bad idea. A dinner or some other activity that takes place in your home, or at least in a place where it's not usual for members of the group to get pulled out of the group tends to work best for these events. During these get-togethers, we also focus our attention on the new people. But since there are far fewer people here, we can more easily have the whole group, or at least large parts of the group talk together all at once. This increases the feeling of being part of your core group for the new people. And once again, makes it more likely that you'll have a deeper connection with them. And here is a great thing. If you try to throw a builder event, but only a handful of people show up, you have now stepped right into a designer event. So while you might not increase your social circle a lot that day, you certainly have the opportunity to create a much deeper connection with whomever showed up. One of my former clients, software engineer who lived in the same city as me when he came to my workshop, has become a master at all of this. I went to a birthday party a couple of years after the workshop. And as we were standing in his apartment talking about the 50 or so people who came. He suddenly said with a smile, I just realized that before your workshop, I only knew one of the people in this room. This guy had made an art form out of hosting these events. And he follows a very simple recipe. He throws builder events as regularly as the schedule allows and it goes out and has an active life. And whenever he meets people that he wants to bring into score group, it makes a note of them. Then a little while later, he will throw a design event. This is usually a dinner party with a maximum guest list of about 10.5 of those are his closest friends and half are the people that he wants to be closer with. Many people in a social group now even considers a bit of an honor to get invited to his dinners using this simple tactic as well as the other advice I'm sharing in this course. He has gone from having a life where you have very few friends and spent most of his time at work or watching TV to having a busier social life than almost anyone else. I know. Maybe even myself. 24. Using Facebook Events: So here's just a quick little tip. If you live in a culture and a community that likes to use Facebook, I strongly recommend that you use it both for your social builder and your social designer events. Facebook's event function is an amazing tool for this. Just remember to use it correctly. Consider the Facebook event page, a sales brochure for your event. It should look good and it should make it sound tempting to attend. In other words, make sure that you put an image in the header of the event, preferably something related to what the event is. So if you're inviting someone to a party, or you need to do is go to google and find a good-looking party picture and pop in there. If you're inviting people to hang out in the park, well, go find a picture showing people hanging out in the park and so on. And make sure that you write a fun little description of the party. Think about it this way. If the people you invite, have another invitation that same day, yours should sound better. Some people like myself, like to use humor in the description while other people just like to write something instance chiastic are exciting, it really doesn't matter. As long as it tastes more than come to this thing, it'll, it'll be fun. At the end of your description. That's where you put that text encouraging people to bring others along, but to let you know before they do, Facebook is great because you can create excitement through the event. They get to see who else is invited. And Facebook tends to remind them that the event is coming up or day or so before the event. Now if you don't use Facebook, don't fret too much about it. Just remember to give people enough excited information when you invite them and to check in with the people that you've invited. A couple of days or so before the event. You'll be surprised how many people simply forget about things that they were invited to, even if they said yes. So make sure you remind everyone who said yes or maybe. And if they said no, you can leave them alone. Of course. 25. The Art of Asking for Invites: So this one's kind of funny to me because this is something a likable people do all the time. But that most people think is something that only desperate people do. Likable people ask other people for invitations. A lot of people think that asking to be invited to something is bad. I've heard people describe it as needy or desperate or clingy yours, something that only those who got a life of their own does. And it always makes me laugh because in reality, it tends to be the people who are most popular, who are best at this. But it has to be done in the right way. The reason people think that this is a bad thing to do is because they imagined that the only way to do it is to ask to please, please be invited in something. That's not how likable people do it. They ask in a way that makes other people feel comfortable and like it's the likable when its offerings and value. And there are also two different types of limitations that the likable people have asked for. So let's take a look at what they are and how all of this works. Let's say that likeable Larry is our work talking to a colleague after arriving in the morning. When the colleague mentions that he's going to go try out a new sushi restaurant down the street for lunch. Since like Well, Larry thinks that his colleagues are great guy and he'd like to get to know them a little better. He decides to ask for an invitation. That sounds great. I love sushi, like malaria might say. If you let me know before you leave, I love to go with you. The concept is very simple, likable. Larry doesn't ask carefully. You are worry about whether or not his colleague wants his company. He lets his colleague know that he's opening, going with it. And it suggests to his colleague that he can invite Larry along when he's ready to go. Small invitations are about things that don't take up a lot of time and space. And that will be happening in the very near future. A half an hour lunch. It's not a big investment for either of them, but a great opportunity to spend some personal time together. Since like malaria is letting his colleague know that if he lets Larry know before he goes to the restaurant, Larry will come with them. He also takes the pressure off. His colleague, can feel free not to let larry know and can even tell Larry there and then why he won't get the invitation. The simple act of suggesting that the colleague can invite them, rather than asking him to please invite them, takes the pressure off both parties. A signals that it isn't crucially important for Larry to get the invitation. This technique, It's based on a very simple verbal trick by showing the other person that it is up to them whether something happens. They will not feel pressured. And there'll be more likely to make it happen since they get to feel like they're in control of the situation. Then there are the big invitations. These are imitations of bigger events where bringing us along, we'll take up a bigger part of the other Persian life. It's a larger investment of time and energy. Perhaps like biliary pings his acquaintance Robert one-day. Robert seems happy to hear from Larry and the little conversation that follows. Robert might mentioned that he's going out on the town that weekend. Or maybe Larry even asked Robert what his plans for the weekend are. Either way, like biliary learns that Robert is going out and might say something like, oh yeah, I'm planning on going on myself. I don't know what my exact plans will be yet. But if you let me know what you're doing throughout the evening, I'm sure we can find a way to meet up for a drink together. You see what happened there. Larry is once again letting the other person know that if they keep them in the loop, they might meet up. He's also going one step further here by letting robert know that he doesn't even know what his own plans are yet. This give rubbers to opportunities to offer invitations. He can give an invitation right there and then for Larry to be involved in Robert's plans that we can and you can do as Larry suggests and keep in touch during the weekend and give Larry an invitation as his own events unfold. Either way as far as Robert isn't concerned, there, it was simply suggesting that they meet since they're both going to be out anyway. And he can feel good about both extending the invitations or not. I know that for some people this seems a little bit like splitting hairs while others dread the thought of asking other people to give them an invitation or something. But this simple way of doing it is exactly what a lot of the most socially popular people do. By nature. Do not under, underestimate its effectiveness. And keep in mind, of course, that when talking to people that you are already good friends with, There's nothing at all wrong with simply asking them directly if you can come along for whatever their plan. Let's now get into the habit of over analyzing everything we do with everyone around us. 26. Accepting the Right Invitations: So if you want an active social life, you have to be good at saying yes to the invitation. So you get whenever I say this, basically everyone who recently. Sure. But as soon as I start asking some critical questions, it turns out that most people don't actually do it. A lot of them blame things like not having the time or the energy. But since we already covered that, i'm, I'm going to skip those excuses. Others say that they used to get invitations when they were younger, but now never really get any. So they can either say yes or no. A lot of people tell me that they accept invitations for activities that sound like fun. But of course say no two activities that they don't want to do. So let's take a look at these last two lines of thought. And what we need to do to make sure they stop holding us back from living our best social life. How we decide which imitation say yes, two is another thing that is different between the linkables and the rest of the population. When the majority of the population gets an invitation to, say, go fishing this week. And with some people they know, well, they first look at the activity and ask themselves, do I want to go fishing? If the answer is yes, they think, do I want to go fishing with those people who invited me? And if the answer to that also is yes, they ask themselves, do have time to your fishing. Seems pretty logical, right? Well, that's not how the likable think. Their first consideration is. Do I want to spend time with the people who are going? If you answer this out is yes, they go on to decide how they're going to make time. And the activity itself is an afterthought. It will only influence a decision if they really hate fishing. And unlikable is know that the activity is just an excuse to spend time together. They know that they don't even have to fish if they don't want to, they can just as easily relax in the boat on the shore with their friends, make a fire, tell stories, play music or whatever else they actually enjoy doing likable. So therefore, go to more varied events simply because it's not about the activity. It's about spending time with the people they want to spend time with. So from now on, consider invitations in that way. Do you want to spend time with the people who are going, if yes, make the time and deal with the activity in the way that suits you best once you're there. Now, granted, if the people who used to invite you to things are no longer in the same city as you are. Simply stopped doing things. That explains why you no longer get invites from them. The same goes for people that you had a falling out with. But if you've experienced that people are still doing things, just not inviting you anymore and you didn't have a falling out with them. Well, the reason tends to be something completely different than most people even think about. Nine times out of 10, they stop inviting you because you didn't say yes to enough invitations in the past, they would have noticed consciously or subconsciously that you kept saying no or not showing up to the thing. So they sent you invitations to since no one likes to be rejected and since no one wants to waste their time with invitations that aren't going to give them anything back. At some point, they simply stopped believing that there was any point and inviting you. This is one of the main reasons for why it's so important that we accept invitations if we want to keep receiving them. Imitations are like everything else that we give someone if they don't seem to appreciate it or if they don't seem to want it, it doesn't feel good for us to keep giving it. And when we remember that, it's not about the activity, but up to about the people. Will far more often say yes. But of course, there are times where we simply can't accept an invitation for whatever reason. And in these cases, it's important that we make an effort to communicate to the person who invited us, that we unfortunately won't be able to make it. But that we truly appreciate the invitation and that we hope they'll keep us in mind for the next one. You can do this very easily by letting them know this when you talk to them and they give the invitation or send them a private message if this invitation is being extended online. As an added bonus, we should also reach out to them after their event to ask them how it was and let them know that we wish we could have been there. When we do this, we avoid the potential issue of the invader feeling like the invitation was a waste of time, that we rejected them or that they didn't get anything back from offering us a chance to come. So the exercises from this chapter is simple but powerful. From now on focus only on whether or not you want to spend time with the people who give you an invitation, not on whether you want to do the activity and then do your best to make time for it. When you can't make time for it or you can't go for whatever reason. Make sure you tell the writer that unfortunately you can't make it. But thank you so much for the invitation and please keep me in mind for next time because I'd love to make it up to them. And after the event, they invited you to send them another message to ask them how it was and to reaffirm that you want it to be there and hope to make it in the next one. This can easily be moved even further along, but you inviting them to get together for just the two of you following the advice earlier in this course. This is a very simple thing to do that only takes a few seconds of your time, but I will make those invitations keep rolling in in the future. 27. Include To Be Included: Before I crack the likable code, I could turn into one of my best friends whose name is Claus for advice. He seemed to always be flooded with invitations and surrounded by people and I wanted to know how he did it. One day after he brought me along to spend time with yet another group of people where I knew no one and he only knew one person before we got there. I asked him why that kept happening. Half the things he go to. I said exaggerating a little bit. Tend to be with a bunch of people that you don't know. Why do your friends keep inviting you to meet up with her other friends like that? Is my let my exaggeration as that include people to be included took me a few more questions to really understand what he meant, but it all came down to his tendency to include others in whatever he was doing. If it was at a party talking to a friend and notice someone who weren't talking to anyone, you would bring his friend over and they would include that person in the conversation. If he was walking to the cafeteria and happen to pass so many new on the way there. He suggests that they come have lunch with him. If he was going out to do something with me and then happen to talk to someone or think of someone that I figured it would be a good match for our plans. He would invite them along. When it gave me these examples, I started to understand what he really meant when he said include people to be included. I considered clause to be the kind of person that I could bring along to basically anything because I felt confident that he would get along with basically anyone I had seen over and over again that he would include and take care of people if they needed it. I'd see in that he could get along with a lot of different types of people since he kept including all kinds of people in his activities, including me. And I'd see in that he had no problems navigating all kinds of different social situations and mixes of people and cause that develop these skills by making an effort to surround himself with people, to learn how to get to know people in the waste. We discussed earlier about talking about our interests. And by being willing to go outside of his own comfort zone and engage with people and situations that he wasn't already familiar with, so that it would be in the future. This may cause an easy and obvious choice for whenever I felt like inviting someone along to anything, since I had the feeling that he fit in pretty much everywhere. Now granted clauses also, fund smart, a nice guy, but I know a lot of those and many of them only get included in activities with people that they're already uncomfortable with. Simply because they never seem to include new people in what they do. The people who get invited to and include it in all sorts of things tend to be the ones to include others in all sorts of things. And this is something that you can easily master because IT process only takes seat three simple steps. One, think about who you can include in what you're doing to communicate to the ones that you're already doing with that you want to include someone else. And three, extend that invitation to that someone else. Make a habit of this. And you'll find both that you'll have more and more people to spend time with as they accept these invitations. And the others will start to include you in more and more things that you were previously not a part of. This is also a great way to maintain friendships with people. As it gives you more opportunity to extend invitations and lets you spend more time with people at the same time. As an extra bonus your friends will use. You start to become friends with each other when you do this, which will often create a solid core group of friends for you. 28. Touch Base to Maintain Friends: For a lot of adults, life can get both distracting and busy at times. This often leads to us thinking about our friends, but for getting to actually reach out to them. Still, actually talking to our friends regularly is one of the cornerstones of maintaining friendships. If we don't, we'll often slowly drift apart and eventually never talk again. It happens all the time. But the truth is that with today's technology, there's really no excuse for not reaching out to your friends on a regular basis. It will literally only take us a few minutes to pull out our phone and call someone, or even just a few seconds to send them a message. And these are things that we can easily do while we're doing other things, cost, who I told you about in that earlier chapter of the course, has a habit of calling people when he's driving somewhere. This makes us drive more enjoyable. And it gives them plenty of opportunity to talk to his friends on hands-free. Of course. Personally, I tend to text my friends when I'm traveling, doing housework, waiting for other friends to show up for something or just relaxing. It not only requires very little effort, ills and makes those parts of my life a little more entertaining. So why do a lot of people not do this enough? Well, there are many reasons or more accurately excuses for it. But among the common ones are reasons related to not knowing what to say. Not thinking that what we have to say is interesting or important enough. Wanting to bother people and other such insecurity related excuses or reasons. But let me tell you a little bit secret about communication. For the most part, it isn't interesting or important. And it's not supposed to be. Thinking about last few conversations you had with people that you know, where you always exchanging crucial information that was important for the both of you and all of those cases? Or were you just talking about something that interests you, Azar, that you were simply exchanging opinions on something that isn't going to influence either of your lives very much. Or maybe you were just killing time talking about less movie. You saw something like that. Azar that in the majority of those conversations, what you were talking about wasn't anything revolutionary or critically important? Because most of the things that we talk to others about isn't talking about friends, isn't about having great things to say. It's about bonding with each other. And humans bond through talking, much the same way some other animals may bond through grooming each other are playing together. So you don't need anything interesting or important to say. To touch base with your friends. You only need to want to nurture your relationship with them. And you won't be bothering them because they'll instinctively react to you reaching out as an opportunity for them to bond more with you. Even when you happen to catch someone at a bad time and they're stressed, they won't actually be upset with you for reaching out. If they don't have the time to talk, they'll just wait to get back to you until they do. So, please don't limit your contact with the people who enjoy simply because you think that what you have to say isn't important enough. Quite often I simply send people a little smileys or ask them a question about what's going on or update them on something that's going on in my life or whatever other everyday pedestrian thing comes to mind when I think about them. For that matter, sometimes I just forward them a funny meme or a video that I think they're like, don't over-complicate this. As an extra bonus. If you're active on social media, don't forget that there is some value to leaving comments and reactions on people's posts too. Please don't use this as a replacement for actually talking to them because it is not. But leaving little Commons will bring you to people's attention more often. And every now and then it will lead to conversations too. So if you're already spending your time on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever. Well, you might as well use some of that time to show people that you're noticing them. So the exercise for this chapter is for those who know that they're not very good at reaching out to friends to just to touch base. Make a list of all the people that you want to nurture your friendship with. Select at least one time a week for you to reach out to each of them. You can spread them out throughout the week if you'd like, and make a habit of texting or calling them at least once a week. Whether you have something interesting to say to them or not. Do this until it's something that you do naturally without needing listen, without needing to think about it. And of course, don't forget to update that list as your circle of friends grows from following the exercises in this course. 29. Spending Time With Friends: While touching base through technology is very helpful. There's no substitute for actually spending time together. It tends to be the only real way to deepen and grow Most friendships. And without spending time face to face. You might have a lot of great conversations with someone, but still find that your real-world relationship doesn't really become that much more significant. This course is already covered the topics of hosting get togethers for groups to increase and design your social circles. We've talked about including people in what you do and accepting invitations. But further than that, we should also be extending invitations and spent time with the people we like the most and want to have closer friendships with. Don't get so caught up in the process of always meeting new people that you forget about, the ones that you want to be close with. This is not very different than the things that we've already discussed. All it requires is that you are willing to be the one to initiate it. Because if you're not, you're left hoping that the people that you would like the most have both the confidence to habit the time and the thought to invite you to spend time with them. And that doesn't happen a lot. We are going to be the masters of our own life. So it's up to us to take the initiatives with the people that we want to have in it. We can't wait and hope that others will give us what we want. We have to take on that responsibility ourselves. We also have to be careful about getting caught up in tit for tat thinking. Too many people say things like, I've been the one to reach out and invite the last few times. Now it's up to that other person. Oftentimes that other person has no idea about this and don't think to reach out. And suddenly a friendship ends when it didn't have to, simply because we're not spending enough time together because of our pride. Friendship shouldn't be a constant comparison. Who did what the last time? If we want to spend time with someone we care about, we reach out and we let them know. If they want to spend time with us. They'll say yes. It's that simple. And people that make it more complicated than that tend to miss out on a lot. And when we get a no to our imitation, which we will at times, we have to remember what we learned about rejection in section 2 of the course. And we also have to recognize that sometimes a node simply means not now or not yet. So we can't be afraid to give it another try later on. If you feel like the person saying no because they don't want to, rather than that they don't have time or some other external reason. Remember the comfort rule. Give it some time, lower the stress level of your invitation and give them a new one. Azar, they'll say yes. Now the truth is that even the most socially active and likable people tend to only have a few very close friends that they spend a significant amount of one-to-one time, that few people have more than a handful of those and many can have more removed France. It's up to you to choose who you want in each of these friendship categories. And when you find someone that you feel might fit into one of them, it is your job to cultivate that friendship. There are no rules on how often we should see someone to create these friendships. But in most cases, the more is better for the closer ones. For now. If you aimed to go and at least one free friend meter per week, either with the same people over and over to cultivate deep friendships or new people as you meet them to expand your overall social circle, you'll soon start seeing that those friendships will grow and blossom. So whether you've just bought this course and have binge-watch your way through the whole thing. Or you've been working your way through it exercise by exercise for a while and are already seeing changes. Take some time right now to think about who in your life you'd like to nurture a close friendship with and then reach out to them and invite them to something that this week. And if you can't think of a single name, that's okay. That just means that you should immediately start deciding on which of the activities we've gone through in this course you're going to start working on. So you can go out and meet someone who fits the bill. 30. A Quick Reality Check: Okay, let's do a quick reality check. Throughout this course, almost all of the examples that I've given have worked out and been successful. But we have to remember that we're dealing with people and social psychology here. That means that there will always be way too many factors involved for us to be able to control or master them all. This means that we will fail over and over again at creating friendships and building networks. Some people won't be interested in what we're offering. Some people, we will quickly lose interest in. Other times, logistics and external circumstances will be the reasons. Things don't work out. We can't let resistance and failure keep us from trying again. The reason this stuff works for me and my clients across the world is that we know and accept that we won't always be successful in their attempts. And that's fine. We're not supposed to be we're not even supposed to be successful in the majority of our attempts. Were supposed to keep developing our skills, to keep searching for the right people to include in our lives, and to keep building new friendships as we find that we have the time and desire or as old friendships fall to the side. Please don't try to be perfect. There is no such thing. Look at this as your favorite game. You wouldn't stop playing at the first, second or 50th time you lost that if you just kept plugging away at it. And that's why it was fun because you didn't let the failures get to you. And that's why you've got better and better at it. So here's your final exercise for this course. Start working your way through it. Throughout the course, I've offered a lot of ideas, strategies, and exercises to help you master what you've learned. It is a process that you'll have to work on over and over again. And you should therefore watch this program over and over again. That being said, you might start seeing results immediately when you start using these things, like many of my clients have and that's great. But even if you don't, do not stress about it, I have taught this stuff to people all over the world for a decade now. And the only ones who do not improve their social results, make new friends and build the social circles to what they want. Or those who don't try, or those who give up too soon. Everyone else, and I mean, everyone eventually get there. Okay, Now let's sum up what we've learned and how it all fits together. 31. Let's Recap!: All right, Let's do a very quick and superficial sum up of what we've covered in this course. We've talked about how the best way to meet new people to create friendships with is to live an active life. This includes seeking out new activities where there will be strangers, hosting events and get-togethers where we invite the people we already know to bring people we don't know. And saying yes to imitations where we'll have the opportunity to meet new people. On our way to these activities. We know that it's a good idea to warm up by exchanging pleasantries and quick little questions and comments. Were the people that we cross password. This will get us out of our head a little bit and help our social fears relax a little. During the activity that we're going to. We now know that a great way to start a conversation with a stranger is to match their energy level and ask open-ended questions. From there, we want to quickly move on to things that we are interested in talking about. As that will both make the conversation much more enjoyable for us and help us quickly discover who we are genuinely compatible with. The most powerful conversations will usually be the ones where you are talking to the stranger about the things that you genuinely want to know about them. Well, you look to see if they have any of the many qualities that you would appreciate in a friend. When they do, you'll see that the two of you will tend to get along very well if you follow this recipe. At which point we suggest to them that we should exchange contact information. After the event. We follow up by extending our conversation with them, opening a few new storylines and then giving them an invitation to meet again and again and again. We remember that while it's very nice when the other person takes the initiative to meet up with us, whether for the first or the fifth time. We can't rely on others to do it. So it's on us. We are the masters of our own life and the ones who are responsible for creating the relationships and friendships that we want. We have also talked about how to deepen relationships with people we already know by pinging them, including them in things that we're doing. And of course, by inviting them both to our events and to spend time together individually. We can also use this existing network as a gateway to new friendships by suggesting to the people we already know that the introduce us to their friends that they think that we'd enjoy meeting. Does this obviously, not everything we've covered in this course, but it is the core of it and what you're likely to be spending the most of your time and effort on. By now. I hope that all of these things seem completely obvious to you. In fact, if you right now thinking, that's it, I already knew all of that. That's great. That means that you not only remember the course, but that you've accepted it as truth. And which case all that's left for you to do is start doing it. This stuff is not rocket science, it just needs to be done. The strategies are simple and straightforward. And you might even have known a lot of this before you took the course. But if you still feel like you want or need more friends in your life, well, that tells me that even if you knew some of these things, you weren't doing them, we will never get real-world results simply by thinking about things. We have to do things. So please start working on the exercises from this course right now, so that you can start living the social life you want a soon as possible.