5 Tactics To Turn A Stranger Into A Friend

Beginnings can start on any day of the week. Most life coaches or business leaders encourage you to begin whenever you are ready and to take advantage of that drive.

Social Media, despite all its wonderful advantages, has created the immediate issue that we are not making friends in real life. We may enjoy thousands of virtual relationships but lack people in our day to day lives to have a cup of coffee with or simply to hang out. We can change all of that by following some simple techniques to deepen relationships and potentially making a stranger your friend.

Put Yourself Out There

Assuming you have already tried to meet up with your social media friends, staying at home is not the way to make new friends. The best places to make friends are places you would naturally frequent all the time. Work, clubs or even grocery shopping provide you with regular faces and people that have at least one thing in common with you. Put yourself out there. This means to start up a conversation. Ask them how they are. Make a comment about the produce. Whatever you say, follow it with a smile.

Find Common Ground

In the film Steele Magnolias, Clairee Belcher says, ?If you can?t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me!? Forming a bond over a shared emotion is a fast way of making friends. Joining a cause, a support group, or simply identifying with someone over a shared complaint forms a deep relationship quickly since you are connecting on an emotional level from the very beginning. This is commonly referred to as ?foxhole buddies?

Don?t Believe Everything You Feel

When we want to meet someone, either potential friend or lover, we tend to experience feelings that many of us interpret to be apprehension or fear. The common feelings are shortness of breath, heart racing, inability to focus, feeling the need to escape the situation. Sometimes our feelings can be interpreted to be something less critical and ultimately helpful to obtaining your goal. In this case, those feelings can be excitement. Instead of running away, use that as an ice breaker. Share how you feel. You would be surprised how many people feel exactly the same way.

Emotional Intimacy

“Being intimate” has come be synonymous with ?being sexual,” but personal intimacy just means ?being vulnerable?. Sharing how you feel reveals parts of you that you usually keep under the veneer of your outward personality. Few people get to see you in all your glory. Change that! The more intimate you are with others, the more you invite people to be intimate with you.

State it and Claim it

Be up front with what you want. Many years ago, in a support group, I stated that what I most wanted in the world was to have friends that would be willing to meet me at gas station in the middle of nowhere at 3am. It was a fanciful way of saying I wanted good friends that would be willing to do anything for me and with me (within reason). Since then, I have established those kinds of friendships with 2 people from that group. It was not magic. It was simply asking for and getting what I wanted.

Making friends in real life is not a lost art, we have simply become accustomed to the ease with which we make them online. What we forget is that these techniques that are mentioned here are things you do all the time online without realizing. Simply transfer them from the screen to real life, and make real-life friends!