Monthly Archives: February 2014

How to Make Friends

Friendships

Step 1 of 4. You just met and you don’t know anything about each other.

Step 2. You start getting to know things about each other from other people, from your own observations and judgements, from conversations.  If someone doesn’t shake your hand, you might think they are impolite, or they don’t like you, or they are a germaphobe who never shakes anyone’s hand.  Which one is true?  Your mind will probably guess one and convince you that you’re right, but to find out the truth, only time will tell. Few of your initial impressions of the person are likely to be accurate because you don’t know the person well enough to know what certain things mean to that person.  If you decide to ask directly for an explanation too early in the relationship, they might be shy about telling the truth–being vulnerable and honest is scary–so they might lie to cover up the truth, or they deflect the question with a joke or a change of subject.

Being able to judge someone based on what you see only works if it’s true that the person is behaving in a way that is representative of who that person is.  This is not always true because people’s moods change, and that mood change results in different behavior: If I’m tired, I’ll be slow and quiet; if I’m excited I’ll be loud and active; if I’m having a normal day I’ll be responsive but reserved.  Who I am as a whole changes every day, but pieces of who I am as a person will stay with me as I change over time, and the only way to learn who I am as a person over time is to watch and observe me over time.

Step 3. You build common ground.  This could mean you realize that you both like similar things or have similar backgrounds and experiences, or, if you have nothing in common prior to meeting, you can create common ground by spending time together and experiencing life together.  This part requires a lot of patience, because it takes many hours to learn enough about the other person that you can easily filter what to say and how to say it, based on what you know about the other person and yourself, and what you hope to achieve out of this relationship.  This part takes weeks, and in my experience it usually takes months. The trick is to stay with it, and ask questions: have people explain their actions so you know the truth, and you can refine the accuracy of your judgments of that person.  If they don’t know you well, they’ll give you superficial answers.  If you’ve know each other for several weeks, they might share with you a more detailed answer, but still not the truth because they want to hide it.  Few people go around wearing their heart on their sleeve, telling the absolute core truth.  For most people, you will only get that when there’s a need, when there’s a problem, challenge, or struggle.  Be there to help, and you will complete your quest and unlock the friendship achievement.

The common ground between every two people is different: no two people are identical, or else they would be the same person.  What this means is that your friendship with each person will be slightly different–different personalities will bring out different sides of your own identity.  This is normal–you don’t have to act the same way to everyone, and you’re not being disingenuous by doing so.

Step 4. Both sides make the choice to be friends. Who you run into is influenced by your life decisions, but ultimately it is out of your control.  If you went to the event an hour early you would have had an entirely different experience and met entirely different people, and given them entirely different impressions of you.  Of all the people you meet, however, you choose which ones become your friend, and at the end of the day, the choice must be mutual: if neither person considers the other a friend, they aren’t friends; if one person considers the other a friend, but the feeling is not shared, then the friendship is in limbo.  With time, one of them could change their mind and accept the friendship, or one of them could change their mind and abandon the friendship.  Only if both people say yes is it real friendship.

What You Should Know About Friendship

Resources

1. How to Meet People

  • Google for activities, hobbies, events that you’re interested in, or just go to one for fun to meet people.  www.meetup.com
  • Next time a friend invites you to something, say yes.
  • Go outside for any reason at all, maybe you need some bread and milk <–funny video

2. Get to know the person

  • My articles on: Conversation and Communication

3. Build common ground with the person (this common ground IS your relationship with that person.  This is where it happens.)  I plan to release an app for this, subscribe to hear news.

4. With time, effort, and honest emotions, the common ground grows, and the relationship grows, and if you’re lucky and it works out, the relationship becomes a friendship.

More articles on Friendship:

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Getting Out of Depression

Depression

Regardless of what kind of depression you have, this advice is universal to all of you:

  1. Get enough sleep.  Lack of sleep results in impaired health and mental health, which in turn causes depression.  See my post on How to Become a Morning Person and Understanding Sleep
  2. Drink enough water.  There is a difference between drinking enough water to survive, and drinking enough water to thrive.  If you are only just surviving, you are probably living and feeling miserably.  Read more about Dehydration by PsychCentral
  3. Get the proper nutrition.  You are what you eat, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Eating the right foods will improve your health and happiness, the wrong foods will reduce health and happiness.  Resources: 6 ways your diet effects your mood, You are what you eat
  4. Exercise enough.  Exercise and Depression by Harvard Medical School says “walking fast for about 35 minutes a day five times a week or 60 minutes a day three times a week had a significant influence on mild to moderate depression symptoms. Walking fast for only 15 minutes a day five times a week or doing stretching exercises three times a week did not help as much. (These exercise lengths were calculated for someone who weighs about 150 pounds. If you weigh more, longer exercise times apply, while the opposite is true if you weigh less than 150 pounds.)”  (More reading: Exercise and Depression – WebMD)  See my Physical Exercise Resources

The theme of the above advice is to Attain Physical Health.  The final pieces of advice I have to offer will vary based on your experience.

  1. Attain Emotional Health.  (See my Life Education Curriculum) Self Awareness, Self Acceptance; Having good Relationships.
  2. Attain Intellectual Health.  Learn things you find interesting, and challenge yourself so that your brain doesn’t decay.  Boredom is never fun; exciting challenges can be fun.
  3. Attain Opinions.  If you only obey others, or only regurgitate other people’s opinions, you are nothing more than a tool or a reflection of other people.  You need to exist, and you exist by having an opinion.  You get an opinion by going outside, and living life: being active and involved in something.  A hobby, organization, career, anything.
  4. Craft your own Life Philosophy, with Logic, Ethics, and Principles.
  5. Hope and Optimism.  It’s hard to believe that the world is going to be a better place because progress is so slow, and the state of the world may appear to be bad at present, but have faith that the future will be bright.  For myself, I want to be a force for good, so even if the future is headed for a decline, I have faith that at least I will exist to improve things.  Try having faith in yourself.

If you achieve all these things and are still depressed, perhaps you should see a doctor.

Alternative resources:

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Decision Making – Rich vs Poor

Rich vs. Poor Series

On average, Rich people get more practice making decisions, are less stressed when making a decision, and are more emotionally detached from the decision, allowing them to use more logical reasoning to make a good decision.  They are also better educated, and so have more knowledge with which to make a better decision with.  All these factors make the Rich better at making decisions than the Poor.  By learning what sets the Poor back and what helps the Rich succeed, you can benefit by applying the lessons to your life and improving yourself.  Here’s a more in-depth examination:

Rich people can afford to be in more activities than poor people, and they are more likely to be involved in helping to organize or run events or organizations, placing them in a position to face more decisions in general.  Practice makes perfect, and the Rich get a lot  more  practice than the Poor.

A consequence of this unequal distribution of decision making is that the Poor, by facing so few decisions, are more affected by each one.  There are several reasons for this: impact, memory, and money. When you have $10, making a $1 decision is difficult; when you have $100, it’s easier to make a decision about $1.  Same idea.  Also, if you only make one decision a day, you’re going to remember that one decision, whereas if you make 20 in a day, you are more likely to forget most of them.  Finally, Poor people dwell longer on the decisions, classically conditioning (wiki) themselves to feel certain emotions when faced with a decision.   They dwell on past decisions more because they don’t get many opportunities for upward mobility, so the few times they did have an opportunity stand out.  These emotions toward past decisions are usually negative, because it is unlikely for them to be making good decisions due to all the reasons we’ve covered. In fact, the fact that they are still poor is a daily reminder of their poor decision making.  All this translates into stress that would affect anyone’s ability, Rich or Poor, to make a good decision, and this stress, anxiety, and negative emotional state are all triggered by decisions, which significantly reduces a Poor person’s chance at improving their decision making.  Rich people are less at risk for this because Rich people make many decisions that change the course of their lives, and constantly make new ones to flush out any bad memories of the old.  This contributes to the Poor being stuck mentally and emotionally in the past and being unable to move forward and progress, which in turn keeps them poor.

The role of emotion in decision making is also fundamentally different: for the Rich, they believe that the best decisions are made using critical thinking, and leaders are honored for remaining calm under pressure (How Successful People Stay Calm – Forbes).  For the poor, since they are uneducated, they don’t have the knowledge or frameworks to think with logic anyway, so instead they rely on the only thing they have to make decisions: gut feelings and emotions.  This is why a crafty salesman will succeed at manipulating a poor person, because the poor person will be led on by the feel good tactics of sales, but will never trick a smart and savvy investor who uses numbers and financial intelligence to make purchases.  Thus, a Poor person is more likely to be taken advantage of than a Rich person, making the chances of a Poor person making a good decision even worse.

Read more about articles in the Rich vs. Poor Series here.

To find out when more Life Education Curriculum is released, subscribe on the side! Follow on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, on Tumblr.  Please share your comments to this post below.