How to make friends and deepen your relationships (7 steps)

Many of the things that we enjoy in our day to day exist thanks to our ability to connect emotionally with other people. The human being is highly social, and that is why we tend to establish links with each other constantly, whether formal or informal.

However, it is not only the quantity that matters; the quality of these social ties must also be taken into account. Specifically, the possibility of having friends is one of the aspects that produces the most happiness and satisfaction. But this is not something that is easy for everyone. Therefore, in this article we will review some tips on how to make friends more easily.

• Related article: "9 habits to connect emotionally with someone"

How to make friends: 7 tips

These guidelines to follow are not essential to find new friends, although having them as a reference in our day to day will help to achieve that goal. The fundamental thing is to be clear that each case is unique, and it is necessary to know how to adapt these steps to follow to the context in which one lives.

1. Don't listen to stereotypes

There are people whose main difficulty when making friends is that feel reluctant at the idea of ​​being seen with the kind of people they have an affinity for. It is easy, for example, that if you have grown up in a relatively homogeneous social environment, certain types of friendships turn out to be strange or even generate criticism, but submitting to these unwritten rules is almost always worse than breaking those rules based on misunderstanding and stigmata.

Ultimately, what you do by going beyond this peer pressure is having access to a variety of potential friends. much higher than before, and although this can have somewhat negative consequences in some personal relationships of the group that previously occupied most of our lives, the problem was already there long before, although not in a manifests. If someone does not accept us for not being in their schemes by showing us as we are, their friendship was very relative.

2. If you can use the internet, do it

The use of the Internet is highly stigmatized, as there are people who mistakenly believe that friendships and relationships that begin in this environment Virtual networks are less sincere and "natural" than those that were formed decades ago, when computers did not exist or had a much more versatility limited.

But this does not make any sense: the network of networks is a perfect place to breaking away from many of the limitations of the material environment in which we grew up or in which we are living. For example, if we have developed a hobby that no one in our environment shares with us, it makes no sense to refuse to use the Internet to find more people with these tastes.

In fact, it is very easy to access forums and web pages specialized in very specific topics, so that we have the guarantee of being able to find potential friends with interests similar to the ones we have.

3. Cultivate your cultural baggage

There is nothing to have a good conversation like knowing a little about everything, having a general culture. Even if we know very little about a topic, that can help develop a dialogue interesting in which doubts are resolved, for example, about the country from which our interlocutor comes or interlocutor.

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4. Take care of your non-verbal language

In this regard, the fundamental thing you should know is just that it is good to follow two principles: look at the eyes and not having a non-verbal language associated with tension and defensiveness. In addition, externalizing your positive emotions always helps, since smiles are contagious (as long as they are not forced). One of the most useful tips to know how to make friends, since its effects are noticeable from the first moment.

5. Starts to lose the fear of starting a conversation

This step is important to get past many of the limitations related to shyness and the fear of giving a bad impression. It is complex and requires weeks of work, but it can be learned.

The main idea behind this process is that the content matters much less than the forms, and that your attitude can make a seemingly absurd topic of conversation is a lot of play and is not strange or out of context if you convey confidence in one same.

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6. Boost your spontaneity

Avoid memorizing very detailed behavior patterns; It is preferable to take into account very basic and intuitive ideas about what to do, and do it without thinking too much. In this way, your attention will be focused on the real-time interaction with the other person, and not in the "script" that you have prepared and that, by definition, is something that is outside the real dialogue.

7. No need to form large groups

Having friends does not mean being part of a large group of friends. This is something that is difficult to understand especially when you are very young, because at certain ages the usual tendency is to socialize in “networks-2 of many people who know each other. But having friends who don't know each other is perfectly fine, so it's not worth worrying about whether or not they like each other. Trying to put them together in a very forceful way is often counterproductive, especially if you have only known these people for a relatively short time.