Old friends, new friends!
In the next 60 seconds, write down the names of 25 close friends, ones you would expect to know for the rest of your life and see at your funeral if you were able.
How is the list? If you are still writing, great! If you were done in 15 seconds and had 3 people on the list, it might be time to make some new friends or reconnect with those that have dropped of your radar.
Why should you care? If you go to the resource section of our website (www.perdta.ai), you’ll find a number of studies and articles on the loneliness epidemic that is affecting people worldwide in all age groups. The lack of social connection has a mental, physical and emotional impact. The US Surgeon equates loneliness the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The challenge of building and maintaining your social circle can be quite daunting and it takes work to keep going; the kind of effort that comes with training for a 5k run, dropping alcohol or sugar consumption or losing a few pounds. Like anything, its easiest to start slowly and work your way up.
To amp up your social connections, try this:
One outreach per day with email, text or phone: If you take a minute to let your friends know you are thinking about them, its going to take only a couple of minutes out of your 24 hour day (.02 of 1%). Over a year, you could reach out 365 times if you kept the same pace, or over 1000 if you ramped it up a bit.
Once a week:
Meet someone new for 5 minutes and try to find a common passion; it doesn’t matter if its bowling, your local football team, chess, dogs if you are the dog park. Imagine if you had 52 new introductions a year – what could the cumulative effect be there.
Get out of the house – familiar territory: Turn off the TV and put away the phone. Ask a friend to dinner, for a drink, a walk or for any number of 1000 things that ends with you putting on your shoes and attempting to achieve JOMO (Joy of Meeting Others) https://youtu.be/_Gf8CroyY78 .
Get out of the house – alien encounters! Go to something you’ve never done; a town hall meeting, classical music performance, bar trivia night, anything that might expand your boundaries and who you might run into……
Reconnect: Think back to friends you’ve left behind somehow; be it a physical move, a work or industry change, divorce or any number of reasons. If you enjoyed each other’s company 5 years ago, wouldn’t you want to know how that person is doing today? I’ve reconnected with 50 people in the last 3 months on the phone and video conference, and it has been incredible fun.
Once a quarter: Check in, see how your efforts are going over the previous 90 days – enjoyment points, lessons learned, whatever you can focus on to understand how you are doing.
Once a year: Do a year in review, not just about friendships but where you are and where you want to go. Time is a precious resource, use if to your best state of happiness!
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash