How to Make Friends: A Beginner’s Guide
Let’s chat about making friends, shall we? There’s a lot of good information out there on how to strengthen relationships, find new communities, and meet new people (ahem, ahem, come to one of our events!). But a lot of that information seems to be hinged on the assumption that we even know the basics of making friends - which let’s face it, many of us don’t. That stuff’s hard! It may also be helpful to have some context and exercises around making friends to use with your little ones if you feel you have it down, and want to impart some wisdom on them. Whatever the reason, we want you to have a guide to the beginner, building blocks for identifying potential friends, brainstorming what those connections might/could be, and starting to develop a game plan for building a relationship. Read on for tips, strategies, and exercises on making friends.
Introduction: How To Make Friends
In your classes, work, or extracurricular activities, you may see or talk to someone who is a lot of fun. Maybe you like to do some of the same things or maybe you talked about something you had in common; whatever the reason, you feel that you’d like to spend more time with this person and potentially build a friendship. It can be incredibly nerve-wracking and daunting, however, to think about building a meaningful friendship with someone new. But let’s focus on learning some strategies and exercises in building a new friendship that are both about the person you’re interested in becoming friends with, as well as your values and needs as a friend - they are equally important!
Part 1: Brainstorming & Reflection
First, let’s brainstorm: try to think about who this person is and what draws you to them, as well as what you have to offer as a friend. Figuring out what your common ground is is a great way to lay a foundation for a growing friendship. It provides you with conversation topics, activities to do together, ways you may be different to keep in mind, and much more.
Exercise 1: Fill out the brainstorming exercise below. First, fill in the venn diagram with things you like about yourself as a person or a friend and things you like about your potential friend (or things that drew you to them). Then, fill in the overlapping circle with ways you’ve observed that the two of you overlap: what do you have in common (personality qualities, hobbies, interests, etc.)?
Part 2: Developing Action Items
Now that you’ve done some brainstorming about yourself and your potential new friend, let’s think a bit about what actions you can take to start building a friendship with this person. A great strategy for building a new friendship is thinking about what you have in common, and using that as a foundation for activities, conversation topics, and other actions you can take to connect and build a friendship. We’ll use what we brainstormed in the first exercise to think through these action steps that you can keep in your back pocket!
Exercise 2: Take each of the phrases you wrote in the “Where do we overlap” section of exercise 1 - AKA things that you and your potential friend share in some way - and put them in the first column of this exercise. Then, brainstorm one SMALL and one BIGGER way that you can express interest, connect, and/or spend more time with this person keeping this shared value, interest, or experience in mind.
Part 3: Identifying Relationship Values & Maintaining The Relationship
As you start to give and receive these gestures to connect with a new friend and hopefully begin to build a relationship, it’s super important to keep in mind what we feel a positive friendship looks like. Friendships require maintenance, as well as reflection on what’s working and what’s not. Think about how you want to feel in a friendship, as well as how you want a friend to treat you and vice versa. Knowing what you value in a friendship can help you continue to evolve as a friend, to make new friends in the future, and to ensure your needs are being met in your friendships.
Go through the following exercises to identify the values you want to uphold in your friendship:
a) Think about what you value most in friendships and/or other relationships. Circle the 5 values below that are most important to you in a friendship:
b) For each value you chose, write 2-3 sentences on how you would like that value to play out in a friendship. This could mean how you’d like to incorporate that value in your friendship with this person, why it’s important to you, how you’d like to be treated in terms of this value, etc.
Example: Value: Generosity/Reciprocation
I struggle in friendships if it feels like I am giving or making efforts and they are not being reciprocated. Ideally, a positive friendship for me is when I am reaching out to make plans, have conversations, etc., and my friend is reaching out (close to) an equal amount. It’s hard for me to feel loved and thought of if I’m always reaching out and my friend doesn’t think to do the same for me - it makes me feel unwanted. So I would like to make sure things feel relatively even in my friendship, in terms of effort and thoughtfulness.
I hope this was helpful in building some strategies and reflection techniques for building friendships! If you choose to fill out any of these exercises, make sure to review them every so often and update them as you grow and change.