A year of making friends, here's what I learned.

[Music] friends as an adult is difficult this is a story about making friends which i've come to discover is remarkably not straightforward making friends as an adult is complex and it's harder to open up as you get older so if you're changing jobs or relocating to a new city i want you to know that you're not the only one feeling those anxieties i spent long periods of my life feeling lonely i had a hard time making friends after college how do you find the right people to surround yourself talk about some really useful things that i've learned throughout my life that have really helped me make friends easier and make higher quality friends and over [Applause] making friends that's what i want to talk about in today's video specifically making friends as an adult so if you saw my last video you'd know that i've been living in san francisco for a little over a year now and along with moving into a new city there came the task of making new friends which made me flex a muscle that i probably haven't used since college it was a discomfort that i really didn't look forward to but i knew would benefit me in the end i spent a little over a year struggling up wasting some time up again learning having some small successes and i'm still learning but i wanted to document some of the takeaways from what i think is a pretty universal human experience first of all making friends and making friends as an adult is definitely hard and it's no short of a struggle i had the luxury of not needing to make friends after college because almost all of my college friends had moved to new york flexing this unused muscle was also not familiar at all to me and a very awkward feeling i realized that making friends is actually not unlike dating and my hot take is that it's actually a bit more difficult than dating the first reason is that it doesn't have the physical reward at the end the only reward is having a great friendship and for a lot of guys out there that is not worth the effort they already have people that they want to spend their time with and they have a good group already and taking a chance on a new person is not really worth it there's also a lot of similarities like having to shoot your shot sometimes you chicken out from shooting your shot you see someone really cool that you want to become friends with but you know for whatever reason you chicken out it also just turns out that sometimes it feels like a numbers game and you might meet someone that might be a friend but then turns out to be a little more different from you or share different interests and then things fizzle out and all of this is pretty similar to dating there's also the opportunity cost aspect and opportunity cost is defined by the loss from a missed opportunity so most of the people you meet in a new city especially if they had already been there for a little while might already have a group of friends and they might hang out every weekend for them hanging out with you or taking a chance on you is taking away time that they can spend with their partners or their friends who they know they have a definitive connection with so unless they're actively looking for friends as well what's really in it for them and one way to alleviate this is actually finding people who also are new to the city and are way more incentivized to make new friends but through all of this i started asking questions like what's the most optimal way to reach out after meeting someone will i look like a weirdo if i ask to hang out too soon i'm going to take you through some of the things that i learned the two factors that i found super useful when making new friends was number one increasing the opportunity to meet new people and two increasing the likelihood that you'll click so with regard to the first point that was increasing your chances of making friends and i've heard this saying before that hard work increases success right and it basically doesn't mean that hard work alone can get you success but it does mean that hard work increases your chances of being lucky which is an element of success so the same principle applies to making friends right leverage something that you go to frequently which gives you more of an opportunity to meet new people and as a result meet someone that you click with so for me one example was work where i started going into the office a little bit more and increasing my chances of bumping into someone and introducing myself or just learning what they do it could be something like a gym a fitness class a club activity if you enjoy watching formula one consider going to a formula one bar and more importantly make sure that you go very frequently go every other week go to your yoga class every single week or better yet a couple times a week so then you can keep meeting new people when you start getting invited to parties make sure you apply a structured approach and you know at first you might be really excited to be invited to anything and as a natural introvert i sometimes found that these large parties were a little bit overwhelming and also sometimes when there are these larger gatherings you end up only talking to the person that you know at the party or the person that invited you because everyone's usually talking amongst groups of people that they already know and it's a little bit awkward sometimes to just walk up to a random group of strangers that already know themselves and just introducing yourself so for me smaller gatherings were more conducive to meeting new people or meeting people that i would connect with but you know use your discretion because of this i actually applied a gamification approach or objective so to speak for a party i know cringe but they actually worked pretty well i would only want to be really interested in going to a gathering if it accomplished at least one of two objectives the first objective was strengthening relationships with my current friends or budding friends if i just made a new friend and then they invited me to something i would definitely go to strengthen my relationships there and invest in it the second is using that as a springboard to meet new people so maybe i only know one person at this party but i know that a lot of similar folks will go and i'll maybe meet someone that i'll uh click with if i thought the likelihood was low for both of these objectives i would be more hesitant to go to the party and it also forced me once i got there to be laser focused on actually accomplishing these objectives the goal is to hit on either both but definitely at least one of these two objectives so the second part of making new friends is increasing the likelihood that you'll click and in the first part we talked about increasing the opportunity to meet new friends and basically increasing your chances of seeing another human being this one is talking about increasing the likelihood that they will be a compatible friend for you so that can be things like having similar values similar interests similar hobbies you really can't have one of these without the other because if you see people really often but they have zero things in common with you then that will not result in a very likely friendship and if you only find people that have similar interests as you but you don't increase your opportunities seeing those people you'll basically just never come across those people so that's the rationale and i think for this point on increasing the likelihood that you'll click one thing that i found super helpful was leveraging second to third degree connections maybe you already have one friend in your city have them introduced to their friend circle there's a high likelihood that if you already connect with one person their friends will be very similar to them and as a result you'll probably connect with them as well maybe you have a couple friends from college that you lost touch with that live in the city that you recently moved to you should definitely hit them up and it definitely can be a little bit embarrassing or awkward to message someone that you haven't spoken to in a while but usually people are pretty nice and just force yourself to reach out and you'll be thankful that you did it was kind of hard to fulfill my needs for a friend at first but you kind of want to identify like the values that you have for me it was like no or little work talk like i really didn't care much for very surface level conversations like you know what do you do for work like where do you live all that kind of stuff i kind of wanted to know what people were beyond what their job title was like what they like to do and like what brings them energy and then the last point i'll make is that tech might help but i wouldn't rely on it so i don't have a huge amount of experience with this and personally for me i found that meetup and other apps weren't super helpful in finding friends but i know for some others it's super super successful once again in my experience they were usually girls but i think men sometimes don't have the type of restraint and patience to use these kind of apps to find people but i've also seen people blow up on tiktok by just posting that they were in a new city and needed friends definitely encourage you to try as well so just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean it won't work for you hello so i think you're better at me than making friends and i think you have more friends than me so i wanted to get your wisdom what's your biggest takeaway my biggest takeaway is keep an open mind in the beginning when i don't have friends to strengthen a relationship with then i would say my goal is to make one friend ask them if they want to go to a workout class together or if they want to like play tennis or want to get dinner i'm not afraid to initiate those things and like if they respond to that like that's great but if not you know it's fine you move on even if like i don't generally feel their vibe at first i you give me a chance yeah one other thing that i wanted to ask you about is that i know that you're a big fan of uh bumble bff what are your overall thoughts on them i know you met a couple people that way i think bumblebee that's great like i've met two people i would say that i have become really good friends with in the city i think it's also a numbers game and i've met about four people and like two out of the four that i would call them my friends so about 50 success rate which is still really good i know my intention before going on bumble like i want to make a genuine lasting friendship i think the reason why it works for me is that i know that if after i meet someone and i see there's a potential for a long-term friendship there i know that i would have to put in the work so it's not like i'm going to meet them and then i never see them again but it's like if i see them i want to make effort to like hang out with them again and like continue to do things and explore the city together so we strengthen our relationship in that way so you have to know that you are willing to put in those work and maybe like one hour a week hanging out with this person last question i have this hot take that i don't think bumble bff works really well for guys do you agree with that or disagree and if so why do you think that is i don't necessarily agree with that because i've heard from other people that guys have had a lot of uh success using mobile effect to find people to play basketball with from then they can organically develop a friendship but i think why it might be a bit more challenging because guys are a little bit more egoistic like they may be a little shy about asking another guy to go get coffee but you guys should just need to get over that and like find something in common and just i also heard tik tok is a good place i also mentioned that yeah like i've seen it but once again it's also been like girls and they're like yeah i'm in a new city like i need friends and then like a ton of girls comment once again i think i've never seen like someone like a guy post that like do you think it's for similar reasons that you talked about could be yeah could be like girls are more eager to put themselves out there for other girls yeah but for guys probably recommend finding some kind of mutual social activity awesome yeah all right thank you any final words and don't give up amen no i feel like it takes me like a year to like find some like good friends so it takes time so to conclude making friends really boils down to two key factors one is increasing the opportunity to meet new people or meet new friends and then the second is increasing the likelihood that you'll click with these people so those were the two main factors that i wanted to touch on making friends is super hard it takes time there's no shortcuts and it requires conscious effort so definitely don't be too hard of yourself know that these things take time and you'll be surprised as to how different things are after a year or two hopefully that was helpful i think this was a really universal human experience that would be interesting to share and i know that it's been a couple months since my last video so i definitely want to be more consistent and keep putting out content i am speaking this into existence and using strangers on the internet to hold me accountable so really looking forward to making some new videos a lot more to come and thanks for watching catch you in the next one see ya i usually set a goal for myself like whenever i'm about to go to a social event or something wait did you get that from me i'm the one that was like you either need to strengthen your existing relationships or make new friends like those are my only two reasons for going to a party i feel like you got that from me alright she's spreading lies

Channel: Michael Gu

Views: 1,509

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Id: 7AX0FYjPpJA

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022