Jan 5
A Beginner’s Guide to Making Friends
An idea from Adrian Drew.
We all want to be accepted; to have friends.
Like it or not, our evolutionary desire for social approval is so strong that it drives many of our actions and shapes our society. It pulls us to wear certain clothes, go to particular places and purchase various things — even if we ourselves don’t actually want to.
Though we’d prefer not to admit it, our craving for approval is such a deeply ingrained part of our nature that it underpins many aspects of our way of life. Examples include fashion, front-facing cameras, luxury brands, beauty cosmetics, and of course, social media.
Don’t believe me? Well, just ask yourself the following question. Have you ever posted a picture of yourself sitting at home, watching TV and wearing comfortable clothes? Or do exciting and attractive images of you looking your best populate your social media feeds?
I’d suspect the answer is the latter. We don’t post photographs of us looking plain and ordinary, simply because those photos aren’t likely to grasp peoples’ attention and reward us with likes. A quick observation of our online tendencies makes the following truth glaringly obvious. We all want to be liked. And yet, in an attempt to earn the acceptance of the people we meet, our beliefs about what it takes to be liked have become misguided.
We think others will only accept us if they approve of our personality or character; if they like the way we look or the clothes we wear; if we have enough followers on Instagram or a strong investment portfolio. The simple truth, however, is that making meaningful connections with others isn’t about some intrinsic property within us. It’s not about how we dress or our net worth or anything external. None of those factors matter at all, really. It just comes down to how we make people feel.
Enjoying this?
Read the full article in Edition 4 of our print magazine, available here.
Often, we’re driven by our own self-consciousness when engaging
in conversation. Under the pressure of awkward conversations with strangers or the forced environment of the workplace, we panic. We fear that we’ll say the wrong thing or make a fool out of ourselves by being vulnerable. At the heart of these fears is the assumption that other peoples’ opinions of us are fixed — as if we will only be liked if we pass some imaginary assessment based upon our looks or character.
In treating social approval as a fixed state, we wait for our acquaintances to show signs that they like us, only prepared to fully open up once we’re sure that we’ve been accepted; and if the opposite is true, we may distance ourselves in order to avoid embarrassment and humiliation.
As Alain de Botton puts it:
‘Both sides proceed under the tacit assumption that there is some external verdict about their value that the other person will be developing in their mind which has no connection to how they themselves behave and is impervious to anything they say or do.’
Enjoyed this?
Read the full article in Edition 4 of our print magazine, available here.
