The most impractical advice for meeting new people
Since I’m not particularly active (nor good) at making the first step when meeting new people, I’m always surprised when asked, ‘You seem to know everyone. How do you go about meeting people?’ I’ve never given much thought to this, but the repetitive question makes me wonder how and why. All the way through high school and college, I’ve always had quite a limited comfort zone preferring a group of friends to any strangers (aka new people). Being very social and comfortable in your friends zone, but at the same feeling awkward and incompetent among the people you don’t know is something common among many of us. Occasionally it feels like both introvert and extravert live within you substituting each other based on the context. Two opposing forces remind me of the following stages of cultivating the Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. It’s important to reach the unity of two running extremes, and then go beyond it towards the ultimate — the absence of any form.
It’s amazing how different we can be under different circumstances. Our friends create the platform where we tend to be more comfortable and more creative, more witty and more intelligent as the result. People we don’t know, on the other hand, more often than not [1] create the territory where we are no longer as clever or as imaginative as before. The Ovid’s Metamorphoses in action!
Coming back to the original question though. How do you create new meaningful connections [2] when it’s so comfortable to be the biggest fish in the small pond? How do you expand your horizons? On one hand, you can say, ‘I don’t have any control over what person is sitting next to me in the plane, at the conference or movie theater, why should I bother?’ You can say pretentious things like, ‘And if things are not under control, how do I guarantee this is a quality person?’ What I would say is quite simple. Don’t have an agenda for such trivial matters. Experiment, be more fluid and listen to your inner self. If you lack the energy, just be with yourself not worrying about the endless stream of people and experiences you’re missing out. Read an exciting book you’ve been postponing the entire year or listen to an interesting talk. Being boring to yourself is a dangerous symptom. There’s nothing worse than interacting with people when you don’t feel like talking, when you don’t have anything to share. It’s as if two beggars with empty hats on the ground in front of them ask for coins from each other. You’ve got to fill your cup before being generous. However, if you’re overflowing with energy, conversations can have a certain fragrance, a new dimension, a new life. And that feeds into even bigger state of abundance. In that case, go with the flow and let that energy drive you. Meet new people, exchange both world changing and trivial (‘good ideas that look like bad ideas’) ideas, but most importantly — have fun along the way [3].
But if this obsession of meeting new people without playing white [4] still occupies your mind, if you want new Facebook friends with no effort [5], I have a counterintuitive, but still somewhat practical advice. ‘Be so good that they can’t ignore you’. Be so awesome that meeting you becomes an honor for everyone. And that takes effort!
Notes
[1] Haven’t really thought about this too deeply, so I’m clearly oversimplifying/overcomplicating certain things here.
[2] In the psychological, not political sense of this word.
[3] One of the most ignored cliches in today’s world is ‘The journey is more important than the destination’, isn’t it?
[4] Read: first-move advantage/disadvantage in chess.
[5] No idea why you would need them. Depth > > > width.
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