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Are You Struggling to Make New Friends?

Polly Chandler · Jan 2, 2023 ·

All our lives we make friends. Think about the social constructs that enabled you to make friends in your life. Was it a playground, school, sports teams, college dorm, your job? The question is, where do you make friends now?  How do you make new friends? Are you Struggling to make new friends?

Ayse Birsel uses a design thinking process to explore many aspects of life. Her new book Design the Long Life You Love is full of design thinking strategies. The one I found most compelling was design thinking around friendship. She writes “All our life we make friends. Starting from our youngest age when we make friends on playgrounds, we have social constructs that create opportunities for friendship. These recede as we grow older but our need for friendship does not. How can we make new fresh friends as we grow older?”

Gerald Mollenhorst, an assistant professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found that “only about 30 percent of our closest friends remain tried and true after seven years. And, 48 percent remain in our immediate social network (meaning we actually talk to or hang out with them on occasion). However, the size of our network remains the same, which means out with the old and in with the new.”

The million dollar question is, if there are less social constructs to make friends and we replace friends every 7 years, where and how are we making new friends as we age?

Chip Conley wrote “we each evolve over the course of a life and thus, our friendships should as well. A stagnant friendship is sort of like a stagnant pond. It smells and nothing lives there. We want people in our lives we can grow old with, grow young with and ideally just grow with.”   

Where are you finding your friends to grow with? 

Ayse Birsel uses her design thinking process and draws from thought leaders about friendship. Lee Kim of Design Dream Lab was one inspiration. Kim’s story of making hats is an inspiration on how to make new friends. Lee started creating hats as a way to make friends when she went out on her walks in her neighborhood. People would stop her and ask “where did you got your hat”. As Kim says “each time I put pipe cleaner hats on my head I sent out a signal to the world, “hi, what’s your name? you wanna be my friend”. 

Kim uses this step by step guide for making fresh friends. 

1. Pick your “play space”- where would you like to make friends?  Your local park?  Library? coffee shop? 

2. Bring a conversation starter. Lee’s hats are her conversations starters? What could be your conversation starter? 

3. Give yourself a duration. Go to your play space every day, rain or shine and make it your mission to make new friends. 

4. Be prepared for a conversation.  Lee’s conversation starter is her hat story and the details become the conversation.

5. Keep in touch. At a playground, parents exchange cell phone numbers. Lee asks for instagram and Linkedin accounts. 

6. Give a gift. Lee takes off her hat and gives it to the person. It’s the ultimate invitation to friendship. 

Lee Kim gives us a road map for making new friends.  Her video tells her story.

What might work for you? 

Aisel’s last insight on friendship was from a participant in one of her workshops, She calls it the “minus 9 plus 9” formula.  Basically, make friends who are nine years younger and nine years older than you are.  Multigenerational friendship is one way to achieve fresh friendship. 

Aisel encourages us to deconstruct our thinking on friendship so that we can reconstruct new ways of making fresh friends. As you enter into 2023, how might you create fresh friends?

Share your ideas on how you make new friends. Together we can make those fresh friends for 2023

 

Uncategorized ayse birsel, chipconley, deconstruction, designdreamlab, designthelonglifeyoulove, designthinkig, friend, friendship, leekim, newfriends, old friends, reconstruction

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