Do you have a close partner or friends, or a wider social network? Do you have people you can connect with, and depend on? Whether or not you have these things, do you feel lonely day to day?

Connection is a basic human need, but it’s one that many of us feel we lack. In this article, we’ll talk about what missing connection does to us - why we struggle to make friends - and, most importantly, what we can do to create better friendships and connections.

The Case for Connection

In the last few decades, by most measures, levels of objective social isolation and subjective loneliness have been on the rise. A quarter of the world’s population reports feeling very or fairly lonely. In the USA, more people are living alone than ever before in history. The percentage of people in the USA who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990.

These changes have implications for social, mental, and also physical health. Social isolation is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and general mortality. Both Great Britain and Japan believe it increases health and welfare costs so much that they have made reducing isolation a central part of their national health policy.

“A large body of research shows that social isolation and loneliness have a serious impact on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity. The effect of social isolation and loneliness on mortality is comparable to that of other well-established risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.” - World Health Organization

The most striking evidence of our need for connection comes from an incredible 72-year-long Harvard study that followed 268 men throughout their lives, understanding what makes humans find joy or suffering, sadness or survival. Their findings about the link between strong social relationships, health, and happiness were so strong that after collecting all the evidence, the study’s director, George Vaillant, concluded:

“It is social aptitude, not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging...the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

But you don’t need this research to know what you experience in your own life. 

Some of us have many friends, and some have few. Even if you have many friends you may experience loneliness. It is the quality of our relationships, as well as their quantity, that affects our experience.

This article is about how to make more, higher-quality friendships and relationships; how to have more people to go out with in the evening, more hands to call when you’re moving, more support for the endings in your life, and more health and happiness every day.

What is Loneliness?

Understanding why we struggle when we don’t have friends can help us understand how to make more of them.

Most people tend to think of loneliness in terms of “not having people around”. But, there are actually two factors within this experience: 1. Social isolation, and 2. Subjective loneliness.

Social isolation is the lack of an objective support network - a.k.a, not having people around.

Loneliness is the feeling of being socially disconnected - whether or not there are people around.

Distinguishing these two factors matters because they are resolved by different mechanisms.

Social isolation stems from a lack of objective connection, whether because we’re struggling to get ourselves out of the house, because we live far from others, or because we have health problems that make connection difficult. Interventions that just get us around other people (some of which we’ll talk about in this article) can help with isolation.

Loneliness can either stem from or lead to negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves and/or others, meaning that we don’t trust our capacity to make friends, or others’ desire to have us as friends. It involves a belief that our situation is uncontrollable - that we are unable to make friends. Lonely people tend to get pushed to the edges of social networks, so then we have less opportunity to make friends. All of this creates a self-perpetuating loop of disconnection. Instead of addressing it just by our actions, we have to address it by working on our concepts about ourselves and the world.

We've split this guide into two parts, in them we’ll address making friends from a few angles:

Part 1 will cover:

• Preparing for social success

• Effective ways to start friendships

Part 2 will cover:

• Strategies for keeping friendships going

Let’s get into it!

1️⃣ Preparing for Social Success

There is a game I play in my Authentic Relating work, called “Emotion Sculpture”. In this exercise, participants are invited to physically shape another person into an emotion. For instance, if longing is something you feel strongly, you would describe your feeling of it to your partner. They would take on a shape they imagine represents your sense of longing. Then, you’d “sculpt” them, by moving or asking them to move parts of their body, into a form that more closely represents how you feel. Sounds strange, but once you get into it, the game tends to flow easily.

When I first played this game, I chose the emotion of shyness. I sculpted my partner into the position that felt right for how I experienced shyness. Then I stepped back and took a look.

I was shocked by what I saw. I thought that my shyness was like a call for help, an innocuous humility that would have others feel drawn to engage with me. But the person in front of me looked cold, standoffish, and unapproachable. No wonder I thought nobody wanted to be friends with me. I looked like I didn’t want anyone to be friends with me.

This has, over time, created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less others approach me, the more isolated I am; the more isolated I am, the more lonely I feel; the more lonely I feel, the less I trust others to approach; and eventually, I vacillate between judging myself for “obviously not being interesting, attractive, or socially powerful enough” and judging others for “obviously being shallow, judgmental, or cooler than me”. As these beliefs become ingrained, it becomes harder and harder for me to get past them, to connect.

Loneliness is a transient experience that can become chronic, if experienced enough. It triggers hypervigilance for social threats. Compared with the non-lonely, people who are chronically lonely approach social encounters with higher average levels of mistrust and cynicism, already expecting to be rejected. They, or we, also have lower feelings of self-worth and are more self-conscious than the non-lonely.

If we want people to approach us, we first need to become approachable. And if we want people to talk to us, we may need to start a conversation with them.

Imagine a social situation - a party or meetup that you might attend, with a group of mostly strangers. Ask yourself the following questions:

• If I go up to someone I don’t know and start a conversation, do I expect them to respond positively?

• Do I expect myself to go up and start a conversation with someone I don’t know?

• If I enter a group conversation, do I expect that I will contribute something useful, positive, or meaningful to it?

• If I enter a group conversation, do I expect that others will want me there?

• What thoughts go through my head when I enter this social space of strangers?

If your answers to those first 4 questions were “no” or "no-ish", you may need to do some work on your internal cognitions before you push yourself into making friends. Check out the following sections for tools for working effectively with your mind. If you already feel ready to go out and make connections with confidence, you can skip to Section 2, “Effective Ways to Start a Friendship”.

Changing Internal Cognitions

To prepare ourselves for success in making friends, we first need to believe that friendship is possible for us. This means getting our minds to work for our goals, rather than against them.

There are many ways to change your cognitions, including various forms of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) that rely on the technique of “cognitive restructuring”, or questioning the beliefs behind your thoughts and actions. CBT calls this the “3 Cs”: Catch the belief, Check the belief, Change the belief (or situation).

On a daily basis, I find two simple techniques based on this to be helpful. One is for challenging my beliefs about myself and one is for challenging my beliefs about others.

Challenging Beliefs About the Self

One simple process of self-challenging is featured in The Work of Byron Katie, adjacent but not identical to CBT. Whenever you notice yourself having a thought that is not productive for how you want your life to go, such as “I am not able to make friends” or “People are mean to me”, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do I react, what happens, when I believe this thought?

4. Who would I be without this thought?

Then, to challenge your cognitions a little more, you can turn the thought around and examine the counterfactuals for truth. For instance, if you believe “I am not able to make friends”, you might check how true the statement “Others aren’t able to make friends with me” feels, or “I am able to make friends”.

Another self-challenging tool, using the ABCD method (identify the Activating event, examine your Beliefs, Consider different perspectives, and Debrief on how these new points of view affect your feelings) comes from Clearer Thinking and is available here.

Challenging Beliefs About Others

1. Make an observation

2. Formulate a hypothesis

3. Conduct an experiment

4. Analyze the results

5. Modify your hypothesis

6. Repeat ad nauseam… or until you gain sufficient confidence that your current hypothesis is correct.

In practical terms, when it comes to making friends, this might look like:

1. Observation - People seem like they don’t want to be friends with me. When I ask someone to hang out, they tend to say no, or say yes and then ghost me.

2. Hypothesis - If I have a conversation with someone and suggest a follow-up, they will say no or ghost me.

3. Experiment - I will ask 5 people for a follow-up after a conversation. I will do this by texting each of them twice over a week and suggesting a specific time and activity.

Then you run the experiment and see the results. To get accurate information, try several different methods in your experiment to test each hypothesis (e.g., “I will ask 3 people for a followup and call each of them about finding a time and activity” or “I will ask 5 people for a followup, and leave the ball in their court to suggest when and where”, or “If I ask for a followup and someone ghosts me, I’ll text back to ask why it happened”).

This approach may seem unnecessarily analytical. But in reality, our brains are doing this all the time. We are always gathering evidence and integrating it into our beliefs about ourselves and the world. We are meaning-making machines. To have great social skills and great connections, it can help to just be a little more conscious about how you run the experiments that are already underway in your mind.

The benefit of treating social engagements like an experiment is that the purpose and goal make it feel like a game. The stakes are lowered. No matter how your experiments go, you get over the inertia of interacting, and gather evidence that can help you engage better in the future.

Think about it now - what is an experiment you can run on your connections and related beliefs? You can use Clearer Thinking’s “Design Your Own Self-Experiment” tool to help you create and plan one: 

Now that we’ve addressed our internal worlds, let’s talk about the external one. How do you start friendships, and how do you keep them going?

2️⃣ Effective Ways to Start a Friendship

Step 1: Get Around People

The first practice for starting friendships is to… get yourself around other people. In most cases, a higher number of interactions is associated with a higher level of happiness. This holds whether the connections you form are strong-tie (close friendship or romantic relationships) or weak-tie (peripheral friend or community relationships). Over time, the connections you form have a buffering effect against negative emotions.

If you’re an introvert - or live far from town, or have a physical ailment or depression - you know this can be easier said than done. Use the tips in the first section of this article to get yourself past the inner blocks.

Then, go out to a place or event with a low barrier to social engagement. Spaces such as movie theaters, bars, and parks may seem like good options for this, but it’s easy to find yourself around others instead of being with them. For many people, it’s hard to muster the activation energy to start a conversation with a stranger without some excuse.

If this is the case for you, try activities with built-in interaction, such as Meetups in your interest area, workshops, board game nights, contra dances (or partner dance if you’re willing to learn some new skills), Authentic Relating Games, or volunteering. Aim for activities that will give you some time to talk with others, and an excuse for what to talk about. Contact the author of this article if you want advice on creating an interaction-focused event of your own, as starting a community is often the best way to find one!

Step 2: Start a Conversation

Now that you’re around other humans, you should probably talk to them. Good conversation starters might be:

1. How’s your day going? What has been the most interesting part so far?

2. Why did you come to this [party/meetup/place/life]?

3. What is something you’ve been working on this month?

4. What do you do for work?

5. What are your hobbies?

6. What’s something you’re passionate about?

7. What have you been learning lately? 

8. How would your friends introduce you? 

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. Here’s [a topic I’ve been thinking of/situation I’ve been working with.] What’s your best advice?

Aim for questions that prompt a longer response or a story, to make follow-ups easier. “How are you doing?” will often lead to a one-word, perfunctory response. “How’s your day going? What has been the most interesting part?” as a full prompt will get you more information, and the novelty of the question will show the other person that you actually want to know their answer. The longer their response, the more you have to ask about in follow-ups.

Step 3: Continue the Conversation

Once you’ve started things off, move between asking questions and sharing about yourself.

While you can keep the conversation superficial (“How are you doing today? What is your favorite food? What are you up to tomorrow?”), studies show that we are happier when conversations are deeper, when we share more about ourselves, and when we like the other person. In one study, compared to the unhappiest participants, the happiest ones had roughly one-third as much small talk and twice as many substantive conversations. The quality of conversation matters, as well as the quantity.

To deepen a conversation, follow the thread of a single topic and/or its related branches. Ask follow-up questions. The more context you get and the more trust you develop, the deeper the conversation can go.

Some good conversation-deepening questions are:

Passion or work

1. What first drew you to this field?

2. How do you stay inspired and motivated?

3. What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started?

4. What is one of the most misunderstood aspects of your field?

5. Who are your biggest influences or mentors in this area?

6. Any big plans for the next month or few months?

7. What’s next for you?

Family, partner, or friends

1. How did you meet your partner?

2. What’s your favorite thing to do with your friends?

3. What are you proudest of in your kids?

4. What’s the most useful thing your grandparents/parents/dad/mom taught you?

5. What is a recurring argument you get into with your partner?

6. What do you love most about your partner? Your kids?

In initial conversations, I like to follow what I call the “30/70 rule”: share about yourself 30% of the time, ask questions and listen 70%. Paradoxically, you will be more likely to seem interesting if you are interested. In an early conversation, it’s easy to talk either more or less than you mean to, and come off as either overbearing or overly quiet. The 30/70 rule helps you remember to take space and leave space. Over time, you can rebalance to closer to 50/50, or to whatever proportion feels right for this relationship.

When you do share, try to relate your self-disclosure to the topic at hand and to what the other person has talked about. One big conversational mistake is giving personal information or stories that are disconnected from the other person’s shares, and thus make them feel like you haven’t been listening.

For more on starting and continuing conversations, read The Path to (Mostly) Effortless Connection.

Last tip: remember that not all conversations are created equal. If you do not feel interested, interesting, or like your efforts are being reciprocated, you can always move on and talk to someone new. Perhaps make it one of your experiments to find out what sort of person you most enjoy talking with. Invite your highest picks into friendship with the following step…

Step 4: Suggest a Follow-up

If you enjoyed the conversation, don’t let it end there. Ask for a next hangout - and be specific about it. “Let’s hang out sometime!” will, due to diffusion of responsibility, almost always lead to never hanging out again. 

I find this easiest to do over text. Get the other person’s number, and message them a day or two later with follow-up suggestions. To increase your chances of response, give a day, time, and suggested activity. “Let’s hang out again! What are you up to this Friday? Want to go for a walk?”

Focus on something that you actually want to do, so you look forward to getting out of the house both to do the activity and to see your new friend. 

If they are busy on the day and time you suggest, ask a more open-ended question. “Ok. I’d still love to hang out again, because I enjoyed our conversation and find you interesting. Is there a good day for you next week? Any activities you like to do with friends?” 

When you’ve gotten a second hangout on the books - congratulations, you’ve started a friendship!

Now the last piece. How do you keep the friendship going, and make it a good one?

We’ve talked about how to get started: the inner shifts, the outer actions, the conversations that open doors. If you’ve made it this far, take a breath and celebrate — even reading about connection is a form of care.

But the journey doesn’t stop at “nice to meet you.”

Next up, we’re diving into the practices that turn sparks into flames: the habits, rituals, and tiny acts of courage that keep friendships alive. In Part 2, I’ll share practical strategies for deepening relationships, navigating awkward pauses, and checking in when things start to wobble.

👉🏻 Stay tuned for Part 2: Strategies for Keeping Friendships Going – it’s coming soon, and it’s the part most of us never got taught.

Let’s keep walking this path together.

With love and curiosity,
Sara

Sara Ness is a facilitator, teacher, and connection researcher. She has worked with tens of thousands of students, from Google to Mindvalley to Burning Man - teaching leadership, conflict engagement, and authentic communication through Authentic Relating skills. She is the founder and CEO of Authentic Revolution and is on the board of the social health nonprofit Seek Healing. You can find more of her writing by clicking here.