How to Make Friends as an Introvert: Discover Introvert-Friendly Ways to Meet New People, Improve Your Social Skills, and Make New Friends
Author: Nate Nicholson. Publishing year: 2015.
How to Make Friends as an Introvert is a practical self-help book. It offers simple and fast ideas of how you can improve your social skills and make more friends.
Are You an Introvert?
Nate Nicholson starts by describing an introvert’s characteristics. These are people who feel shy about making social interactions. For example, starting a conversation with a colleagues.
There are many nuances and levels of introversion:
“Introverts are often described as old souls. Old souls have a much more mature outlook on life”…
There is nothing wrong with being an introvert. On the contrary, they have their own specific strengths and skills:
“Your ability to see the bigger picture makes you a person people seek for advice.”
Use Weaknesses as Strengths
How to Make Friends as an Introvert teaches us how to turn weaknesses into strengths:
“…the more reflective people are, the most honest they become.”
One of the biggest weaknesses of introverts is their shyness. This can be a small issue, like not wanting to participate in public speaking or choosing a profession where they don’t have to interact with too many people. But it can also become a bigger problem. If they are too shy to ever interact with other people in a social context, they will never make friends or meet a partner.
Another weakness might be perfectionism. Things don’t have to be perfect. Situations don’t always turn out as we plan them. But sometimes, it is good enough:
“Instead of thinking how to make everything perfect, I should have acted and accepted the way everything would turn out.”
Finally, the book teaches us how to become more assertive, which is a skill everybody needs.
How to Make Friends as an Introvert
After defining what it means to be an introvert, we move on to read precise and direct advice on how to meet new people and how to make new friends.
From making casual conversation, to talking with strangers and developing meaningful friendships, the book covers a large array of social interactions. It makes an inventory of this social skills we need to master. Finally, it ends with behaviors we need to avoid in order to have a healthy social life.
This guide is an easy, quick read. It offers punctual solutions for very well defined problems. It does not go in depth but rather keeps to fast recipes with immediate gains. If you ever struggled with social interactions you will find this book helpful.