It is fairly easy to avoid getting rejected. Just don’t step up to the plate and you can never strike out. If you really look at it, this is the modus operandi for most people. They’re filter feeders, taking whatever comes their way, doing their best with it, but never going out and actively trying to get what they want.
For better or worse, this works okay in our society. Unless you’re really near the poverty end of the scale, there’s a default life waiting for you. On one end it might be working two shifts, scraping by, but being comfortable on your secondhand couch watching TV. Or on the other end it might be eating from the silver spoon until your inheritance creates a silver spoon for your kids.
If you want that default, whatever it may be, you can just go with the flow. If you want something else, you have to be proactive.
Recently I’ve been thinking about how this applies to social situations as well. If you only meet the people in your predefined social circles, don’t go terribly out of your way to become better friends or be an especially good friend, you’ll still be fine. Or at least, you probably won’t be lonely.
I’ve said it a million times, but out of all the great things in my life, the relationships I have with my friends and family are the most important. I have close relationships with most of my family, and good relationships with even those I don’t see often. I think my friends are subjectively, and even objectively, some of the greatest people alive today.
Some of this, of course, is luck. I didn’t choose my siblings, parents, or extended family, and they’re all really amazing people. But I did choose my friends, and I am deliberate in building relationships with people, and that’s made all the difference.
In particular, I put myself in a position to face rejection on a regular basis. At any given time, there are probably one or two people with whom I’m trying to become better friends. I don’t wait for it to happen; I invite them to things and take the initiative to share personal things or ask about them.
And when there’s someone I don’t know but I think I might want to be friends with, I’ll ask for an introduction or reach out and talk to them personally.
This doesn’t always work, but that’s the point. Some people just aren’t interested in becoming friends, and you feel a little foolish sometimes for making yourself vulnerable by initiating. But that’s okay, because the people you do end up having great relationships with make it worth it one hundredfold.
The same goes with family and existing friends. You can make the time to call and visit them, set up things to do one-on-one, and do nice things for them.
Just like any area of your life, your social life can be bad, mediocre, or amazing. The factor that determines where on that scale you fall will be what you put into it.
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Friends, old and new, eating Macarons from La Duree, Paris, in Bangkok, Thailand.
This post is a small glimpse into the subject of my next book. I think it will be a little bit polarizing, but will be really good for a lot of people
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