Friends | Be the spark

How to deepen relationships

On average, you have less friends than your friends. It’s called the Friendship paradox. One implications of this is that if everybody reaches out to one friend every day, on average less people will reach out to you than you will reach out to. On top of that you just get the usual chaos of life: People get busy, forget without bad intentions, have fear of rejection, low energy.

This didn’t used to be a problem because we’d just run into each other in tight-knit communities, but now we live more isolated and alone, and things don’t just happen automatically anymore

But no need to despair. You don’t have to wait for friends to reach out. You can be the change you want to see in the world. You can reach out. You can be the spark. And people will love you for it.

How to deepen relationships

Reach out

Sounds so simple and yet a lot of us don’t do it. Build a habit to reach out to people intentionally. As a frist step in each good habit, you need triggers. Examples for those triggers coudl be

• When you think of them: Maybe you listen to a song or read something that reminds you of them, or they’re simply on your mind because of something they said or a story they told. Tell them. They’ll appreciate it.

• When you feel a need: Wanting connection or feeling lonely is not something to be ashamed of. You also don’t feel ashamed when you’re hungry. You just eat. In the same way, just reach out when you feel a need for connection.

• When your list says so: Takes little work and is super useful: A list of people you know with a few tags. Travelling to a city? Reach out. Planning a dinner? Check the list. Their birthday? Check. Bonus points for the date you next want to reach out to them.

Practice rituals

Coming up with reasons to reach out and meeting people is draining. Luckily, culture has solved this for us. It came up with lots of reasons to celebrate and have people around.

• Celebrate your birthday: Start here. See it as a gift you gift to others, not something self indulgent. A lot of us got scarred as teenagers where birthday parties were status games. Good news: They don’t have to be. Do what you like.

• Follow your communities rituals: Religious holidays, New Years, a sports game finale, Eurovision Song Contest, work events, anniversaries of any kind, national holidays, there is always a reson to meet, just look for them.

• Create rituals: Hosted something once and people liked it? Make it a recurring thing. Thursday after-work drinks. Monthly book club. Board game nights. Cowork Tuesday. Annual winter vacation with the crew, …

Host

When should you host? When you wish more people would be hosting things. If you get less social interactions than you’d like to have, start hosting, and once you get too much, because people are inviting you back to too many things, just stop again.

• Scrappy is vulnerable: By hosting people at your home you’re letting them see your more vulnerable self. It shouldn’t be perfect. Embrace scrappyness, don’t polish up, lower the bar, they’ll love it.

• Start comfortable: No need to throw a massive dinner party alone. Team up with a friend to host. Order pizza or cook a simple dish. Do something that you’d love to do even if nobody or just a few people showed up.

• Focus on activities: Doing something together bonds and takes the pressure off the socializing. My recent favorites: a “sideproject saturday” where we’d meet at a coworking space and vibe-code. A “donation dinner” where we would order pizza and do donation admin together. A “protest brunch” where we made our own portest signs over croissants and coffee.

How to get started

• Bet money on reaching out to people regularly

• What kind of event would you love to attend? Plan a small version of it.

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version