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Several conversations with several friends - and also the story of my entire life - is getting me to crystalize some thoughts The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people
Possibly the most important thing in a friendship- including one with yourself, or your spouse, or your child - is attention. Deep, focused, undivided, non-judgemental attention. To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard https://t.co/ttJw3cljfN
So: the most important thing about the most important thing in life is attention, and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it. If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention... ...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life https://t.co/DILk1zn2pN
becoming friends with yourself: https://t.co/35UnodNImE
Much of self-improvement, personal development, introspection, etc can quite simply be reframed as the art of socialising with yourself. Listen to yourself, pay close attention to yourself, don’t interrupt yourself, be kind and supportive to yourself, be constructive in criticism
making friends by correctly reading and responding to the implicit proposals in other people's utterances https://t.co/7kjmEMdXW8
give sincere compliments. (fantastic side-benefit of this is that you also develop your taste in the process, and taste is *extremely* valuable) https://t.co/IocuGZ5MMj
I don’t know if I ever specifically set out to learn this, but Ive gotten pretty good at it over the years: I think giving people specific and sincere compliments is a pretty great skill to develop. It’s a the intersection of making people feel good + developing your taste
gently, kindly and curiously ask people about their experiences https://t.co/1RdFHqYMDm
What have you seen? What surprised you? What have you been wrong about? What do you know now you didn’t before? What have you struggled with? What has your relationship with X (food, money, parents, job, dating) been like? This puts you in 0.1% and people will *love* you https://t.co/CmH88FeEmt
but don't push too hard for the answers to any particular question – rather, be sensitive to the other person – their gestures, body language, expressions – and look for opportunities for excellent followups https://t.co/UC8VTTazou
The most powerful IRL interview/conversation/flirting skill isn’t asking good questions nearly as much as asking good followup questions - it’s being sensitive to interesting micro-reactions. When you ask a question and they respond “😂... no”, and you go “Why 😂?” Etc
putting together a list of threads about making friends here. Will probably eventually expand this into a series of blogposts: https://t.co/CGhsQhefwp https://t.co/UiAEchlE9U
was looking for this tweet in this thread and couldn't find it contrast with pay attention to me!!! energy above https://t.co/iOzhY776ky
The best questions you can ask someone is in that space where you’re paying close attention to them - to their face, their expressions, their body language, and you notice that they’re holding back in some way. They might not even realize themselves that they’re doing that! https://t.co/uycjsv2nZD
