How To Get A Social Life

Don't have an unrealistic self-image that demands you can only hang out with a certain caliber of people. Be realistic about yourself and your circumstances.

Never turn down an invitation

If someone invites you to do something, then you should go. Why turn down a free chance to get out there with people?

If you're more of an shy, introverted person it's easy to mull over the invitation and rationalize that it won't be that fun and that you don't want to go. Ignore those thoughts and go anyways. You never can be sure how fun something will be until you show up and see how it is for yourself.

Sometimes you'll have to inconvenience yourself for the sake of your social life. You may get invited to a movie you don't particularly want to see, or someone might call you up on Friday evening as you're about to go to bed asking if you want to go out. Whenever you have two or more people in the equation, you're going to have to compromise sometimes. Again, just being out there outweighs these minor annoyances.

Once you know some people, build on this foundation

Once you've made a regular friend or two you've got a good base to work from. If you're more introverted in nature, one or two good buddies may be all you need to be happy. At the very least, it should be enough to get rid of that desperate lonely feeling.

Sooner or later you'll end up meeting your friend's friends. If you hit it off with them then you can start hanging out with them as well. You can also become a member of the whole group with time.

You can continue to meet entirely new people. Having friends will make this easier as they'll do things like invite you to parties or keep you company in places where there are new people to potentially meet.

Maintain your friendships

Keep in regular touch with friends through the phone, email, MSN, etc. Hang out with them on a regular basis. Every friend and acquaintance has a right amount of time you need to spend with them. Some relationships are more casual and you only hang out every month or less, other people will wonder if you've died if you they don't see you every week. Common sense will tell you what these amounts are.

Don't be needy and pester one friend too much and rely on them to meet all your social and entertainment needs.

You may not have a problem with meeting people and hanging around them once or twice, but you may run into trouble in the long run. Don't fall out of touch with your new friends and acquaintances. Various introverted and insecure traits can get you at this stage:

1. You can feel insecure. You'll convince yourself your new friends don't really like you and drop contact with them in response to this imagined slight.

2. Your lower need to be social may cause you to not want to hang around with them as often as you need to keep the friendship going.

3. Shyness may make you too wimpy to call them up and make plans.

If you haven't talked to someone in a while it's not really a big deal. You can still get back in touch and catch up. It's not even that awkward. Don't think you automatically have to throw the friendship away.

Building up a good social life takes time so stick with it. A solid group of great friends often takes several years to develop.

Chris writes completely free articles to help shy, lonely guys get over their issues at www.succeedsocially.com