By Michael Brickey, Ph.D.

Introductory comments by Royane Real

Author of  “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends”

My mother just got moved into a nursery home because she is having a lot of health problems.  In the nursery home she is surrounded by a lot of other older people who are getting frail also.  Most of them are women.

Whenever I go to visit at the nursery home, what I notice the most is how few visitors these people get.  If they are lucky, they get occasional visits from their family, but very few of them get visits from their friends.

Part of the reason could be that their friends are also getting old and frail, so maybe it’s hard for them to get out to make a visit.  Maybe their friends can’t drive anymore. 

So, many of these older people are now in a situation where they have probably lost their spouse, and lost many of their friends.  If they are lucky, they will be able to make connections and friendships with some new people in the nursing home.

I compare the situation of these isolated and lonely older people with a few other older people I knew, people who were good at making new friends throughout their lives.

For example, my good friend Doris was making new friends even when she got to her eighties.  She kept going out to parties, she kept asking people to come to visit for tea. 

And what I noticed about Doris that was most amazing, was that she didn’t restrict her friend making activities only to other older ladies in her age group.  She asked people half her age, and people a tenth of her age to come over and visit.

Unlike some older people, Doris didn’t spend any time talking about the good old days, or the bad old days.  She was vitally interested in the world around her, and she lived completely in the present.  Whenever she met somebody new, she showed that she was very interested in getting to know all about them. 

I haven’t reached Doris ’s age yet, but I have certainly learned some important lessons from her about how to age successfully and still be surrounded by people who care about you.  In her very old age, even when she became very sick and was quite financially poor, Doris was able to reap the social investment she had made after a lifetime of caring about other people.

The following article by Dr. Michael Brickey discusses how you can successfully combine aging with friendship.   But you will have to start now if you want to reap the benefits!

( The introductory comments which appear above are by Royane Real )

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Learn to Be Popular - even if You're Shy and Lonely!

By Royane Real

Do you ever with you had a better social life?  Are you tired of being lonely?  Perhaps you suffer from shyness and you wish you could learn how to be outgoing and popular.

My popular book “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends”  will teach you everything you need to know about how to make friends.  Where to find them.  How to start up conversations with people you don't know very well.  How to get over your shyness.

You'll learn how to keep a conversation going.  You'll find out what to do to keep a friendship strong and make it last.  

Isn't it time to stop being on the outside looking in?  Now is the time and here is your opportunity to change your life from one of being lonely to one of being popular. 

Testimonial from a happy reader :

"Some other authors will charge you way more for self help programs that won't be written as good as this one, but this one is packed with information and is worth every penny." Testimonial by Niko Sekuloski, Detroit

Learn more about this exciting book that can change your life forever  “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends” at  http://www.lulu.com/real     

Feature article

Making New Friends All Your Life

By Michael Brickey, Ph.D.

The Girl Scouts have a song that goes, “Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” It is great advice. What typically happens as people age is that their circle of friends shrinks as people move, develop different interests, or die.

Can’t you just feel life closing in when you think about it? Not making new friends is choosing to coast in life instead of embracing life.  It is a script for premature aging.

Try on this belief: I make new friends all my life–even when I am well into my hundreds.

Notice how time and space open up?  When you adopt this belief you tell your mind to develop a script to fulfill it. To make sure the belief sticks, look for examples of people who are always making new friends.  They can be great role models.

If you are shy, set a goal of learning how to make friends comfortably. Perhaps you can identify some shy people who have a knack for making friends and see how they do it.

Another strategy is to become involved in organization in which it is easy to make friends. If you are willing to take a leadership role in an organization making friends is even easier.

Why do women live longer than men?  One factor is that, on the whole, they are better at developing friendships and social networks than men.

Michael Roizen’s Real Age statistics found that a 70-year-old man who is married, sees at least six friends monthly, and participates in social groups has a life expectancy ten years longer than a man with none of the characteristics.

For women the difference is eight years.

Marriage was a more important factor in life expectancy of men than of women–presumably because single women, on the whole, have more friends and those friends provide more emotional support.  And Roizen’s research isn’t even looking at whether the marriages are happy marriages.

The key factor that typically moves an acquaintanceship to a friendship is self-disclosure and sharing.

“Keeping your cards close to your chest” is a prescription for loneliness.

If you want to make friends, go ahead and be the first one to share personal feelings or information. What do you have to lose?  At this point they are only an acquaintance and if they are turned off or scared off by you telling them that the person you would most like to meet is Richard Simons, then they wouldn’t have made a very good friend for you anyway.

The rule of thirds says a third of people naturally like you, a third won’t, and a third will be apathetic. (Of course there are few exceptions for charismatic people and curmudgeons.)

So you may as well be yourself and the people who will like you will like you for the real you. The only way to lose is to not play.

So make new friends like your life depends on it.  It does.

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Make Yourself Unforgettable

Become the kind of person EVERYONE remembers and NO ONE can resist!

By Dale Carnegie Training

You’ll find that people in every area of your life — from work to home and everywhere in between — respond to you more positively and generously than they ever have before! 

Discover more information at this link:                                                           http://nightingale.directtrack.com/z/10542/CD1323/ 

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