Kindly, having just spent a solid month horse packing and hiking those very boreal forests, let me, if I may, offer another perspective: if you want to make real friends, go deep, and that means so fucking deep that you learn to count on one another. Through injury, through high river crossings, grizzly sightings, and a million other experiences, being pushed outside your boundaries makes room for a lot of other things to happen. Truth, a few assholes showed up too. But in the middle of the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, with no signal to distract you, what a prime way to find out who matters, why, and what’s really important in life.

Granted, Randall, this is what I do for a living. However I learned a long time ago in the military that extremity makes for deep connections. My chosen sports, from skydiving to bungee to horse riding to hiking to kayaking, means that I am with folks who share my values. That’s the key- if you and don’t know what our values are, it’s damned hard to place ourselves in the rivers where others are likely to want very much to be in our inner circles, and ourselves in theirs.

I’ve been teaching networking skills for nearly forty years. We have to stay open, but we also have to get out of the fucking house and into the mainstream.

Wanna make friends? Make yourself available. Be curious about other folks. It is NOT all about you ALL the time. The more welcome we make folks feel in the living room that is the space in front of us, the more they are going to want to hang out and do the same for us. Thanks for the article.