“Making new friends is hard’ - have you ever thought that to yourself? Then you need to meet Sarah, the friendship coach for expats. Sarah supports expats who moved abroad to overcome the barriers that stand in their way of successfully making new friends abroad. In this article, she shares her 3 pillars and key takeaways with you. So that you can start making new and long lasting friendships abroad! And these tips are great for adults and kids as well!
Making friends as adults can be tough, let alone making friends as adults in another country.
As expats we need to say goodbye to everything we know, everything that seems familiar to us: our routine, our home, our family, our friends, our LIVES. When we then move abroad, we need to adjust to a new environment, things that we took for granted are now different and we sometimes need to learn everything from scratch.
While we are so busy adjusting to our new lives, we realize that we miss our loved ones back home and that everything seems so much more difficult without them being with us to support us. We feel isolated, lonely, overwhelmed but yet we feel we don’t have time to make new friends or even worse, we don’t even know where to start.
This is where “the 3 pillars to making new long-lasting friendships abroad” come in!
1. Get yourself out there
In order for you to make new friends, you need to be willing to go out and show up in front of other people. You need to feel confident, courageous, committed and brave to get yourself out there and be possibly rejected by others, ghosted or disliked - which is part of the game of making friends.
This can be daunting for some people, because they think that if they get rejected, judged or disliked by someone, it means that something is wrong with THEM. They make it mean something about themselves, whereas it has nothing to do with THEM, but everything to do with the other person. Not everyone likes peaches, that doesn’t mean that peaches aren’t good enough or that there is something wrong with them.
Our emotions are created by our thoughts - if you feel negative, discouraged or fearful, this is because of the thoughts you are having about a certain situation. If you want to make new friends, your goal is to create thoughts that will make you feel confident, courageous and committed. The right mindset, thoughts, beliefs and emotions are the base of the whole process. If you have any limiting beliefs about yourself, the process or others, you won’t be able to successfully form deep friendships with others. It is important for you to raise awareness around what is currently going on in your mind and to change it to something that sets you up for success and not failure. This can be difficult to do on your own, as your ability to raise awareness about things yourself is limited whereas a coach can bring things to the surface you weren’t aware of - ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’
Takeaway: Getting yourself out there is all about your mindset - the way you think and feel. Pay attention to your thoughts and create thoughts that will make you feel positive and courageous to get yourself out rather than worried and fearful of the process. No one’s behavior determines your self worth - your self worth is 100% no matter what.
2. Meet new people
Once you feel ready to get yourself out there, it is time for you to meet new people.
There are so many opportunities and options for you to meet new people, online and offline. If you tell yourself that you can’t make new friends because you don’t know where you can find new people - that is a LIE. If this is you, take some time to really explore what is actually holding you back from making new friends, because I can guarantee the reason is not what you tell yourself it is.
Another big issue I see many people face is the aspect of not having enough time to make new friends. They are too busy living their lives and fulfilling all their chores, so that by the end of the day they don’t have any spare time to invest into making friends. If this is you - again that is a LIE.
None of us are so busy that we have literally no time to invest in friendships. Most of the time we FEEL busy, whereas we spend time buffering by for example scrolling through social media, watching TV, overeating, overdrinking, overshopping. We do this to escape our lives, so that we don’t have to get uncomfortable and do what we really WANT to do.
If you feel you are too busy, sit down and write down WHAT exactly you do during the day (for the whole week) and HOW MUCH time you spend doing this certain activity. Then you can evaluate - do you want to continue spending 1.5 hours a day on social media or can you cut it down to 1 hour and spend 0.5 hours a day working on your mindset or meeting new people?
Takeaway: Meeting new people is simple but our brain comes up with a list of excuses why we are NOT able to do it, for example confusion where to start, not knowing where to find new people or lack of time. This is your brain trying to keep you safe from something that is unknown to you and therefore feels unsafe to your brain. While this is a normal response from your brain, it doesn’t allow you to achieve the results you want in your life.
3. Connect with them and form friendships
When you have worked on your thoughts and your mindset so you feel confident and comfortable to show up as yourself and you managed to meet new people, the next step is for you to connect with them on a deeper level and to form a deeper friendship with them.
This is where most people get stuck - they have a bunch of acquaintances but they don’t feel connected or close to any of them. The most important thing you need to do in order to form a deep friendship with someone is to spend a lot of quality time with them and to open up and be vulnerable. It can take up to 200 hours to form a ‘good friendship’, which was easier for us to do when we were kids but is a little more challenging nowadays. And the goal is not just to spend time together, because this doesn’t guarantee a ‘good friendship’, as you can see with for example your colleagues - it needs to be QUALITY TIME. This can be for example making memories, having fun, sharing important information, trying out new things together.
As I mentioned earlier, our feelings are created by our thoughts. If you do not feel connected to your acquaintances, it is because of a thought you are having about your relationship. This might be ‘they don’t know the real me’, ‘I don’t think they really like me’ or ‘I could never rely on them’. Of course, if you think those thoughts, you won’t be able to feel connected to anyone. So in order for you to change that you will need to allow your brain to think different thoughts that feel REAL to you but that also allow you to feel more connected to your acquaintances such as ‘they will be able to get to know the real me if I show them the real me’, ‘Whenever we spend time together he/she seems really interested in me’ or ‘He/she would listen to me when I need to talk to him/her’. Takeaway: Forming a deep connection and friendship requires for you to open up and be vulnerable and to spend a lot of good quality time with the other person. If you have a bunch of acquaintances who you don’t feel connected with, it can be helpful for you to think thoughts that create more connection for you, in order for you to allow yourself to invest more time, energy and love into your relationship with them.
Making new friends is an easy process yet there are so many barriers, limitations and difficulties along the way that you need to overcome. Would you like to get in contact with Sarah: send an email on Sarah.Siegert.Lifecoach@gmail.com
Find her on instagram @friendships.abroad or take a look on her website for a FREEBIE!
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