2026 June 23 Rediscovering friendships

This is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thanks for joining me to talk about friends and new friends. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message. This week we're going to be talking about making friends and meeting people.

Now you might be thinking, "Come on, Jim, I know how to make friends by now. I've been doing it my whole life." Well, I know you do — but most of it has probably happened in a very different situation and with a different personal frame of reference.

You probably did the classic, "Oh, what do you do?" And then you said what your profession was. But now there's a temptation to just say, "I'm retired." And in some cases, not much more than that. In some ways, it seems like meeting new people has somehow gotten harder than it used to be — not in a technical sense, but just in a "what do I talk about now?" sort of sense.

We talked about this a few weeks ago in terms of how we can view ourselves differently. But tonight is more about the mechanics of just what to say. We have two general approaches, which use two different pillars from our approach — namely curiosity, as in Earl Nightingale's "Be Interested," and contribution, by being genuinely connected to what the other person is saying and showing that through our actions.

For a great many of us, friendship used to kind of arrive on its own. It came from being at work — the people at the next desk, the ones you solved problems with, the faces you saw every day. And most likely, you also had family around you, or some group of people you hung around with. You just had your life together, so you had things in common. We rarely had to go and find those people, because the circumstances and situations we were living in placed them right there beside us and we didn't have to do anything about it.

But those roles have changed now, and the opportunities to meet people have changed as well. And our brain may have started saying, "I'm just not good at this anymore" — because you might be feeling like we're no longer a part of things. It's important to realize that it's the structure that has changed, and the task of being social has landed back in our own hands. It's not just by circumstance and situation anymore.

Of course, when we're in a new situation, what our brain immediately wants to do is get us back to a safe and familiar space. We've talked about this many times. So it may create negative thoughts to justify why things seem difficult — like maybe "I was never any good at meeting people and just got lucky before." But again, our brain's number one job is to keep us safe and alive, and that usually means doing what we used to do. Since before, we often didn't have to try to meet people — it happened by situation and circumstance — your brain will rationalize why meeting people now is unsafe and difficult and something we shouldn't do.

But if you realize that the whole situation has changed, that the old opening lines may no longer be appropriate, and that a new view on your own life may be in order, then the situation becomes much less intimidating.

Perhaps you remember that old Earl Nightingale line: "If you want to be interesting, be interested." That's such a simple, meaningful statement, and it truly works to an amazing degree.

Most of the pressure we feel about meeting people is the pressure to be interesting — to have something worth saying, to be sharp, quick-witted, and worth somebody's time. And that pressure tends to grow heavier as the years go on, because we start to wonder whether we still have it. Are we really doing interesting things? Because, you know, we're retired now. What's interesting about that?

But when Nightingale turns that whole situation around, the challenge isn't to be interesting — you simply try to be interested, which is a much easier and, well, kind of an interesting assignment. And you can easily do it at any age, in any room, in any situation, starting today.

To be interested in someone else costs nothing and asks for no performance at all. It only asks that you be a little curious about the person in front of you. And curiosity, as we've talked about before, is something you already have.

The next time you happen to be standing near someone — in a line, at a counter, leaving church, wherever you happen to be — you don't have to be impressive. You only have to genuinely wonder about them. Where are they from? What are they up to? How long have they been coming to this place? What's their family like? Take anything. One real question asked with real attention, and then actually listening to the answer.

It seems, especially these days, many people go whole days without being truly listened to. We've all felt the difference between someone who's just waiting for their turn to talk and someone who genuinely wants to know. The second one is kind of rare, and people feel it almost immediately when you're genuinely interested in what they're saying. You don't need to be charming for that. You don't need to be quick-witted. You only need your attention, and your attention is entirely yours to give.

Now, the other half of that is that not every meeting has to become a friendship, and most of them won't realistically. But a warm 30 seconds with a stranger is a complete thing unto itself. When we let each small encounter simply be what it is, the pressure drains away — and perhaps some of them continue to grow. Friendships tend to find us when we stop auditioning for them and let ourselves be discovered by somebody else.

Which brings me to the smallest tool we have — perhaps the most understated one. There's an old saying, and I say it every week as you hear me: a smile can change the world. It sounds like something you put on a poster and then forget, but it really is more important than that. I think it's a lot closer to the truth than it sounds, because a smile is about the smallest gift one person could give to another. It costs nothing, it asks for nothing, and it tells the other person — before a single word's been spoken — that you're genuinely open to them.

In a world where so many faces are tired or guarded or buried in a phone, an open and unhurried smile is a small act of generosity and sincerity. And generosity, it turns out, is one of the surest ways back into the company of other people.

That's really the heart of what I wanted to say tonight. This touches all the different pillars that we've been coming back to — two of them in particular, more than the others, hold up this kind of attitude change.

The first is curiosity. We stop trying to be interesting and simply let ourselves be interested in someone else. It's a big shift in the dynamic of the conversation, and other people will feel it immediately. It's the same ability that once made us good at our work and good with the people around us. You don't have to manufacture it from nothing — you only have to turn it back on again. You used to be interested in the people around you. Just be interested in the people you meet.

The second is contribution. We tend to picture contribution as something large — mentoring, volunteering, passing along a lifetime of hard-won know-how. And those are all excellent forms of contribution, and it can certainly grow into those things. But it begins much smaller than that. A smile is a contribution. A few minutes of honest attention is a contribution. Asking a neighbor how the week was — how it really was — and meaning it is a contribution. Each of these is a small offering of yourself, a small connection. And more often than not, friendship is built from exactly these small offerings repeated over time.

The friendships that grow in our lives rarely come from one brave introduction. They come far more often from showing up a little curious and a little generous. Warmth and proximity, kept up patiently over time, is how most friendships and good relationships grow. This isn't a project to complete. There's no schedule to keep. One smile, one real question, one ordinary week — that's plenty. Small things have a way of compounding quietly on their own without ever having to force them.

And as always, remember that one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. UKR7.com and WCK.org are two international sites you can check out. But there are also always local charities looking for help. And as we just talked about, even a simple smile can change someone else's day in ways you cannot imagine.

Thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting and useful, please pass it along, subscribe, and hit that like button. Drop me a comment about what you'd like to hear. Have a great week, and remember to live the life that you dream of — because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.