 How do you make a better group of friends? Well, here's how you do it. You put yourself in environments of people who are doing exactly the same hobbies and interests that you're into. So for example, if you're into watching NFL on a Sunday and your favorite team is the Denver Broncos, go on to meetup.com and find Broncos supporters in your city. Find out when they're getting together and then just go and put yourself in that environment. And when you're in that environment, you will meet cool people. If you're into cooking, go and put yourself in an environment where there are lots of chefs or cooking classes. If you're into physical exercise and you want to start getting into a little bit more of like a nutrition and lifestyle kind of plan, then rather than just going to the gym, which could be a little bit isolating obviously, go and join a running group or join a yoga class, or go on a yoga retreat, put yourself into an environment there where you don't know people, but just know that the type of people that you're going to meet is going to be interesting to you. For example, there's a festival, which is not for everyone, but there is a festival in the Nevada desert called Burning Man and there's a lot of people think that it's, you know, filled with a whole bunch of hippies, you're all popping drugs and popping pills and taking drugs and going crazy and there's free love and everything. And you know what? There is that, but there's also all the other stuff as well, which is happiness, openness, friendship, and the whole ethos of that particular festival, as there are many festivals around the world, is to help people, is to be friendly and to be smiley and to just make sure that everyone feels welcome. Now, I'm not saying that you have to go to that particular festival, but if you want to be happier and attract happier people, put yourself in an environment where you know there are happy people and that is an example of that. Likewise, if you are wanting to be a Harley Davidson motorcycle rider, then go and join a Harley Davidson motorcycle fan club and all of a sudden you've made a whole new friends, a whole new group of friends. When I first moved to the United States in 2003, I actually flew in a Los Angeles airport and I didn't know whether I was going to turn left or right out of the airport and I ended up living in a hostel, the Hermosa Beach Hostel just south of the airport and I didn't know anyone, knew nobody. But you know what? I used to play rugby. I played rugby in Australia. So what did I do? I typed in Los Angeles rugby and two teams came up, Santa Monica Rugby Club and Los Angeles Rugby Club. So then I went on to the Los Angeles Rugby Club. I phoned the number and said, hi, my name is James. I just arrived in Los Angeles. How do I get start doing training? And they said, oh, you know what? We're doing a training on the beach on Tuesday night at 6.30. Come down there. I went, OK, so on Tuesday night at 6.30, I turned up and I went, hi, is Jason here? Jason was the contact I'd spoken to. I said, yeah, over there. I go, Jason, hi, my name's James. I spoke to you on the phone. He goes, oh, yeah, welcome. Hey, everyone, this is James from Australia. Hey, man, how you doing? And then we started playing rugby, touch rugby on the on the beach. And then from there, the season started and I started playing rugby. And I ended up playing for Los Angeles Rugby Club for two years and made some of the best friends of my life, all because we had that united interest that that we're on a same team. We were teammates. We would play sport. And then at the end of the sport, we'd socialize afterwards. When people got to know me and they were friendly with me, they're like, what's your story? I'm like, oh, I just arrived. People tried to help me out with work. They tried to help me out with accommodation. All of a sudden, I had like 20 new friends or because I had a shared interest. In that particular case, it was rugby. So think about the activities and the things that you're into. It's so easy in today's day and age to put yourself in a new environment by going to meetup.com. I mean, you just literally type in meetup.com and you could type in like pottery. And all these pottery groups in your neighborhood will come up and then you just turn up, just turn up to one of these meetings that they have scheduled. The next thing you know, you're hanging out with people who love the same thing. A bond is formed because people like people who are into the same things as them. And when you're there, you know, maybe you you host a little get together or someone invites you somewhere. All of a sudden, you've got a whole new group of friends. It's like if you're sitting at home and you're like going, I've got no friends. I'm not doing anything. Why would anyone invite me anywhere? Well, get up off your ass and put yourself into environments of the very people that you want to socialize with. And then when you're in that group, don't just be a taker and like expect someone to invite you to places and parties and entertain. You know, take a genuine interest in other people. Try to help other people be attentive, smile a lot. And when you do that, the people there are going to like you. They're going to feel affection for you. They're going to start to get to know you. Then all of a sudden you'll start fielding these invitations to other meetups and other organizations and other activities. So no sitting on your hands and doing nothing worried about the fact that you don't have a good group of friends. If you don't like the group of friends that you got, get out of them and substitute them for a new group of friends. There's never been a better time. I'll tell you why you think it's so hard to leave your current friends and go into a new group of friends. Because back in us in when we were cave men and cave women, we were in tribes of about 120 on average. And if someone was ostracized from the group, like if the group said, no, that person's got to leave, it was certain death, right? Because you had a rival tribe or you had a big bear that might come and eat you. So we have this stone age mind that is fearful of being ostracized from a group. But guess what? We now live in 2016, 2017, whenever you're watching this. And if you get kicked out of a group, you can just join another one. It's called Facebook or it's called meetup.com or it's called like there's just so many different tribes that you can join now. It's not like rivaling tribes are going to beat one another up and try to kill you, right? We're all one big happy family now, kind of. So don't worry about leaving your current tribe. If it's not serving you, if you're not happy with it, just go out there and explore lots of new tribes. And maybe the new tribe won't be a good fit to begin with. That's OK. Just try again, you know, it's it's pretty simple. So there you go. That's how you go out and make new friends. I hope this helps subscribe. If you're watching this on YouTube down below, leave a comment down below and let me know how you have found new friends. And if you're listening on the James Wanik Shape podcast, thank you for listening. And I'll catch you on the next one. How to set up a business for under a thousand bucks. Can you do it? Yes, you can. According to my mate, the author, Dan Flashman and Brandon.