Dr. Aziz (host of The Art of Extraordinary Confidence) offers practical advice for creating stronger, more meaningful friendships. Key points: let go of draining long-distance or obligation-based ties if they no longer fit; bring your energy into your current environment and pursue activities you enjoy (sports, hobbies, events) to meet compatible people; when you find someone you click with, ask them to hang out using either a casual or more expressive approach; be persistent and "insert yourself" into their life (follow up multiple times) because people are busy; if repeated outreach fails, move on. He briefly promotes his paid program The Confidence Code for deeper training on social skills and wraps up with encouragement to take action and seek connection.
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Do you want better friendships now? Do you want to have the kind of friends that inspire you, that excite you, that make you smile, that make you laugh, that know you deep down in your heart and you know you're there for each other? If you want those powerful kind of friendships, stay tuned in this episode because we're going to dive even further into exactly how to create those in your life now. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and. And in the first part of this episode, we talked about building friendships. And the first thing you gotta do is you have to get clear on what it is that you want in your friendships now and be willing to upgrade. In this episode, we're gonna talk about how to do that. So first things first is you gotta let go of the old. You gotta let go of the old before you can reach out for the new. And the way that you do that is, do you have, like, long distance phone friendships? And if you love that, if you're just like, oh, I love calling my buddy on the phone, or I love calling this person on the phone that we went to college with, and she's so great, and you guys just love it, great, do it for me. And for a lot of people, I know this is so draining. It's just hard. I mean, I love certain people in my life, but to get on the phone and it's just there's not as much of a flow there anymore. I mean, if I'm in the city that they're in, I'll see them because I love them. But getting on the phone and having maybe a sense of obligation that you should get on the phone, it's been three weeks. I got to talk to them, or it's been two months. Just see if you can let that go. Trust that they're still your friend. You still would want to see them, but they're more like, you know, family lives in a different city. You might not talk to them all the time on the phone. So you got to let those go. That's okay. Bring your energy into your space right now. Unless you love the long distance phone stuff. And then in that case, keep doing it. If it really meets your needs, keep doing it. But bring your energy into where you are right now. And you want to be emitting a sense of like, I'm open, I'm available, and I want to connect and start thinking about who's in your life right now, who are the people, where do you go to hang out, where are the People that you see that you might want to actually hang out with. And usually it's around activities that you like. It could be at work. But don't just limit yourself to work because a lot of people have friendships that are based upon solely on proximity. Well, we're hanging out together every day, so I guess we're friends. And that could be a really amazing experience. I've had that where you really click with someone and it's really fun. But oftentimes people, you know, it's okay. So you got to go out, you got to expand beyond that, and you got to do things that you're interested in. So pursue the sports, the hobbies, the activities that you really enjoy. And then when you're there, see who you really like, who you really resonate with. You know, there's a person that you always chat. You go to this golf thing and you always talk with them, and you see them twice a month. And whenever you talk to them, like, man, this guy always makes me laugh. I really like it. So move towards that. Or you're going to some other thing that you show up once a month at, and there's this woman there that just every time you talk to her, you feel good because she's so interested in you and you're fascinated in her. Move towards that, make that a priority. And guess what, it takes a little bit of a risk, right? You got to put yourself out there. This comes back to standard. Confidence work is like, go after what you want. Oh my God, they could reject me. And if you want to get like way more deep into all the elements of building friendships, by the way, in this short video, I'm covering the core concepts and the 30,000 foot view. But if you want to get the granular view on the social skills, the self esteem, and the specifics of building these connections and friendships, you got to check out my program, the confidence code. Because in there we go real deep and there's a whole module about creating friendships. But the key is you have to go approach that person and then you have to ask them to hang out. Shocking how you know it's straightforward, it's simple, but it might not feel easy, might feel uncomfortable, and that's okay. So you got to move towards the person and you can do it in a couple different ways. You can be very casual about it, like, well, hey, it's been great talking with you. Let me get your number or your email and maybe we could hang out sometime. Very casual, very simple, very basic, very low pressure. Because it's like hey, give me your number. Maybe we can hang out sometime. And that kind of doesn't put any heat on them. They can give you their number and they don't have to commit to anything right there. So that's one option and that works very well. I'm just a more authentic and loving person. It's just how I roll. So I like to be more expressive. And this is not for everybody, but this is what I might do. If I'm really enjoying hanging out with that person and I really like it, I'll be like, man, I love talking with you. I love hanging out. This is awesome. I would love to do this again. What's your number? I'd love to follow up and we'll go see a movie or hang out or whatever. I would say it like that. That's more me expressing what I want. That's me more putting it out there. I've done a ton of rejection work. So if they're like, that's okay. I've also done enough of this work that, you know, I trust that people can take care of themselves. So they don't want to do that, that's fine. They can say no. They can say, hey, my life's full right now, or they can give me their number and then kind of avoid me and not want to hang out with me. And that's okay too. And that's one final follow up I want to put in this episode before we wrap up. Once you get that contact and you're able to go further with them, you have to insert yourself into their life. I talk about this in the confidence code. You got to insert yourself into their life because look, people are busy, especially if that person's amazing and you feel it and you're excited by them and they're turned on by life. And like a lot of people are going to be attracted to want to hang out with them. And so you got to insert yourself into their life. And what that means is you got to be persistent. You got to try a number of times. So if you invite them to something and they don't get back to you or they can't, don't be like, ah, well, screw them, they're not interested in me. So I actually didn't like them anyway. Right. That's what we do. But just be persistent. Look, people are busy. Doesn't mean they hate you, doesn't mean that you're not good enough. They're just busy. You got to insert yourself into their life. And you try that two, three times and then if they're not available, it, you know, maybe it's just not going to work right now, or maybe it's not the best fit and then you move on. But you got to be persistent in that way. There's so much here about how to deepen those friendships, about how to be more authentic in yourself, to connect more deeply. And perhaps I'll do another video about that in the future. Or you can go to the confidence code and really learn all that stuff once and for all in there. In any case, though, the key here is you can create this and if you're not satisfied, take action and make it what you want. Because man friendships, man friendships are essential. We gotta feel like people know us and love us for who we are. And even if you have a partner or a relationship or you're married and you got kids, I don't think that's enough. I think you also need friends. I think we all need some people in our lives that are outside of our family, that know us and love us and are there for us, and we're there for them. I think connection is extremely important, and I want that for you. And share your questions or comments below about how to make this a reality in your life. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. We'll talk to you soon.
