Adult life can be super isolating. Like, how are you supposed to make friends when you don’t have recess, dance class, or a homeroom to bring you together?

I’ve found the keys to the friendship kingdom, and I want to share them with you. Let’s get into how I’ve been able to create new friendships and maintain old ones, even while traveling the world.

Personally, I highly value friendships. I know relationships are the core of my happiness and the baseline for my mental health. Knowing where your values lie can really help motivate you to put yourself out there. Whether it’s raising your hand in a crowd or being the first to DM an online connection, the beginnings of a new connection do come from a commitment to putting yourself out there.

Whether you’re a solo traveler or a mom working a nine to five, I think this episode will support you in your search for community and find your own Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants moment.

In this episode, I discuss:

• Treating leisure like a commitment, just like you do a workout or meeting
• Making the most out of online communities
• How to make friends in a crowd (even if you’re not the most Leo-esque person in the room)
• Maintaining old friendships, no matter where you’re at in life
• Playing into each friendships’ strengths to create longevity
• Why I don’t buy into the “just cut people out of your life if they don’t serve you” mantra the self-help world preaches at us

Transcript

What's up everybody. Welcome back to in my non expert opinion, I'm your host, Chelsea Riffe, and I'm also a podcast strategist and help people launch and grow and monetize their podcasts. Today is a super special solo episode as it's something that I did not realize. So many of you wanted to learn about, and that is making and maintaining friendships.

So, I did not realize this, honestly, until the last six months. But I have a lot of friends. And I don't mean to say that to sound like braggadocious or arrogant or like I'm better than anybody. It's truly just because I insert myself in so many different networks and meet so many people that I think traveling has also given me this skill of like being able to chameleon and be in any room and talk to anybody.

And because of that, I made a lot of connections. So even recently in London, I used to only know a few people here. And this time I had to actually say no to seeing people because I genuinely did not have the time or energy or mental capacity to socialize. That much now as I'm recording this again, I feel like it can maybe sound arrogant I'm like, I just didn't have the time to meet with people that wanted to meet with me But I genuinely like I have work to do.