Now that we’ve figured out what you want to accomplish, we need to determine your interests. Here’s how they both help you with meeting people:
Your goals help you make sure you’re meeting the right types of people.
Your interests help you find the right places to meet them.
By figuring out what you like doing, what you enjoy learning, what’s important to you, and what things may interest you, you can find some really great places to meet new people.
One of my mottos is, if it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable. Don’t force yourself to go to a yoga class you dread just to meet new people. Chances are you’ll stop going if you don’t enjoy it.
But if you find places you love going to, that you look forward to attending, then it won’t be a big deal if you don’t make new friends there because you’ll still have a great time. And that’s the thing – people will be more interested in befriending you if you’re having a blast.
So that’s what we’re going to do – we’re going to figure out your interests so so we can find places you want to go to, where other people will be interested in meeting you too.
Create Your List of Interests
I’m going to give you five questions, and I want you to create a list of answers for each one.
I like to keep mine on a Google Sheet because I frequently make changes to it and can access it wherever I happen to be.
Here are the five questions:
- What do you enjoy doing?
- What do you think you might enjoy doing?
- What do you enjoy learning about?
- What do you think you might enjoy learning about?
- What is important to you? (goals, beliefs, values, etc.)
Don’t worry about being right or wrong. Just get as much out of you as you can. As time goes on and you come up with new ideas and realize that certain things don’t interest you anymore, your list will change. That’s perfectly okay.
Here’s an example of how a list could look. But you want yours to have many more answers than this:
- Hiking, mountain biking, surfing, disc golfing, eating sushi, foosball, darts, watching SF 49ers, writing, going to breweries, jumping rope, running
- Joining ultimate frisbee team, camping, painting, creating and selling designs
- Marketing, psychology, business, entrepreneurship, history, social skills, parenting
- Sales, physics, carpentry, interior design, photography, how to make good home videos
- Make side project into profitable business, land more freelance writing clients, preparing to be a parent, ambition, honesty/integrity
Here’s another example, using the worksheet format I provide for you (you can view the PDF here):
That’s all you need to do to make your list. But just like with your goals, they don’t do you any good if they just sit on a list that you never look at. You need to review them and make sure you’re spending time doing things you love.
Reviewing Your Interests
To do this, you simply add a fifteen-minute block of time to your calendar to review your interests. I like to do mine right after I review my goals (and to be honest, it usually takes me less than 10 minutes to review them both).
The process is identical to reviewing your goals. Just read through them and see if any should be added or removed. You know that something belongs on your list if you’d be happy doing it during your precious free time.
If it seems a little weird to review the things you already know you like, don’t worry. We’re going to use this list to help you find places you want to be and where other people will want to meet you.
Action Steps
1. Create Worksheet #2: Your Interests
Create a list of answers for each of the following questions:
- What do you enjoy doing?
- What do you think you might enjoy doing?
- What do you enjoy learning about?
- What do you think you might enjoy learning about?
- What is important to you? (goals, beliefs, values, etc.)
2. Set a recurring event on your calendar to review your interests once every week
3. Review your interests once every week
- Read through them
- Add or remove any as you see fit
That’s it. In the next few lessons, with your goals and interests in front of you, we’ll go through the best ways and the best places for you to meet new people. Talk to you then.