Sharing failures and struggles creates stronger bonds

Many people are misguided about how to behave when meeting new people or reuniting with old friends. Many people fear looking like a failure in front of their peers, and because of this will puff out their chest and tell tales of how wonderful, exciting, extravagant and successful their life is. This is a sure-fire way to alienate yourself from all of the people with whom you are trying to reconnect.

Be Honest!

I got an epiphany during my current trip to England. Everyone has fears, problems, struggles. As a defense mechanism, our brains feel uncomfortable sharing this vulnerability with people. Remarkably, after doing this, people feel an immediate bond.

Im going through an interesting time where Im a little uncertain about my purpose in life. In the past, I had always been on a well defined path. When meeting friends, instead of talking about my fears, uncertainties and struggles along that path, I would try to stress how great things were going. Though my friends / acquaintances would leave thinking how great things were going with me, they would fail to forge an emotional bond because it's more difficult to relate and have feelings for people's successes.

On this trip, I unashamedly talked about the struggle to find my purpose in life and how unfulfilled I was by my good job, townhouse, girlfriend, honda accord, 2 dogs, 2 cats life in the past. In sharing my inner self, I connected with ALL of my old friends. The testament to this is when people wanted to meet up again before I left!

I found this really interesting, and Im really glad that I don't alienate people anymore (fingers crossed)! That's the last thing I want to do, but I now realize I would have done so in the past.

How do you connect with people?