When was the last time you made a friend? Not just someone you see at work or someone who is an acquaintance – a true friend. Someone you can call on and trust, who has your best interests at heart and can lean on you too.

In a previous article I described why it is especially important to make friends after retirement. Sanjay Gupta, author of “Keep Sharp: Build a better brain at any age,” call friends “connection protection” to be strong and resilient. Friendships are arguably the antidote to the loneliness epidemic facing older adults as people leave behind the social connections and identity provided by work.

After extensive research, David Niven wrote the book “The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Learned and How You Can Use Them.” “Contrary to the belief that happiness is difficult to explain or that it depends on having great wealth,” he writes, “researchers have identified the underlying factors in a happy life. The main components are number of friends, closeness to friends, closeness to family, and relationships with coworkers and neighbors. Together, these characteristics explain about 70 percent of personal happiness.”

In other words, your happiness is heavily influenced by your relationships with other people. It may sound simple to encourage people to make friends after retirement (which can include reconnecting with old friends or making new friends), but it usually isn’t. While young children can come home from school with their best friend one day, for adults it’s more complicated. We get stuck in our ways and often find it hard to get out of our comfort zone.

What the research shows

Julie Beck spent three years interviewing friends about their friendships. These interviews turned into “The Friendship Files” for “Atlantic”. Beck interviewed 100 friends and concluded that there are six forces that help form, maintain, and sustain friendships over the years: accumulation, attention, intention, ritual, imagination, and grace. Her research is being turned into an upcoming book, Friends I Made Along the Way.

Accumulation time spent together counts. A study estimateS that it takes 40 to 60 hours together in the first six weeks of dating to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, and about 80 to 100 hours to become more than that. When time spent together accumulates, friendships form. The time spent can be spread over time or condensed into a shorter period of time, such as a course, workshop or travel experience. So, surprisingly, friendships tend to form in places where people spend a lot of time anyway: WORK, school, church, extracurricular activities.

Paying attention it goes a long way when you build these unexpected friendships—noticing when you click with someone, being open to chance encounters. It helps us get out of our habits and into the moment. Because as much as we feel like our social networks are set and established, it’s never too late to meet someone who will be important to you for the rest of your life.

While attention is important, it is essential to set a intention. When an opportunity arises, you have to put yourself out there, and that takes courage, vulnerability, and a willingness to let things be uncomfortable. You have to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

One behavior that seems to make it easier to maintain friendship is ritual. While a routine is habitual, rituals are experiences that occur with intention and can be transformative. Rituals are when something happens regularly with an emphasis on deepening relationships. They can take a variety of ways to get together: book clubs, dinner groups, activities like tennis, golf, pickleball or bridge/book clubs, dance groups. Whether it’s weekly, monthly, every six weeks or every two months, a consistent ritual builds relationships and friendships.

Sometimes in-person or local rituals aren’t possible, but there are still plenty of ways to consistently check in and nurture your friendships. For example, I personally find that the effort of coordinating schedules is often the biggest obstacle to seeing my friends. It would be easy to lose touch, so I schedule appointments to call so we don’t play phone tag. When something is in my schedule, it will happen.

The formula of friendship

Shasta Nelson, the author “Friendship: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness,“created a formula where there must be three characteristics for all healthy relationships and believes that these three are non-negotiable.

Friendship = Positivity + Consistency + Vulnerability

• Positivity it means positive feelings. “Increasing emotional happiness in each other.”

• Consistency means consistent interaction. “Repetition or regularity that develops patterns, rituals, and expectations in our relationship.”

• Vulnerability it means meaningful sharing. “Feeling Validation and Listening.” Being seen.

This last point – being seen – is an important topic of friendship itself. David Brooks’ latest book is titled “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Seen Deeply.” To address polarization and isolation within society, he believes we need to focus on skills that can be learned but are not taught in most schools. In an interview on CBS Sunday morningBrooks said his hope is that “people learn to see each other. (If) there is one skill at the heart of any healthy family, community, organization or country, it is the ability to see and be seen. , heard and understood.”

Brooks describes two distinct types of people, mitigants and Brightening: He says, “My theory is that in any group of people, there are some people (who) are diminutive. They make you feel invisible, unseen. They are not curious about you. They stereotype you. They label you. And then there are other people who are enlighteners. There are people who are just curious about you and make you feel enlightened.”

To highlight the luminaries, six years ago, Brooks started a non-profit organization called WEAVE: The Social Fabric Project. The website states that WEAVE “invests in people and the people who build it”. The focus is on knitting communities together and restoring social trust.

Friends Factory

Ayse Birsel, author of the books “Design the life you love” and “Design the long life you love,” describes how “friends are made rather than found… As you design your life, think of a friendship factory where you literally make friends. To make friends in this factory, you have to build trust, have common interests and values, and spend time together.”

Form or join a club/group

Follow your passions and interests. Find and join a group of like-minded people who enjoy the same activities (sailing, cycling, canoeing, running, books, dancing) or form a group. Since I told my husband that he needs more friends and loves to read, I suggested he start a men’s book club. Invite two friends (people who like to read and not necessarily your best friends) and ask them to invite two more and ask them to invite two more. There are currently 10 men in the book club and each one enjoys being in the group. In addition to reading books, they socialize, and the group meets the test of friendship: positive vibes, they meet constantly about once every two months, and they got to meet new people and share stories.

Go on “Wisdom Walks”.

A friend of mine and a couple of her friends started an eclectic walking group of about a dozen people. We only meet twice a month in a central location and go with whoever shows up. Everyone and anyone can invite someone to join. It is an open and inclusive group. But just calling it “Wisdom Walkers” sets the tone and creates positive and interesting conversations.

Ask questions

The best way to get to know someone is one on one. Get in touch and invite someone you want to reconnect with or get to know. Ask questions.

I like to ask students, “What is the difference between being interesting and being interested?” John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Johnson, wrote an article for Stanford Magazine in 1994 entitled “The road to self-renewal” where he emphasizes to “be interested”. He writes, “Everybody wants to be interesting, but what it comes down to is being interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. I risk failure. Reach out.”

Use the Golden Retriever technique

You can learn a lot about making friends from Golden Retrievers. They’re always happy to see you and couldn’t care less if you’re happy to see them, the writer points out Sarah Todd in “Quartz.“They never worry about putting themselves out there with new people. They don’t worry about anything. Using the Golden Retriever technique means that if someone ignores you or shows little interest, don’t take it personally or use it as an excuse to stop trying to make friends. Move on and find someone else who appreciates you and seems interested in getting to know you.

Making friends as an adult doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to figure out who you can trust, who listens, who is fun, who lifts you up, and who is a good influence on you. Chip Conley, the founder Modern Academy of Elders and the author “Learning to Love Middle Age: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age“, he believes that friendship is a practice and that people can improve their friendship skills over time… He suggests that friendship is a muscle that needs to be exercised.” And if the muscles of your friendship are out of shape, rest assured that you can build them back up with practice and intention.

To make friends, we need to get out of our comfort zones. Friendships are relationships that take time, money, and energy to maintain—often resources we don’t have. If we understand the value that friendships play in our lives, it’s an investment with high returns in less loneliness, better health, and more happiness. Now is the time to exercise your friendship muscle.