HOW TO BE MORE SOCIABLE AND FRIENDLY: 15 EFFECTIVE TIPS - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

Learning to be sociable is important for personal and professional life: the human being is a social being and needs to be related to survive and be successful in life. In our daily life, the communication we establish with other people can be effective, productive and reach its goal in a satisfactory way or, conversely, it can be confusing and ineffective.

There are many people who are very socially skilled, who are sociable in a natural way, it seems that it does not cost anything to relate, communicate or make friends. Far from what is believed, social skills are learned. It is in your power to carry out actions that help you to be more sociable and to know how to create and maintain greater social relationships.

Sociability, according to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, can be defined as the quality of sociability, that is, one who is naturally inclined to deal with and relate to people.

It is important to know how to weave social relationships. Social relationships with other people are important, we are social beings and to survive it is important to know how to relate and be able to understand the people around us.

When we say that a person is sociable it is because they are able to interact and relate to other people effectively. He carries out activities with them, he knows how to move in environments where there are many people, he has many friends, he knows how to meet new people…

What are the advantages of being more sociable?

It is becoming more and more important to be sociable and adapt to the environment in which we live. People who have a good social network or who exchange knowledge, emotions and experiences with other people are more prepared to face difficulties.

Now we are more social than ever and it is in our power to develop and learn better our social learning.

Being more sociable allows us to meet more new people, have more experience, get to know the people around us in depth, share interests with other people and therefore achieve greater well-being.

Sociability or social skills are behaviors that are learned and it is from childhood that they can be promoted.

Sociable people tend to communicate better, people like them better and have more friends, they open up to others to let themselves be known, they judge less, they are respectful and cheerful.

As we have already mentioned, we are social beings and we need others to achieve many things in life and to be happier: on many occasions we work as a team, we live with other people, we enrich ourselves when we meet people, we learn from other people…

Also, being sociable also helps us with ourselves. We also learn who we are from the way others see us. Our self-esteem also depends on the experiences we have with others, for example.

Being sociable brings benefits such as:

- Greater well-being

- Greater self-esteem

- Greater support and therefore good support in the face of stress and difficulties

- Positive emotions

- Greater knowledge of oneself

- Live more experiences

- Increased quality of life

- We feel loved, part of a group, valued

- They help us achieve goals

- Create links and maintain them over time

15 tips to be more sociable

Positive attitude is very important

Source: pixabay.com

Optimism and a positive attitude towards life has been increasingly studied.

In recent decades, optimism has been related to many psychological and health variables, such as having less stress, getting sick less or coping with daily problems in a better way.

One of the characteristics of optimists is that they seek more social support, and therefore, they relate better with other people, in addition to better resolving social conflicts.

A sense of humor is part of a positive attitude towards life. It is important that you are a happy, optimistic person with a good humor.

A sense of humor will help you trust yourself more and connect with others in social relationships.

Know yourself well and trust yourself

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It is important, in order to be more sociable, to have a good image of yourself and to trust your own abilities. It is true that all of us tend to represent to ourselves and to others a somewhat more "improved" version of ourselves.

Seligman, for example, an important author within psychology, already indicated that the evaluation we make of ourselves is usually more positive than that of other people.

And this has an adaptation function, because through expectations it can motivate us to achieve goals. However, if we are not fully aware, it could also lead to some problems.

Leaving all this aside, it is important to know each other. Within emotional intelligence, for example, one of the necessary competencies is self-knowledge.

Emotional intelligence can also help us to be more socially effective and more sociable, as it includes behaviors that involve knowing ourselves well and knowing others, knowing how to recognize and express our own and other people's emotions, among other things.

To be more sociable, self-awareness and acceptance of oneself is important, otherwise, you will not be able to attend to your needs and show yourself as someone genuine and capable in relationships with other people.

Be kind and available to others

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Being nice and open to doing favors for others (if possible) is a good way to get in better contact with people we know or to initiate with people we know less.

When you are kind and available to others, you will also feel more satisfied and others will be with you.

For example, smiling is a good way to be nice. Be polite, through formulas like thanking or asking for things please, too.

When you smile, people create a positive image of you and are more interested in meeting you. The smile prompts the other person to smile.

Greet other people, for example, is also a simple gesture that can boost relationships.

If you criticize, be constructive

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Criticism or people who criticize and gossip can have negative effects on social relationships.

However, criticism can sometimes be beneficial. The important thing is to know how to do them. Through criticism we can improve a relationship with another person, correct something that bothers us, achieve a goal…

However, if we do not do it in the proper way, it can generate conflicts with our interlocutor. It can be misinterpreted and experienced as an attack.

To do this, look not only at the content of what you say, for which you can use techniques such as the sandwich (which I explain below), but also the way you do it: the tone, the gestures, your facial expression…

The sandwich or sandwich technique involves introducing a critical comment that we want to convey between two positive comments. Thus, you tell the person something they do well, continue with what could be improved and end up highlighting some other positive aspect.

It is important that you be honest and sincere with the other person and know what the objective of the criticism is, ask him, listen to the person.

Don't attack him, don't accuse the other person, or use sarcasm. Offer solutions to what you propose and do not be ambiguous. The important thing is that you are clear and specific.

Take care of others and be empathetic

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To be more sociable and achieve more relationships, it is essential that the other person feels that you understand him, that is, that you care about him and that you are empathetic.

Empathy is the ability to understand the other person and to correctly perceive what they are experiencing. In addition, you must communicate it verbally and non-verbally in the message that you convey.

It is considered one of the most important interpersonal skills to achieve good relationships with others.

Pay attention to your body language

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Your own body language is also very important for effective social relationships. For example, looking into the eyes. When you have conversations with other people, you should look them in the eye long enough to establish good contact.

The fact of looking away tends to generate distrust in the interlocutor, so it is important that you avoid doing so.

Also pay attention to the volume of your voice, do not lower the volume, since it may seem that you feel intimidated and it may seem that you are a shy or insecure person. An excessively high tone that can be annoying and aggressive is also not suitable.

Also pay attention to intonation, because through it you can communicate to the other person that you are interested in him and in the communication that you are having. If you have poor intonation, the person may feel bored and soon disconnect.

You should also attend to silences, fillers, repetitions… sometimes this arises when the person has anxiety about the social relationship. It is important that you are yourself and that you manage to overcome anxiety in order to be able to relate better with other people.

Posture and gestures also give information. Maintain the appropriate physical distance and don't go overboard with physical affection as there are people who might be uncomfortable.

However, it is important that you read the non-verbal message of your interlocutor to adapt to him in a certain way.

Start conversations

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One of the factors that can explain inappropriate social behavior is the fact that the subject is not interested in initiating or maintaining social interactions with other people.

If you want to be more sociable, you should worry about starting and maintaining conversations with others correctly.

If you don't know what to talk about, you can start by commenting on neutral aspects, the situation or the environment or even the weather. It is better to ask open and easy-to-answer questions, to progressively ask more intimate or personal questions.

Suggest new activities in your group of friends

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A good way to meet more people and be more sociable is to propose new activities in your group of friends.

Many times we tend to close in on people we already know and we end up doing the same types of activities or going to the same places.

A good alternative is to propose new activities to your group of friends, which you have not done before and where you have the opportunity as a group to interact and meet other groups of friends.

Do activities to meet new people

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Also individually you can do activities to meet new people. In the daily routine, we always end up doing similar things and with the passage of time, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to meet new people.

In the early stages of life, people often indicate that it is easier to make friends, but that as we get older, groups tend to be more restricted and it is more difficult to meet new people.

However, this is only partly true. There are many activities you can do to meet new people, you just have to open up a little more to new opportunities.

For example, join associations or organizations with interests similar to yours (photography, crafts, cycling or sports activities in general, volunteering…).

You can join language groups that are left to practice and it's a good way to meet people. When you attend events where there are people you do not know, do not always stay close to the people you know and jump into meeting people.

Be assertive

Assertiveness is also an important issue when it comes to social skills and becoming more socially skilled.

The fact that the person is not sure of the rights they have or what they think, or believe that they should not respond, for example, can lead people to make it difficult for them to interact with others.

Being assertive implies acting taking into account your own rights, opinions and needs, mobilizing according to your own interests but at the same time taking others into account.

To be more sociable it is important that you develop and work on your assertiveness. Within the assertive styles we have three: the passive, the assertive and the aggressive.

Being assertive implies that you take yourself into account, that you know how to defend your rights and do not allow yourself to be manipulated, but also that you do not manipulate others.

Capture the verbal and non-verbal signals of your interlocutors

As in a previous section we made reference to the non-verbal message that you transmit to your interlocutor, you must also be attentive to their signals, both verbal and non-verbal.

The person has an intonation, gestures, etc., that you must know how to read in order to adapt.

For example, the face is where you can most express how the person feels. You can look at the eyes, the mouth, the eyebrows. Basic emotions, for example, give us information through the face.

Look at what he says, how he says it, whether what he says verbally is congruent with non-verbal signals, and all of this can give you a lot of information.

Give information about yourself to others

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Many people with low self-esteem, in the wrong way, consider that others do not care about the things that happen to them or their tastes, experiences or opinions.

For this reason, they are people who communicate less with others, listen more but speak less. They consider this to be a suitable way not to disturb others. But this is ineffective for establishing social relationships.

To create new social relationships it is important that you take an interest in the other person, but also that you show a part of yourself. We people like reciprocity.

Therefore, keep data of what the other person likes or does and ask them, but take the opportunity to also tell what you like, what interests you, etc.

Do not try to assess whether you are acting right or wrong: "the role of the spectator"

One of the factors that explains the maladaptive social behavior of people or that can make it difficult for the person to have a socially skillful behavior is the assessment that the person makes of their performance.

Sometimes, the subjects are pending to evaluate how they act and they do it in a negative way, through negative self-verbalizations, or in other cases fearing the consequences of their actions.

It is important not to judge the interaction as it happens, because this will increase your anxiety and the chances of you blocking yourself. It is more important that you focus on the other tips and that you be yourself.

Discover the interests of your interlocutors and show yourself interested in them

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It is important that you take an interest in and get to know your interlocutors, their tastes, their preferences, what they do, etc.

This will make it easier for you to start and maintain conversations. To do this, ask questions about the other person and when he begins to tell you things, continue the conversation by being interested in it.

Pay attention to what he says, listen by looking into his eyes, making signs that you understand what he is saying and then, in turn, show a piece of information about yourself.

In any case, don't be nosy or ask uncomfortable questions. And if a person prefers not to speak, it is better not to insist.

Learn to listen

Knowing how to listen to people is an important factor in being more sociable and being more successful in relationships with others.

If you listen to others you will be able to understand the other person, to understand them, to know about their tastes and interests, to care about them and to have conversation starters.

Listening is a psychological process that starts with hearing but we must not confuse it. Listening implies taking into account other variables such as attention to the other person, observation and interest towards her.

Active listening is paying close attention to the importance of the verbal and non-verbal messages of our interlocutor.

If you listen to the other person, they will pick up on it and they will feel more willing to start conversations, get to know you and relate to you more.

References

1. Castanyer, O. Assertiveness, expression of healthy self-esteem.
2. Del Prette, A., Del Prette, Z., Mendes, MC (1999). Social skills in the professional training of the psychologist: analysis of an intervention program. Behavioral Psychology, 7 (1), 27-47.
3. García Rojas, AD (2010). Study on assertiveness and social skills in Social Education students. Education Magazine, 12.
4. Naranjo Pereira, ML (2008). Appropriate interpersonal relationships through assertive communication and behavior. Research news in education, University of Costa Rica.
5. Ortego, MC, López, S., Álvarez, ML Social skills. Psychosocial Sciences. University of cantabria.
6. Real academy of the Spanish language. Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.
7. Roca, E. How to improve your social skills.
8. Vera-Villarroel, P., and Guerrero, A. (2003). Differences in social problem solving skills in optimistic and pessimistic subjects. Univ. Psychol. Bogota Colombia).