By Niccolo Raimondi (IT Museum Felonica) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Humans are social animals, for the most part we need one another not only to survive but to stay sane; no one can live in complete isolation. That’s why we hang out with each other and make friends. The thing is, we can have a lot of different type of friends, we can have good friends, we can have bad friends, we can have friends who want to try and influence everything we do, we can have friends who just don’t care for the most part, we can have friends that help us, we can have friends that get in our way, we can have work friends, we can have school friends, we can even have frenemies (not something you want to have if you can help it).
Now, having different types of friends is all well and good, but my own personal experience is when it comes to stress relief and stress management, the best kind of people/friends you can hang out with are those who you share an interest with.
When you hang out with someone who shares an interest and you do that thing or talk about it you end up doubling the fun of that experience. It’s hard to explain but it’s kind of like you are feeding each other and feeding off of each other, I’m not sure if that makes sense but it’s the best way I can explain it.
I’ll give you an example. I’m a big Pokémon fan so when Pokémon Go became available to download I downloaded and started playing it almost immediately. Some of my friends had downloaded it too so we planned an outing together to go and catch some Pokémon (yes I know that it isn’t real and that we’re just catching digital characters but shut up its fun, plus it gives me more incentive to go outside than anything else ever did). We mostly stared at our phones and walked around looking for Pokémon but it was still fun, and when we sat down to rest we reminisced about the Anime and the games and showed each other which Pokémon we had caught so far. It was a lot of fun and it felt good sharing an experience like that.
This obviously doesn’t just apply to Pokémon Go, its true for any gathering of people who share interests, whether its hikers, golfers, gamers, cosplayers, book clubs, chess clubs, sports clubs and anything else you can think of. All in all it’s a good way to hang out, have fun and beat stress.
Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but that’s usually only when people start to take things too seriously and become more focused on being right rather than having fun. Interests are all well and good but you have to keep an open mind and not just focus on being right or only get your own point across. If you do that you’re more likely to get stressed out even more and that’s not the point.
Now let’s say you are looking for people who share a particular interest, aside from walking around and talking to random strangers. Well thanks to the internet its super easy, you could do a broad search where you go on google and look up groups with a particular interest. Or you could do a more refined search where you go to a social media website like Facebook or Reddit and look for groups with a common interest. There are a lot out there; it’s just a matter of finding them. Once you’ve found a group that you like you can participate in discussions over the internet; people have a lot to say so you could be there for hours if you wanted. You could try and find a group whose members live close by, and then you could plan to meet up, but that’s up to you, and them.
Well that’s about it for this post. Finding people with similar interests is really easy nowadays; it’s just a matter of reaching out. And if you’re scared of making new friends that’s okay, people will always be around; just do it when you’re ready and you feel the time is right.
Alternative Yoga 