Roland Mailbox

Author: Luo Lan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-03-01
Features: Excerpt: I am a high school girl. I am introverted and not good at socializing, but I often feel lonely. Seeing my classmates playing and laughing, while I can only stand on the sidelines as an outsider. We are a coeducational school, and others have male classmates to chat with, but no male classmates come to me. Should I also learn from them? I am too quiet and too! What do you think? If you feel that life lacks excitement and you need friends, of course, you can try to change your slightly. In this way, you can gain a healthy body and a happy mood from activities. But you must also know that changing your personality is not an easy task. Often, when you try to imitate others, you lose your original strengths. Therefore, you should take it slow and first try spending more time with classmates who are lively and playful to see if you are accustomed to this lifestyle. Adopt their cheerful qualities to change your shortcomings. But you must never just carelessly imitate the superficial playfulness of others and use this attitude to interact with male classmates, as this will make them think you are frivolous. The secret to making friends, whether with the same sex or the opposite sex, is not just laughing and joking on the surface but having good character and a kind, calm demeanor. What you should strive for is to be quiet but not cold, friendly but not frivolous, caring but not lowering your own status. The key for someone who finds it hard to make friends is not whether they enjoy playing or not, but whether their attitude is welcoming or distant. Quiet people, if they give a kind and approachable impression, are still happy to associate with them. Therefore, I believe that if you envy your classmates' playfulness only because you want to make more friends, there is no need to imitate them. You should use your own character and personality to attract friends who truly belong to you. Friends do not need to be many, but it is important to have friends who are compatible with your temperament. I often find that people who enjoy playing have many friends, but most of them are just casual acquaintances with no deep feelings for each other. Of course, this does not mean that the friends they make are all bad, but rather that they are a different kind of friend. Quiet and introverted people may not be suited to making many friends in lively settings, but when they have people with similar temperaments, these few people can have quiet, deep conversations with them, slowly understand each other, and become very close friends. Moreover, such friends are relatively safer because, before interacting, you have already carefully chosen each other based on your personalities. By the time you both feel you can get along and start spending time together, you already know each other very well. This way, you are less likely to make friends with people of incompatible or complicated personalities. I hope you will consider my words. Friends are not forced but drawn to you. The greatest force in attracting friends is the compatibility of your personalities. Therefore, the best way to attract friends is to develop our personalities in positive ways. For introverted people, making friends with those who share their temperament means spending time together not by running around, dancing, or going to the movies, but by quietly sitting in the living room chatting or taking a walk in a beautiful mountain landscape. At such times, the conversations you have may be even more frequent and meaningful than those of people who usually enjoy playing. But if you force yourself to change your quiet and introverted personality to be with people who enjoy playing, you will feel unnatural and unhappy. Therefore, if you envy them, you might as well learn from their optimistic and cheerful qualities, but do not expect to become like them.