The Easiest Way To Meet Someone New

Smile and say “hi”.

High school was not my favorite. Some people loved their high school experience but me, I am not one of them. Sure, do I have good memories and reminisce on some of the events that happened? Of course! Do I still have friends from high school that I regularly see? Yes. But I would not say high school was my favorite.

I am the second born in the long list of 5 Gane boys. My older brother, Luke, is one of my heroes. He is everything you could want in an older brother and he paved the way for a lot of awesome things for me in life. One thing he did do was set me and my younger brothers up to be well known on our high school campus. He set a standard of, for a lack of a better term, “popularity”, that we all gleaned from whether we asked for it or not. He was on the football team, he was great with his peers, teachers, and genuinely a very like-able guy.

I on the other hand was a zit faced, skinny but athletic, insecure teenager who psychically thought no one liked me. Most probably didn’t because I was not a like-able person at the time. I did a poor job of utilizing the “Law of Attraction”. I brought nothing to the table out of “humility” (actually a false sense of humility) and therefore was more of a leech than a life giving organism. So, for most of high school, I put my head down, went to class, and did my best to get through 4 years of social angst.

I did notice that Luke was really good about connecting and talking to pretty much anyone. I asked him one day how he did it. He told me something that I still practice to this day,

“I just smile and say hi.”

That’s it? I wondered. It had to be more than that right?

Nope, it was just that. There was a story he told me that one day during our morning break, he walked by a group of senior girls, one of which was a head cheerleader and very pretty. They both looked at each other and he did it, he smiled and said hi and guess what? She said hi back! They became pretty good friends that year and it was all because he smiled and said hi.

Sometimes all you need to get out of your head is for someone to share a simple tip and a story. This one changed how I would connect with people in college, where on day 1 I knew about 5 people on a campus of over 4,000. It wasn’t long before my circle of 5 friends turned into over 100.

I just smiled and said hi.

Thanks Luke!

What about you? Do you have any simple tips for connecting with others? I’d love to hear them. Email me or share them with me via DM.