I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Finding a bro whose personality clicks with yours, and who you can talk to at a deep level, is likely to be frustrating. It’s work, even if you’re having fun doing it, but worst of all, it’s very easy to get into the trap of thinking that you spent all that time being social and got nowhere.
The most important tool you have for overcoming this kind of frustration is faith. I’m not referring to religious faith, here (although a lot of people use their religious faith to deal with frustration in general, and if that’s your thing, too, great). The faith that I’m talking about is simply the faith that you will achieve what you want. Without that faith, you’ll just give up.
If you’re the analytical type, you’re probably thinking that it’s more important to be rational than faithful. If you are, I have some good news: rationality and faith are not mutually exclusive. I don’t believe in blind faith in what you’re doing, and there’s no reason that you should, either. Rational people don’t keep doing exactly the same thing forever just because they believe one day it will finally yield results.
The key to balancing faith in your goal with your rational awareness of what’s going on can be summed up in one word: improvement. To put it another way, if you go long enough without seeing improvement of any kind, you need to make a change in your strategy. But when you do see progress, it provides a jolt to your faith, and is an indicator that if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, more good things are likely to happen.
With this idea in mind, you might want to keep a journal about your search for a bromantic friendship. How many people did you talk to today, and where? Did anyone invite you to some other event? (That’s a big step right there.) Are you doing anything to make yourself cooler? How’s it coming along?
If any of those answers are encouraging to you, that’s a sign you should keep the faith, bro.
Later,
-The Blog Dude
