Bill Shakespeare once said that all the world is a stage, and we are merely players. Or maybe it was Geddy Lee, but who cares? The point is, if you look past the douchiness of how it sounds, there is some valuable wisdom behind that statement.
Like you, any other dude you meet is going to be an actor on the stage of life. So, you aren’t actually meeting him at first; you’re meeting the character he’s playing. The next time you meet him, you might be meeting a very different character, especially if the environment and/or the guy’s mood is different. One of the biggest milestones to starting a friendship or a bromance is to get him to break character, so that you can start interacting with the real person.
One of the things that most people never learn is that they can be a director as well as an actor. You can change the stage on a dude, and he’ll start acting according to the new stage you’ve set. If you set a stage for him to walk all over you like an alpha male, he’ll do it. If you set a stage for him to be laid back and fun loving, he’ll fall into that, too. The process can be as simple as telling him that he reminds you of your buddy from high school and telling a story about it, or it can be longer and more interactive. At the end of the day, it’s all about drawing him into your circle. And if he decides to draw you into his, that’s cool, too.
