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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,

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Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's

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Speaker 1: tip is to make your invitations specific. If you are

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Speaker 1: suggesting getting together with someone, offer enough details that it

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Speaker 1: can actually happen with one reply. Today's tip like another

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Speaker 1: this week, comes from Anna Goldfarb, who is the author

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Speaker 1: of the new book Modern Friendship. Goldfarb notes that it

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Speaker 1: is really harder to make friends in our disconnected age,

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Speaker 1: but this is an important but it is not impossible.

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Speaker 1: One way to move casual acquaintances up the friendship ladder

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Speaker 1: is to invite them to get together in a new way.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people know this intuitively. You chat with

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Speaker 1: your fellow yoga class attendee regularly, so at the end

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Speaker 1: of a class you say, we should get together sometime.

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Speaker 1: The problem is that while the intention is lovely, this

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Speaker 1: statement is pretty much unworkable. Imagine the person enthusiastically says yes,

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Speaker 1: now what you say, okay, when I don't know I

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Speaker 1: need to check my calendar. We still don't know what's

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Speaker 1: going on, or what you're doing, or how long it

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Speaker 1: will take, and now we need to come back to

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Speaker 1: each other at some other point, to make it happen.

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Speaker 1: I know people who will stay on it until it happens.

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Speaker 1: But these people already have tons of friends because they

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Speaker 1: are just like that. For the rest of us, these

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Speaker 1: are some fairly long odds, so Goldfarb suggests making your

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Speaker 1: invitations more specific. You should ask ask the person to

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Speaker 1: do something that you strongly suspect they will be interested in.

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Speaker 1: You should give them a specific time, or maybe even

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Speaker 1: a backup time. If it's something more vague, you could

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Speaker 1: explain the upside for them. She offers examples. For instance,

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Speaker 1: if you've noticed that someone seems into their nails or

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Speaker 1: at least wants to be want to get manicures next weekend.

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking eleven am on Saturday at the place near

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Speaker 1: your gym.

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Speaker 2: We can grab Chipotle afterwards. If you have time or

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Speaker 2: for someone interested in food, you might email thinking of you.

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Speaker 2: Any interest in going to a farmer's market with me

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Speaker 2: on Saturday from ten am to noon we can grab

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Speaker 2: almond croissants from the new bakery that just open nearby.

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Speaker 2: Or it's been too long since we've seen each other.

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Speaker 2: Any interest in going with me to the new tapas

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Speaker 2: place for sungria on Thursday, say six pm, we need

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Speaker 2: Sungria in our lives. I know if anyone I had

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Speaker 2: chatted with enjoyably extended one of those invitations to me,

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Speaker 2: that would be a pretty easy yes. If I couldn't

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Speaker 2: because of the timing, I would immediately come back with, well, gosh,

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Speaker 2: I'd love to, but I have a kid's piano recital

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Speaker 2: at eleven am on Saturday. Could we do two o'clock

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Speaker 2: or could we do the next Saturday. The specificity of

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Speaker 2: the invitation invites specificity in response and guessing. These would

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Speaker 2: be easy yeses, or at least easy yeses with modifications

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Speaker 2: for you as well. So if you would be excited,

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Speaker 2: probably most people you would extend these specific invitations too

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Speaker 2: would be excited as well. The odds are good that

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Speaker 2: you will wind up spending time together. As you spend

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Speaker 2: time together, the relationship grows. So follow Goldfarbe's advice in

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Speaker 2: Modern Friendship and make these invitations specific. Your social life

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Speaker 2: will likely improve as a result. In the meantime, this

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Speaker 2: is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the

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Speaker 2: most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.

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Speaker 2: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach

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Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast

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Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,

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Speaker 2: please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.