Why I Want to Be Friends With Martin Smith

When you think of a person you’d like to get to know and think for a perfect example, I bet you think of a rock star.

Someone like Bono from U2, Chris Martin from Coldplay, or Kevin Max, probably best known for dcTalk.

Or if you’re not into rock music, maybe you pick an author or speaker like Scott Ginsberg or Billy Graham. And if you’re into politics, you may think of getting to know the recent Nobel prize winner, Al Gore.

My pick today would be Martin Smith from the U.K. based rock five-some Delirious?. Who would be yours?

Try before you buy

We want to be friends with great people. People whose minds resonate with ours.

We want to be friends with people we know.

That’s why these people seem like good friends: We have seen into their minds. And we liked what we saw.

In music, it’s the lyrics and the sounds that the composer has crafted out of his or her soul and shared with the world. In books, it’s the words, the stories. In politics, it’s the worldview.

These people have shown us a lot so that we can like them already before we have even said a word to them. It’s like we know them already.

Limited availability as a major problem

While I would really like to get to know some of the people I listed in this post I know that getting to know famous people is a rare commodity. I’m not the only one who would like to chat with these people.

In fact, I can tell you right now, that apart from Scott Ginsberg the probability of me ever chatting with any of the men listed above is pretty much zero.

I have seen the try before you buy advertisement and liked what I saw, but now the retailer is telling me that these friends are already taken.

How to make yourself as interesting as a rock star

As Ravi Vora wrote recently on this blog, you don’t have to be a rock star to be insanely interesting. Rock stars are regular people too, and a regular person can be just as interesting as a bestselling author.

The difference is that in the case of a rock star, author or speaker I already know that the person is interesting whereas with regular people it takes time to see below the surface.

And here comes the trick: To make yourself as desirable as a friend to the kind of people you like to get to know, open up. Do what rock stars do and share a piece of your soul on the Internet. People will come to like you, but unlike rock stars they actually are available to be your friends!

Blogging is a great means for this. Just like e-mailing, chatting or forum posting. I actually even got to know my wife through that kind of mediums and must say that it’s a great way to learn to know a person.

Open up your soul and I might want to be your friend too!