【推荐1】Good social skills are an important part of building rich friendships, enjoying yourself in public, and succeeding in your career. If you consider yourself to be shy, you might run into some trouble chatting with people you don't know. Don’t worry—there are plenty of easy ways to improve your social skills throughout your daily life.    1    

1.Compliment（赞美）someone.

    2    Then, say hello and offer a compliment.Keep the conversation going by sharing simple ideas and asking questions.A friendly conversation with a stranger is an easy way to give your social skills a boost.

You could say "I love your coat" or "I really like the way you style your hair."

2.    3    

Teams are great ways to meet like-minded people.Strike up a conversation with someone sitting near you.You might say, "It's so nice to see so many people here" or "What brings you here?"    4    

3.Listen to the people around you.

It's important to be open and vocal in a conversation, but don't try to control the dialogue.Listen for openings where you can ask relevant（相关的）questions throughout the conversation.    5    

【推荐2】There’s no doubt that loneliness hurts. Functional MRIs show that the area of the brain triggered by social rejection is the same area that’s triggered by physical pain. To understand why loneliness hurts, let’s take a closer look at friendship through the eyes of two heavyweight philosophers.

In one corner we have Aristotle, who wrote that without friends, there’s no reason to live. The Greek great believed that friendships are based on the virtues of the friend.     1     But the problem with Aristotle’s theory is that if you lose some virtues, you should also expect to lose some friends. And that’s not how friendships work — at least not the good ones.     2    

So as a sharp counterpunch to Aristotle, let’s turn to the renowned Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said that all people have value regardless of their virtues. Since we view our true friends with this kind of unconditional love and respect, we can assume they view us the same way.     3     Being away from our friends takes away these life-affirming interactions. Worse, having no friends means our value, or dignity, isn’t being appreciated.

    4     This may seem obvious, but there’s a catch. Your connection has to be oriented (以……为方向) toward the other person — not in what they can do for you and your loneliness. So say hi to a neighbor, hold the door for someone, or volunteer at the soup kitchen.     5     However, they’ll help you feel more connected to the world. And the more of these small steps you take toward connection, the farther away from loneliness you’ll get.