My FRIEND (not dumped, not getting dumped, hasn’t dumped me) James Bishop over at Finding Optimism has a great new design. His blog, which features the best mental health article for the day, has moved to www.findingoptimism.com/blog, and you will see that the first (or second depending on when you read this post) is my post “10 Ways to Make Friends” that was posted at The Huffington Post.

Now James knows that I’m a tad sensitive to the types of photos placed with my blogs because not so long ago, John Grohol of Psych Central published my post on humor with a lovely photo of an old woman holding a flower. Friends e-mailed me to see if everything was okay because apparently all the stress in my life was causing massive wrinkles. So, thanks, James, for the apes!

The following post is the “HuffPo version” of my longer Beliefnet “13 Ways to Make Friends.” If you want to make friends in a hurry, in 10 ways as opposed to 13 ways, here you go. I’ve listed the first four, and you can go to the Huffington Post to get the other six.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it also takes a village–at best a supportive community, and at the least a few very good friends–to keep a person sane and happy. All of us need companionship, which is exactly why teenagers are texting their friends in the middle of dinner (TMI, BFF, OMG…), and why people who didn’t own a personal computer last year now have profiles on Facebook, My Space, and other social-networking sites.

Maybe the first trick to finding friends is to befriend ourselves, and to become comfortable with silence, because no one has the power to make us feel okay with ourselves but us. But, lest we stay quiet for too long, here are 10 techniques to meet new friends, which I think everyone can benefit from, because, as I learned in Girl Scouts a few hundred years ago…some are silver and the others are old, I mean gold.

1. Join a book club.
If your neighborhood doesn’t have a book club, you can usually join one as part of the local library, the recreational or community center, the community college, or online, of course.

2. Volunteer.
That one seems like a no-brainer, but, seriously, have you ever considered the many charities to which you could give your time? Your local civic association is always in need of volunteers for projects like “let’s clean up the park before a hundred dogs crap on it again” and Toys-for-Tots, Christmas in April, and so on. Don’t forget about all your local politicians who need help with their campaigns.

3. Find a support group.
There’s more to the support group universe than AA. Have you ever looked through all the local listings of meetings in your area? There’s even ACOMP (Adult Cousins of Mean People) … not really.

4. Take a night class.
That’s where you can supposedly meet men (or women) if you find yourself single in your late 30s or 40s or 50s. If you take a class in something that you are interested in, you’re very likely to find potential friends with similar hobbies.

To continue reading click here.

To read more Beyond Blue, go to http://blog.beliefnet.com/beyond_blue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.

To subscribe to “Beyond Blue” click here.