Making new friends as an adult isn’t easy. I experienced this firsthand when I moved to London, England right after university and suddenly found myself living in one of the biggest cities in the world, with less than a handful of contacts in my phonebook.
Once you leave school, how do you make new friends? All of a sudden, we are not grouped in with the same people on a daily basis, and, especially when working for small companies, I found it hard to find anyone who wasn’t my boss to connect with. In my case, it wasn’t until my second year in London when I finally felt like I had made friends, and it was only because I started working for a bigger company (British ELLE Magazine) where I was able to connect with more people my age and similar interests (fashion, obviously).
People say the gym is a great place to meet new people, but how do you really meet new people at the gym? You can’t exactly go up to someone who’s mid bench press or post shower and say “Hey what’s up let’s hang out” without having them give you some major stink eye or calling security. But, as I’ve recently learned, it is actually possible so long as it’s done in the right way.
Over the past few weeks, adidas Canada Master Trainer, Julian Ho, has started to include 10-minute breakout sessions at the end of every #HereToCreate class and they’ve been such a great way to create real connections with the amazing women who attend the class.
After a solid 45 minutes sweat session, Julian breaks up the class into 4-5 groups that are each lead by Julian and the #HereToCreate ambassadors, Christina The Athletarian, Catriona of Coco & Cowe, Jessica Mulroney and myself.
Each week, we are assigned a topic to discuss together as a group. So far, some of the topics have included: ‘What are you here to create?”, “What are you afraid of?”, “Who are your role models?” and “What are your successes?”.
Once in our groups, we each take turns introducing ourselves to the group and answer the question relating to each week’s topic. To me, this has been such a great way to connect with new people, and it’s been so interesting to hear that so many of us share the same fears, challenges and feelings on a regular basis, no matter how different we are.
In last week’s session, one of my group members shared that she considered attending the #HereToCreate class a great success to her because of her struggle with social anxiety. She admitted that all day she contemplated coming to the class or not, and how hard it was for her to follow through with showing up to the class. However, she felt extremely proud to get through the class once she arrived, and got a solid round of high fives from the entire group for having the courage to share her personal experience with all of us.
If you are in Toronto and are interested in taking part in the best workout of your life, and meeting new people, I strongly suggest setting up a calendar reminder for 9am on Thursday morning to sign up for the following week’s Thursday evening class at Totum King through the HereToCreate.ca website. If you are unable to join us in Toronto at the #HereToCreate classes, try suggesting the addition of breakout sessions at your favourite classes to your instructors or gym.
Enjoy!
xo
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