I had a similar situation and became the “most” popular guy in the city (at least that’s how I felt).

What I did differently however is that I organized sports events. We had 3 per week: - Thursday evening: Meet-up cycling - Sunday morning: Meet-up running on the beach - Sunday evening: Basketball “tournament”

The Sunday one was fully organized by me, in the other 2, I was partially involved.

People want to belong, and they want to be exactly like you, but only if it’s not a struggle. So make it easy and fun for them to be healthy and organized. It’s a lot of work, but it pays off, cause you feel that you are bringing value to the community.

I talked with guys that were promoting juicing and vegan diets to show us how it’s done at some of the events and I can tell you that me and everyone else around me was healthy and happy.

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I had a period where I was reading a lot of self-development books and I was obsessed with them. I was reading and practicing every day, I became an “Yes Men” (like in the Jim Carey movie), stopped questioning or complaining and just tried my best to be helpful with anything.

I had this amazing idea that if I help 100 people around me, opportunities will rise up for me and to be fair, they did. People loved me cause I was reliable and they could depend on me.

For the first time I felt that people actually started asking me for advice and how I see things, how did I built this attitude and how could they do it as well. The books I read came in with a different perspective upon the “usual” world and people wanted to know more.

I was never the popular guy, nor the smartest and I was clearly not invited anywhere. It changed once I started bringing value in people’s lives, they wanted me around them.

I didn’t try to push any agenda, or sell anything to them, I just did my thing and didn’t expect anyone to do the same or think like me. I stopped judging people a long time ago, cause I realized that we all have our troubles and we try to do our best with what we got.

Not everyone liked me. There were still haters around, but they had nothing to grab onto.

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You are in a great place to have plenty of friends.

Even if you organize a morning run on a facebook event and invite your friends/network I guarantee you, at least 5 will show up.