9 Simple Activities To Improve Social Wellbeing (Ranked)

So, you have checked what social wellbeing is, and why it’s important to improve it. Now it’s time to know what are the activities that can result in a positive social wellbeing.

There are 9 activities to improve social wellbeing which are: get active together, be happy together, give back, throw a party, take courses, join events, tree of friends, make use of long waiting and commutes, and bond with your kids.

I’ll explain that some of these activities can be used to overcome some factors that can affect your social wellbeing and preventing you from promoting it.

Below is a powerful table that summarizes the social activities you can use, how easy it is to do it, how much impact it has, and which factors they overcome

1- Get active together

Joining sports regardless if it’s a group or an individual based one, provides a group to belong to and resources to make new friends which improves your social wellbeing

Now you have a group you belong to and share the same values and goals. If it’s a team-based sport like football or if it’s an individual sport like Karate where you’ll be representing your community or country

This is also a good place to meet new people who share the same interest as you in sports so it’s a good and easy opportunity

This activity is suitable to overcome number of factors affecting your social wellbeing like personality, disabilities, people, environment, and social status

Personality

Joining sports is suitable for both extroverts and introverts. If you’re an extrovert, you don’t have a problem anyway since you like gatherings.

But if you’re an introvert, you’re most likely going to find it easy to blend in and socialize with others specially if you’re in an individual sports like karate.

Disabilities

Sports provides safe place for all people with or without disabilities. So, if you have the disability factor, sport can be a remedy to overcome that by participating in the relevant sport for your disability

People

Sports provides a good place to meet good, supportive, and valuable people. Taken into consideration how it’s going to be like a small community with same interests, values, and goals, and also how sport nurtures the soul.

Environment

Same as people. If you’re environment is a negative factor to your social wellbeing, then joining a sport team provides a better one.

Social Status

In general, sports support social wellbeing regardless of your social status. It’s one of the places where all are equal and considered as ONE team.

The only exception is if the sport itself is only accessible to a certain social status like golf for high social class.

2- Be happy together

Same as sport but for hobbies and things that make you creative and happy.

Joining a group with the same interest in the hobby you like also provides a group you can belong to and chances of creating meaningful connections which promotes for a positive social wellbeing

This can be you joining clubs for charity, reading, writing, art, cars, bikes, cats, dogs, gardening, etc. The sky is  your limit.

This activity supports you overcoming the same factors mentioned in the sport one.

3- Give back

Giving back to others builds the foundation of a stronger social wellbeing of individuals in a given community.

We all must build the habit of giving back to others, starting from giving back feedback (a constructive one), ending with giving back time, money, and effort.

Obviously giving back has more strength from the spiritual wellbeing perspective, but also it has an impact in the social wellbeing one. After all, your wellbeing dimensions are all integrated into one body.

From a social wellbeing perspective, giving back is a good tool to build new and meaningful connection with others. Examples to do that can include the following:

Feedback:

You can give feedback to others the right way and in the right time. This helps them work on the weaknesses spotted by you and improve. The benefit here is, if done right, it adds a good relationship between the 2 of you.

Lectures:

Are you in expert in some topic? Then you can explain it or teach it to others which can be your peers, students, or neighbors or community members.

You can make face to face sessions, or online ones if it’s not applicable. You can also make videos or podcasts about it or write about it in a blog.

All these provides you with more networks and valuable connections.

This social wellbeing activity is a good solution for almost all the factors affecting your development to your social wellbeing.

For education, although it’s minimal, but if you’re giving back on a social wellbeing topic or tool then you’re improving the education factor.

For personality it’s going to be like sports and hobbies, and while being an introvert could be an obstacle in doing the face to face or online activities, it can still work with videos, podcasts, or blogs as it will be you at first. Then when you have the momentum, you can go live.

People won’t care about your disability when you have something valuable to share with them. Not doing that is the disability everyone will notice.

For people, environment, and social status, it’s going to be more or less as what we discussed above.

4- Throw a party

One of the simple yet powerful activity you can do to improve your social wellbeing is throwing a party to socialize and make new friends.

And depending on where or for whom you do it, you may also have the benefit of having a group to belong to.

For example, you can throw a party in your new apartment or new house to get to know your neighbors and for them to know you. That’s you gaining more connections and friends.

Doing that to look for club members you’re creating or to promote the idea of creating a club by anyone, not only provides you with friends but also with a group you can belong to as well.

Throwing a party can be done in the workplace if you’re new to the company. This leads to you knowing more people and wining friends at work.

This activity is mainly focusing on gaining new friends and possibly a group to belong to, and it doesn’t have much impact on the factors affecting social wellbeing.

5- Take courses

Self-development is one of the factors that has the highest impact on your social wellbeing and has the highest control by you. Its impact is huge because the alternative source in the government education is close to 0.

The main source we depend on when learning social skills and improving our social wellbeing is through self-learning.

That’s why one of the strongest tools you can use to improve your social wellbeing is by taking courses on this topic and weaponize yourself with its tools.

I created Well Being Toolkits for this purpose. To empower you with numerous tools about wellbeing to refer to at any time.

It has 3 benefits

1. Gaining more information, developing social skills and tools
2. Making friends and creating connections
3. Having a group to belong to, specially if the course is months long.

When it comes to overcoming factors affecting social wellbeing, taking courses provides yet another strength because it has leverage over almost all of them

It will override the poor or no education about social wellbeing. It’ll compensate for your lack of personal development. Disability won’t be a showstopper because your primary goal here is to learn not to make friends which will come later. It’ll overcome your parenting style factor because you’re going to learn how to be better at it.

For people, environment, and social status refer to the sports point above.

6- Join events

Joining events has the same benefits and advantages over the social wellbeing factors just like getting active and happy together. I separated it from them because of the low frequency this one has.

With sports or hobbies, they can be running all year long. For events on the other hand, it’s only for a day in a year, with few days or weeks if you’re talking about multiple events throughout the year.

With that being said, joining those sporadic events provides a good possibility of meeting new people, making friends, and creating meaningful and valuable connections.

Examples are, the annual marathon for a specific cause, a community-based event, a world health day event running in your city, a traditional event in your neighborhood, etc.

7- Tree of friends

It’s a thing my friends and I do occasionally, not intentionally though, and I figured I can add it here with making it more systematic if it’s going to help you.

Every once in a while, when we meet, some of us bring a new friend they have to our outing, sometimes more than one does it so we end up with 2-4 new people to meet.

We finish the outing with those new members becoming part of our future outings or social media groups and eventually the tree of friends we’re having is getting bigger and bigger.

Of course, not ALL  of us meet every time, but the network is bigger because of this.

So, what you can do with your friends, is to agree that few of you, or even each one of you, bring a new friend that others don’t know about, one that still would be interested to join you and interesting to know by others.

Now each one of you will have access to more new people which can end up being a true connection. I know marriages happened because of this strategy 😀

This activity has influence over 2 of the social wellbeing factors, disability, and people

Meeting new friends recommended by current friends is one of the safest places, any person can be in, even if with disability. If you’re trusted friend is going to recommend another friend, then most likely the new one will have the same manner, mentality, and attitude.

Also, meeting new friends through your current network will increase your pool of good people that surround you.

8- Make use of long waiting and commutes

Strike a conversation with the person next to you in places you’ll spend long time waiting or in your commute.

This can be while waiting for your turn in banks, airports, or any other institutes. And it can be while commuting with trains or buses or traveling by airplanes.

Make a small conversation with the other person sitting next to you and if you think it can work, make it longer. Sometimes it just work and next thing you know is that the flight is over, or your turn is up, and the conversation isn’t over yet

Now you have a new friend and you’re improving your social network

This activity can benefit you in the people factor of increasing your pool of good people surrounding you.

9- Bond with your kids

Like I said in the parenting style factor, and always say in my coaching sessions, that parenting is a job. A different one from your 9-5 job but is one for sure.

That’s why parents have an important work to do in raising their kids the best way possible with maintaining their wellbeing including the social one.

Parents are the first persons the child makes relationship and connection with and it affects how they perceive it in the long run. If done correctly then this will foster their relationship with making friends and other relationships.

Parents also are the first and most important teachers that children learn from about social skills and tools like:

• Dependence
• Rule in family which will grow to represent community or work
• Managing and understanding feelings
• How to speak with others
• How to listen to others
• How to connect with others
• How to negotiate with others
• How to collaborate and share with others

You can refer to “Refer to the other link of activities with kids” for more games and activities that you can do with your toddlers and children

The benefit of this activity for the parent is wining his connections and relationships with his children. The most important one ever existed.

For the children on the other hand, this will provide a strong foundation in overcoming many factors affecting social wellbeing which are: education, personal learning, personality, disability and diseases, and parenting style.

It’s going to compensate for the lack of education they receive on social skills and tools. Their personal learning, personality, and disability will have minimal effect since you’re planting a growth mindset seed within them.

Now they see learning is lifelong action, their abilities aren’t fixed, and their disability doesn’t define who they are, it’s their actions that does.

Being a better parent with the right parenting style equips your children with developed social skills and wellbeing.