[way_seriously]

practice a sport with an active community, anything from skydiving to Wednesday evening tennis club. If you are that successful, look for a club with a long or better yet, closed joining list. Make that your goal, you’ll have to work your contacts to get in, once in, keep showing up.

no lack of people wanting to connect with a successful mentor. Design your own mentorship in a way that it won’t consume more than an hour/week of your time but will consistently bring interesting new blood to you, run an open office, say from 5-6pm, make it accessible for anyone to book an hour with you and most importantly, to book again if they like the advice, and if they do, you must accept them, even if their idea sucks, keep seeing them until the idea doesn’t suck anymore or they give up, learn to be so pleasant that the ratio of people giving up is falling.

volunteer at your homeless shelter as a ‘socialiser’ (they need people to just come in and talk to folks) and to ‘sleepover’, they need someone awake at all times, this can give you a new perspective.

as others have pointed out, see a psychiatrist.

spend less time on the internet and more time talking to people face to face, anyone, from cashiers to hairdressers to the guy seating next to you, ask questions only about them, if they ask you a question, meld your answer into another question about them.

stop looking for friends and asking people why they disappeared, if you actually ask them "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" don’t. Work on becoming pleasant. How well do you take criticism? How often do you positively criticise? Halt all criticism, even the extemely positive ones.

I had a similar conversation with a psychologist/economist friend who left Goldman Sachs to lead a more fulfilling life, she deals with over achievers in business and sometimes life, that find themselves struggling for a deeper meaning, her answer was, if you only have one or two close friends, it’s perfectly normal, if you don’t have a single person close to you, then you should act on it.

I’m going for a walk.