1. Find there many others like you.
Nowadays there are more devices than ever before to find out where the knitters, hikers or kiteboarders are meeting so that you can get together with those who distribute your interests. This makes it more easygoing to know groups with which you will have something in general, a natural basis for starting a friendship.
2. Regularly show up when meeting up with others.
You don’t have to run for director of the knitters' society at your first meeting. But you do have to show up. I have been telling others to exercise yoga for 20 years and ensuring I would do it myself for just as long, but besides the occasional coincidental yoga offering at a retreat, I didn’t take the difficulty of finding a class I could attend daily until a month ago. Now I am liking it and it was not that difficult. I have put a note in my phone to retire from the procrastinator’s society.
3. Be interested, but don’t expect fulfillment or praise.
Each time you show up is an analysis, a micro-adventure in social bonding. If you are curious about and excited about others, they will be attracted to you because you are giving them notice. So you will get recognition in return. Interest in others also takes your focus away from those uncomfortable feelings that tend to make you hide and lower.