The best thing for meeting people that I've found is to appear confident and interesting. I used to be extremely shy, and sometimes I revert back to that shyness, but nowdays I've become comfortable with myself. You can always start off a conversation with a silly comment about a situation you find yourself in with others.

The most important thing is to be confident about yourself and your opinions. You are an interesting person. You are completely worth striking up a random conversation with. Believe that and it will get you far with people.

If you're feeling really shy you might not look shy to other people. You might look tense and anti-social, and people don't want to take the risk of trying to talk to a tense anti-social person.

Also, do not settle for someone who pulls the same crap as your old friends. It might take a while to attract a new kind of person, but it's obviously worth it. And you know you've got all of us here at Psychcentral.

I was going through the same thing as you for several months. Trying to push away old friends who were bad for me, and trying to collect new ones who really cared about me. Now I actually have people who truely care about me, and it shocks me every day.

I hope that my advice helped you out a little bit.