5.) What about just hanging out with groups of friends? Because for some people it’s easier to meet interesting new people every night, but when comes to regular hanging out personally on a relationship-basis can be more difficult, or vice-versa. How do you maintain your social life?
A simple answer would be that I maintain my social life by just making a point to regularly hang out with the people I already know. Again, a knack of organizing plans comes in handy here. I think for some people their insecurities hinder them here. They may have gotten the hang of meeting people and making a good first impression, but once they know someone they start thinking things like, “They don’t really like me. I’d just be pestering them by seeing if they want to grab a drink on Friday. I won’t bother…” They need to push past that and behave as if their friends do like them, which they likely do.
Maintaining relationships also means trying to deepen your friendships. Sure, it’s fine if you want to keep some people as more casual acquaintances, but if you see yourself becoming better friends with someone, you can’t keep it surface level forever. You need to do things like open up and talk about deeper or more vulnerable topics.
6.) Do you have any particular strategy you use when you go out in social gatherings to meet people (both women and guys), like a bar or nightclub?
I wouldn’t say I have any particular method or strategy. I think in these situations, 99% of the battle is just having the guts to go up to people and start a conversation (and if you don’t, there are methods to address that, like gradually facing that fear, or disputing limiting beliefs). After that it doesn’t matter a ton what you do or say to break the ice. The conversation starter doesn’t need to be anything fancy or original. Some people will be interested in talking to you, others won’t (and there’s no way to appeal to everyone). Of the ones you seem to get along with, get their contact info and try to hang out again.
I think when it comes to just meeting people to make friends most people can accept a very general blueprint like that. When it comes to meeting someone to date or hook up with, people are more nervous and feel they need some special strategy. I don’t really go into dating on my site, but I know tons of other ones do. Overall I’m in that camp that thinks that once you’ve got a basic foundation of confidence and social skills and an idea of how to show interest and ask someone out, success is more about playing a numbers game to find someone who’s compatible with you. I don’t think there’s some esoteric set of techniques that can let a guy get any woman.
7.) If you could travel back in time to mentor your former-self and have 1-full day to teach how to go from socially awkward to socially awesome…what would you do?
Haha, first I’d give him a print out of my site and tell him to read it once the day was over, since that’s basically why I started it in the first place, to give myself the kind of guide I wish I had growing up.
Um…what else? I think developing your social skills is a long-term process and is mainly the result of consistent practice, so I wouldn’t expect to totally transform myself in a day. Also, to avoid wanting to re-type everything I know I’ll give a top 3 things I’d do:
1.) I’d take myself shopping for some better clothes, and then tell myself to look into getting contact lenses and grow my hair out. I used to look very stereotypically nerdy, and everything got easier when I started putting more thought into how I looked. It’s not that looks are everything, but there is a very pragmatic side to getting your appearance half-decent.
2.) I’d explain to myself how to make friends and organize plans and turn all the mild acquaintances I already had into proper friendships.
3.) I’d tell myself everything I knew about dealing with fears and anxiety, so I could get a head start on dealing with them.
8.) Lastly Chris, I am a huge fan of your site http://www.succeedsocially.com. It’s a great resource with lots of valuable information helping people nailing just about every aspect in their social life they’re facing. Any final thought you like to share to folks, who are struggling socially and what they can do about it now?
I think I’ll leave it at that. I initially tried coming up with some suggestions, but again, it was getting into that territory of just wanting to summarize everything on the site.
So I’ll say if anyone’s interested, just check the site out and see if any of it speaks to you. Everything on it is 100% free and available. I don’t have an ebook or anything that I’m trying to sell, so I don’t hold any information back.
– Chris MacLeod
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Such a great post. There were lots of stuffs I could relate to from past struggling with people.