Why is it important for us to socialize with others?
Anthropology defines humans as social creatures. Their life is dependent on their actions, reaction, and social interactions. This practice is essentially important to men because without this, depression, fear, and isolation are inevitable.
This can ruin your self-confidence, jeopardize your professional life, and, ultimately, affect your mental stability.
Thus, in order to form meaningful relationships with other people, it’s essential to equip people, who otherwise lack social skills, the necessary training.
In the previous Social Skills Training Part 2, we talked about the “4 Pillars of Social Skills Training.”
(For “Social Skills Training Part 1,” go here.)
Finally in this last article of this series…here are some social skills training you can do:
Keep Track of Your Progress
Get yourself a notebook. You will record notes on a daily basis of your progress. Firstly, be honest with yourself. Write down 3 things about yourself that you want to change. It might be you want to overcome shyness, introduce yourself to strangers, or talk to that hottie at the gym…who maybe smiled at you a few times, but you couldn’t bring yourself to talk to her.
Meet Yourself
Lock yourself in the bathroom. Huh? Let me explain. Stand in front of the mirror and look yourself in the eyes. It’s like looking into the eyes of a stranger. Most of the time, we don’t even know ourselves. Keep on looking at your reflection and say, “Hello there.” Yes, it may seem silly, but this is a way to see yourself as you are to others. Say it with your name as if you were greeting a long lost friend. “Hello Bill,” or “Ted.” Say it a few times and maintain eye contact with yourself. Now introduce yourself. Yes, go on. Tell yourself what you do for a living. “Hi Bill, my name is Bill, and I’m a rockstar. Pleased to meet you.” After you have practiced for a while, you will know who you really are and tweak it for your “best self” to come across. Write down in your notebook how long you practice “meeting you” in the mirror and the progress you made. Now that you’ve practice introducing yourself, it’s time to meet people.
Eye Contact, Smile, and Greet
Whenever you encounter somebody you like to meet, try to make eye contact and when they reciprocate, smile and greet them. It could be a simple “Hi” or “Good afternoon,” but it will definitely break the awkward silence. Once the person responds to your greeting and you want to continue the interaction, ask some open-ended questions that don’t render a “Yes” or “No” answer, only heading towards a dead-end. Open-ended questions create a whole pandora of possible directions the interaction can go. Keep notes of other people’s reaction to your response to calibrate next time. Do not neglect the common everyday opportunities of basic social interaction, such as saying hi to people.
Match Faces
Have somebody get pictures of people showing different kinds of emotions. Good social skills is being able to read how others are feeling that way you get to react appropriately, then have the right words to say to them. When that other person shows you a picture, guess the emotion behind it. Having empathy is a great trait of good communicators as feeling the emotions of other people and showing them you understand can create a tremendous bond between the two of you.
Mirror Mirror
One of the most effective ways to make someone like you is to mirror their behavior. For example, if an interviewer is leaning towards you, you should also imitate the same behavior (without being too obvious, of course). Have you ever noticed couples who really don’t look alike at first start to look like each other after a while? This is because they mirror each others’ facial expressions. So when you talk to someone, try following their nonverbal behavior or the way they talk; it will make it easier for them to get comfortable with you.
So there you have it…
Some social skills training you can take up on to amp up your social self.
It’s ironic that we’re all innately social creatures at heart, our ancestors had to be to survive to bring you here into this world, and it’s in us, yet we, ourselves, get in the way of that or the external factors we were exposed inhibited that.
We crave it. We need it.
Just because if you’re the most outgoing person you want to be, doesn’t mean that’s the end of it. Take up on as much social skills training as you can to improve your social skills, and you’ll be amaze and even surprise yourself.
So what’s next?
Hopefully, this “Social Skills Training” series has helped you. This is no way has covered everything there is need to know.
If you like to get more deep into this…you should check out the book Social Skills.
