getting better at talking to people

improvement pill here welcome to the beefriend course where I show you how to befriend more people today I want to reveal to you the secret to getting better at talking to people so let's dive right into it so the first thing you have to understand is that you were not born socially handicapped we humans are very social species so much in fact that you can take a baby and put him or her in a room full of people and over time he or she will learn to speak purely through observation no one needs to go up to the baby and say hey that's a cat yes cat CA T meow meow say with me you don't have to do any of that if you just talk and go about your daily activities the baby is capable of learning your language by pure observation and this is because the human brain is actually extremely good and identifying patterns and rules when it comes to social interactions which is basically what language is if you think about it patterns and rules so it's not that you were born socially handicapped the reason your social skills aren't that great is simply because you haven't given your brain enough time so observe interactions and become fluent in all of the patterns and rules in short you lack practice and for the most part it's not really your fault because if you think about it in modern times we spend the large majority of our time behind screens interacting with each other and it's only been getting worse and worse every generation I didn't get a smartphone until I was almost like 20 years old but nowadays most kids get their first smartphone before they're even ten and we all know that it doesn't take much skill or practice to accept the friend request and shoot someone a message we can type and use emojis to communicate with each other but it's really really different from actually talking to someone in real life when you're texting there are hundreds of little components that are not there hundreds of little patterns and rules that your brain isn't able to observe about the other person for example things like their body language facial expressions tonality speed of talking proximity eye contact etc these are all components that you have to pay attention to when talking to someone else in real life if you want to make friends but all of these factors are completely missing when you text or message someone using your magic little rectangle in a way talking to people in real life is like a completely different language the reason why your social skills aren't that great and why you feel nervous about meeting new people is simply because you haven't been giving your brain enough time to properly learn this language you're fluent in texting but you're barely passing real-life talking sort of like how I barely passed Chinese in high school the secret to getting better at talking to people or learning any language is to simply get more practice to interact with more people to give your brain more opportunities to observe and learn the unique patterns and rules of this language now you might be wondering an improvement pill okay that makes sense and all but how do I get more practice well when I was about 18 years old I decided to take on what's called the hundred interaction challenge to improve my social skills basically you have a month to interact with 100 people it doesn't really matter how deep the interactions are heck you could run up to people and just say hi and then run away and that would still count as an interaction the majority of my interactions during this challenge involved asking people for directions while pretending that my phone died and that I was lost and although these interactions on a surface level seemed very simple and short I eventually found myself transitioning into deeper conversations and this actually led to a whole lot of practice for my brain and I did see a pretty significant boost in my social skills by the time the challenge was over now a quick little side note people always ask me to make a course for the hundred interaction challenge whenever I talk about it but to be honest it wouldn't really even be a course I literally just explained to you all you have to do but then they'd often say something like oh but it'd be helpful to have an accountability group and also if you can motivate us every day of the challenge so if that's something you're interested in I guess why not I'll make the program cuz I do enjoy helping you out all you got to do is sign up for my mailing list using the link in the description box below and I'll let you know the next time we run this experimental program back to the topic at hand here's a good analogy that I want to leave you with when it comes to getting better at talking to people watching videos to learn social skills is sort of like watching videos when you're trying to learn how to ride a bike yes it can be very helpful to watch others do it it can be helpful to learn exactly how bikes even work but the fastest way to learn how to ride a bike is to just jump on and start pedaling sure you'll probably fall over and over again but eventually you'll get it right eventually you'll figure out how to balance properly and this is basically what happens when you go out and start talking to more people sure you'll probably have a couple of awkward interactions but eventually you will learn the patterns and rules of the culture.