How to socialize for beginners

Welcome to the Befriend course, where I'll teach you how to make more friends. Today, I want to share with you the secret to improving your conversational skills. Let's get started. First things first: you weren't born socially impaired. In fact, humans are incredibly social animals. You can even put a baby in a room full of people, and over time, he or she will learn to speak just by observation. No one needs to approach the baby and say, "Hey, that's a cat, yes cat C A T meow say with me."

If you just talk to the baby and carry on with your daily activities, the baby can pick up your language through pure observation because, when it comes down to it, language is really just patterns and rules in social interactions. Therefore, it's not that you were born with poor social skills; rather, the reason your social skills aren't that great is simply because you haven't given your brain enough time to observe interactions and become fluent in all of the rules and patterns.

In other words, you lack practice. Generally speaking, this isn't your fault because, when you think about it, most people in modern society interact with each other behind screens, and this problem has only gotten worse with time. I didn't get a smartphone until I was almost 20 years old, but most kids these days receive their first one before they're even ten years old, and we all know that it doesn't take much expertise and that texting is very different from talking to someone in person because there are a lot of small details that are missing when you text. For instance, there are body language, facial expressions, tone, proximity, eye contact, and other small details that are difficult for your brain to pick up on when you're talking to someone in person

All of these are elements that you possess that you have to pay attention to when talking to someone else in real life if you want to make friends. You haven't been giving your brain enough time to learn this language, which is why your social skills aren't that great and why you get nervous when you meet new people. You're fluent in texting, but you're barely passing real-life conversations.

In a way, talking to people in real life is like learning a whole new language. Things like body language, facial expressions, tonality, speed of talking, proximity, eye contact, etc. are all components Although you can communicate well via text, you struggle to carry on a conversation in person. You can improve your communication skills in any language by simply interacting with more people. This will give your brain more opportunities to observe and learn the unique patterns and rules of the language.

You might be wondering if there's a pill that can help you get more practice, and that makes sense, but how can I get more practice? Well, when I was about 19 years old, In order to get better at socializing, I decided to participate in the "hundred interaction challenge," which essentially gives you a month to interact with 100 people The depth of this interactions is really irrelevant; you could approach people, say hello, and then quickly leave; that would still be considered an interaction. During this challenge, I asked people for directions most of the time while acting like I was lost and that my phone had died. Although these interactions seemed short and simple at first, I eventually found myself moving into deeper conversations, which actually gave my brain a lot of practice and significantly improved my social skills by the time the challenge was over.

I want to end with a good analogy about how watching videos can help you improve your social skills. If you're trying to learn how to ride a bike, for example, watching others ride can be very helpful in learning how the bike works. However, the quickest way to learn how to ride a bike is to just get on and start pedaling; sure, you'll probably fall over and over again, but eventually you'll get it right and figure out how to balance properly

This. is essentially what happens when you go out and start talking to more people. Sure, you might have a few awkward encounters, but eventually you will pick up on the cultural norms and patterns, as well as what is and isn't funny and appropriate. You will also learn how to speak elegantly and how to strike a balance. So go out there and start talking to more people! That's the secret.