**\*Disclaimer\*:** You can disagree with my approach, and that’s completely fine. This is just a small guide on how I improved my social skills.

# Lots and Lots of Practice

Now, I can understand that if you’re introverted, it can be extremely difficult to talk to people in general. So, it’s important to take some baby steps. One way that I drastically improved my social skills, is by using Discord.

For this to work, I want you to think of something you enjoy/are passionate about, and consider joining a server with like-minded people. If you don’t know where to find servers like that, type in a keyword into [THIS SITE HERE](https://disboard.org/). Spend some time scrolling through and find a community that interests you. Once you’re there, see what other people are discussing and push yourself to join in. Yes it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll grow because of it. After it becomes too easy, you can start going into voice chats and discussing things with the people you meet there.

You want to progressively challenge yourself each and every week. The end goal should be to get out of the house, find events that are going on in your area (that interest you) and start talking to people there. Other alternatives include: getting into sports, getting a new job, going to the bar, etc.

# Being present

We live in a world that’s filled with distraction. We endlessly scroll through social media and waste tons of time watching meaningless drivel. While it provides us with a lot of dopamine, it also lowers our attention spans and makes us more susceptible to getting lost in thought.

Now, how can we combat this? BEING PRESENT (and spending less time on social media lol). I’ll give you a quick exercise you can start implementing now. Have you ever noticed that when you talk to someone, you think about what to say next? Instead of doing that, the next time you have a conversation, be conscious of each and every time that you wander into your head. If you’re thinking about what it is you want to say, shift your focus to your breath and the sound of the person’s voice you’re talking to. The goal is to keep your mind quiet and give your full attention to the person in front of you. They will feel heard and enjoy talking to you far more.

# Loving Yourself

Alright, alright, I get it. You’ve heard so many people say that it’s important to love yourself. Bleugh, right? No. The main reason why it’s often so difficult to talk to people (at least in my case), was because I feared judgement from the people I was approaching. However, once I started investing more time into myself, I developed a sense of self-confidence like never before.

So, how can I go about loving myself (is the million dollar question)? Well, it’s by engaging in acts of self-care. One of the most beneficial things you could ever do for yourself is journal. It’s not uncommon for people to push their thoughts and feelings away (which is an act of self-hate), so by writing their thoughts and feelings down, they are accepting themselves, which inevitably leads to more self-confidence. Next time something bothers you or makes you really happy, write/type it down. Embrace it in all of it’s glory. You can also start working out, going for more walks, treating yourself/doing things that make YOU happy, improving your sleep, correcting your diet, etc.

The more you invest into yourself, the less you’ll care about what others think, which will make it smoother for you to talk with others. Sure, it might still be nerve-wracking even then, but you will be overthinking much less because you trust and love yourself.

# Pushing Through The Discomfort

Here’s the sad reality of it all. Change is uncomfortable. Nothing about stepping into the unknown is comforting. In fact, it’s terrifying. For that reason, it’s important to realize that if you let that fear takeover and do nothing, **NOTHING WILL CHANGE!**

So here’s what you should do. First acknowledge that fear and the unknown are EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. Tell your fear (as if it were a person), *I know you’re trying to protect me, but you are stopping me from doing the things I want.*

Once you accept that you’re not in a life/death situation and that simply talking to someone won’t harm you in the grand scheme of things, you become free. The only thing to do next is TAKE ACTION. Unless you take action, nothing about your reality will change.

So, here’s a little exercise you can do moving forward. If you notice that you start feeling fearful towards something that isn’t harmful in any way, HIGHLY consider taking action and DOING IT. If that’s too difficult for you to do, try spending some time thinking about WHY you want to speak to more people in the first place.

Establishing what your WHY is can really help you with making a change. Think about how your life would be if you were talking to more people. What kind of people are you talking to? What kind of memories are you making? Are you excited about something specific once you make more friends/form new relationships? Consider writing down your ideal life as a sociable person and remind yourself of that whenever you feel the fear taking over. You need to fall in love with talking to people more than you enjoy staying comfortable and doing nothing. Otherwise, you will always fall back to living in fear.

# Final Thoughts

My end goal with this whole guide is to highlight that to improve, you have to push yourself and put in some heavy, dedicated work. Yeah it sucks, but it sucks WAYYYYYY less than being unhappy and unfulfilled with life. You only have one shot at this life, so don’t waste it!

PS: If you thought any of the advice I gave was helpful, do let me know! I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this! Thanks for reading 🙂

\-Daniel

1 comment
Leave a Reply
You May Also Like