I am extremely introverted and could go months without interacting with people outside of work and my partner. That wasn’t necessarily a problem, until I started to feel like I was just floating through life without making any impact or being impacted, and it started to feel a bit pointless.

Whenever someone would ask me to hang out, I would wrestle with two options: (1) how to politely decline without hurting their feelings, or (2) go to the event and feel totally drained after, but not have the guilt of turning someone down.

Now, I go through a quick checklist and if it passes I HAVE to say yes. It’s a weight off my shoulder to not have to wrestle with those options.

Another benefit so far is that I seem to have less discomfort socializing. Interacting as an “experiment” feels like a form of dissociation where I’m more of an observer or actor. From that perspective, if things go wrong it wouldn’t be mortifying so much as an interesting turn of events in a semi-fictitious story.

Lastly, I’m more curious about life. Instead of the usual dog walk and puzzle, something totally unexpected could take place. For example, last night I discovered yacht rock. Next weekend I’m going to a ballet. Next month I’m going to a parade and have to dress up, something I would never choose to do on my own.

I hope this experiment helps me to be less judgmental. I also hope to improve my skills talking to a variety of people, which would help my career. The real winner would be if I start to enjoy it on a deeper level, if I’m able to connect with others in a more honest and authentic way.

I used to get pretty bad headaches after socializing, or stutter around certain intimidating people, so I don’t know how I will deal with that yet. I also get super anxious if the person I bring doesn’t jive with the company, so I’m not sure how long I could endure that. But so far it’s a good start.

17 comments

  1. That’s what I did for the last year and a half. It’s great. Life is for the living. Go have fun.

  3. Nobody invites me to do things. I have been doing that constantly last few months. Only works when people notice your existence, so I have to make just enough of a tiny impact people start to notice

  6. How do you have a partner? I don’t understand how people so introverted get in relationships. Asking for self because I can’t do it

  7. If you want some motivation, go watch the movie ‘Yes Man’ from Jim Carrey. I personally find it quite amusing.

  9. I hope everything goes well for you and also hope you get better luck than me.

    When i decided to say yes to everything people stopped inviting me.

  10. That’s a pretty good start, awesome!

    I did this myself too where I accepted any invitation from family even if I had no motivation at all because I didn’t know if its actual demotivation or my “introvert part”.

    That helped me get a feeling for when I simply don’t want to participate or if I simply leave my comfort zone.

    I also would suggest you take notice of what exactly is making you feel uncomfortable and actually write it down and also what exactly is robbing your energy.

    The more often you do this, the better you will understand and will understand yourself better.

    With every other event, you will have more and more information and with every additional bit of intel, you can question all of them.

    A common reason for getting introverted symptoms is experiencing a hugely emotional experience in terms of receiving attention.

    This leads to constantly overthinking “what other people might think” about you.

    So your subconscious mind will not even give you anything to talk about because it’s trying to protect you from this emotional damage.

    So questioning limiting beliefs that involve “other people’s opinion” (short: opo) will help you to get rid of this belief, step by step.

    Eventually, you will learn that “opo” doesn’t matter at all. You may even understand what “haters gonna hate” means. You can do whatever you want, there will always be haters, people who talk BS about you or what you say. But there will also always be people who like what you say and totally agree with you. So understanding this on a fundamental level will allow you to say “Goodbye” to haters and “Welcome!” to people who like your natural self.

    For now, just continue your experiment, and don’t give up. Endure it, try to celebrate the fact that you actually doing it instead of regretting it. I remember when I was once in a Turkish disco and was full of fake confidence, walked to the dance hall, and immediately regretted it. I was like “wtf am I doing here? I don’t belong here..”.

    So my plan was to walk through once and then back again through everyone, right back to my sitting place, and just whip my head to the beat. At that exact moment, the dance floor opened up and a hot Russian lady was smiling at me and walked slowly to me, and started to dance with me. This was the craziest scenario ever! Not even Walt Disney would have made up such a story but it actually happened. And she couldn’t speak German or English, and neither could I speak Russian, yet it still somehow worked for that night (even tho her friend/husband was very angry about the following events.. xD).

    No matter how uncomfortable you feel, try throwing yourself into any situation and watch what happens. Always ask yourself “What is the worst thing that could happen?” and if it’s not “I could easily die”, then go for it.

    Also, don’t punish yourself if you allow your fears to win. Sometimes the fear will be bigger than the courage. It happens, don’t give up on such accidents. There are no mistakes, just tiny accidents. The brain loves to exaggerate and make one bad situation into “I f*cked up my life” which is simply not true, it’s just one/a few scenarios that you can change in the future. Everyone, literally EVERYONE on this planet, will let his fear win multiple times in their life. It’s the most normal thing. Eventually, you will learn to let your courage take the lead but until this happens, you first have to practice it.

    Wish you best success, keep us on track =)

  11. At this point I wish there was atleast someone to invite me somewhere. The last time I had something like this happen to me was probably more than 2 years ago

  12. Hey me and a bunch of friends are gonna burn the city of Philadelphia to the ground because the eagles lost so you want to join?

  13. I did this when I started college. I made myself say yes to everything unless I had a good reason to think the activity wouldn’t be safe. I got to experience a lot of incredible opportunities this way.

    The only problem was that it depended on the people around me inviting me to stuff. They did, but I missed out on a lot of things outside my friend group because I never challenged myself to be the one initiating activities. It’s reactive instead of proactive.

    My junior year of college I worked at a summer camp where I found myself surrounded by a different group of people. I did a lot of day’s off hanging out with them being way outside my comfort zone (hanging out at bars) and it was nice to learn my limit. Camp lasted 2 months and after I spent the first month hanging out with them, I spent the second by myself reading and enjoying the quiet. It felt really good saying no to social activities because I knew I wasn’t missing out on anything.

  15. That’s a great idea. I’m super introverted as well, after any event I need like two weeks to recharge. I feel like I’m becoming a hermit. I’m going to take your social experiment and apply it to my life lol. Let us know how it goes!!! Best of luck 🤞

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like