1. Body Posture & Eye Contact | Social Anxiety Blueprint
As you’ve been reading the introductory stories leading up to this actual module, you may be anxiously waiting for me to give you a purple pill that will shoot unicorns out of your nostrils and magically dissipate all your anxiety into the ether.
Yeah, no — such thing does not exist.
A lot of improving social anxiety comes down to doing the little things in disgusting amount of repetition until you become better.
It is the 1%’s added each and every day — that you don’t notice on a daily basis — but will make a difference weeks, months, or years from right now.
That being said, this series, the Social Anxiety Blueprint, will be the road map to your social success.
The first thing we need to work on is your body posture and eye contact.
If you’re reading this story, I know exactly what your body posture looks like as you’re reading this — Slouched shoulders, hunched back, facial expressiveness of that of a potato.
These are all signs of contraction, not expansion. We’re going to work on this.
Confidence starts from body posture, facial expression, and eye contact. This is the foundation. The base of the pyramid. The prerequisite course before Human Anatomy 4501. Let’s get the class started.
1. Chest Out
This little adjustment itself will fix the hunched back problem. Open up your chest. Think of it as sticking your sternum out. This pumps more blood and oxygen throughout your body and helps your think more positively.
2. Shoulder Blades Rolled Back
This complements Step 1. Think of it as pinching your two shoulder blades together. The point isn’t to stick your chest out as far as possible. The purpose of this is to fix the hunched back and stand straight with conviction.
3. Head Back
Imagine there’s a string tied to the top of your head on one end and on your back on the other end. All it’s doing is pulling your head slightly back. This will also prevent neck disk in the long run.
4. Ease Up Facial Muscles
It’s a bit uncomfortable to have a conversation with someone who looks like someone stole their cookie for the entire duration of the interaction. Do a yawn right now. That’s how relaxed your facial muscles should be. Relax your eyes and have a subtle smile as you’re talking (or when the other person is talking).
5. Eye Contact
You can tell a lot about the way someone looks at you. If someone comes up and talks to you but is looking away as they’re talking, what does that convey about them ? They most likely don’t engage the people around them, since they don’t have conviction in what they have to say. Therefore, proper eye contact is extremely important.
Eye contact does not mean you deathly stare into the other person’s soul. It’s not a staring contest. Open your eyes clearly yet relaxed. You casually look into the other person’s eyes. This will come more naturally as you get Step 4 down. Look away occasionally, but if you struggle with eye contact in the first place, focus more on just not breaking eye contact.
Your Mission
Eye Contact
Go to a public area (mall, streets, bar) and go talk to 3 strangers. If you don’t know what to talk about, just ask for where the nearest coffee shop is. Stay in each interaction for at least 1 minute. As you’re talking with them, you are not allowed to break eye contact. You can blink, but you cannot look away.
This will feel unnatural and awkward. When I first did this I had a burning sensation in my chest from all the discomfort. But fuck it, growth never comes from being comfortable. You usually would not look a person in the eyes the entire duration of the interaction. However, as an exercise to improve your eye contact, you will need to get a habit of doing so. Don’t try to come up with some witty one-liners, just focus on the eye contact.
Once you’ve completed your mission, first of all be proud of yourself, then report back to me on any of my social media platform. Message me how it went, and let’s talk about it. You got this.
