Excerpts of Life
Focusing On Your Needs Heavily Relates to Social Success
this will change your social game forever
I’ve always aimed to please people in my conversations.
I have this lingering belief that I am not that great at socializing.
I analyze the people I consider ’socially successful’, watching their smiles, gentle eye contact, funny jokes, and how they usually take initiative.
These tips work fine. They increase my social success, bit by bit.
However, these tips make me feel mechanical — like I’m trying too hard. I stop understanding the smaller nuances of conversation.
With these tips, my mind overthinks and gets clouded during my interactions, and I fail to stay completely present with the other person.
Ultimately, I lose my authenticity.
However, there’s something that’s changed the way I look at social interactions.
A technique I call ‘Social happiness’.
Knowing what you want in your interactions
Growing up, we’ve been taught to stand up to countless bullies, or people that drain our energy.
We call that setting boundaries.
To understand the social game, let’s first know what we want to achieve.
Let’s set a boundary with ourselves.
To determine what I wanted in my social interactions, I asked myself:
What do I want my interactions to be like?
I came up with three words.
Authentic. Comfortable. Light.
Authentic: I want to express myself fully and without constraint (mostly, no overtly rude stuff).
Comfortable: I want to feel settled in the social group, and not need to prove myself.
Light: I want my conversations to be all ranges of hilarious, full of stories, entertaining, and full of light banter. I want to have a carefreeness about me.
First, ask yourself: What do you want your interactions to be like? (Come up with at least three adjectives)
Tip: If you can’t think of any adjectives, think of a social interaction that’s made you feel content and happy. Recall its details.
Interacting in the most fulfilling + happy way possible
I now knew what I wanted. I now knew how to be socially happy.
The next thing I had to do was practice.
With those three words in mind, I approached as many people as possible.
Some of those interactions went well. I could feel a sense of ease and comfort as I interacted with them.
I focused on pleasing myself to stop myself from focusing on pleasing others.
I wanted to have a conversation that was meaningful to me. A conversation that met my needs.
Some conversations didn’t go well. Those were the conversations with conflict in beliefs. Perhaps they were looking for different things in their interactions.
Now that you know what you want, interact as if you’ve mastered those traits.
Inherently, we all have.
I’m me. I’ll always be me. That’s my most authentic self.
I can be light. Whenever crafting conversations, I can try speaking with a lightness in my voice. I don’t take everything too seriously. I poke fun at people. I live with just a bit more upbeatness and positivity.
And last, comfort. This was hard to embody for me. I wasn’t comfortable with strangers.
But I knew that with authenticity and lightness within me, that’s all I can do to make myself comfortable.
I changed my mindset, knowing that no one is socially confident. We’re all awkward in some ways, waiting for people to come along and make us comfortable.
I focused on having interactions where we would both be comfortable in our presence.
Last, I internalized that not all social interactions have to go well. Many will fail. Many will take time to build.
However, I still blamed myself for the failures.
In response, I learned to focus on the journey instead of the results, to build genuine connections.
You forgive others so easily. Forgive yourself if you do make mistakes.
You’ve tried your best. The interaction could’ve gone many ways.
Reflect, move on, and be grateful that you tried.
Final thoughts
The interactions that I got and will get is hardly perfect.
On my social journey, self-doubt often dwells in my head.
I consciously have to remind myself that these are the things that I want to embody, with the interactions I want to have.
Authenticity. Comfort. Lightness.
Eventually, these things will become a part of me.
Confidence is a mix of experience and a lack of self-doubt. — Alex Mathers
Someday, my social interactions will become nearly effortless.
But until then, I’ll continue aiming for meaningful interactions.
Thanks for reading!
