How to Stop Being Shy and Become a Social Champion
If you don’t have a nice circle of
friends, that are fun and who also encourage you to get ahead in life, then
you’re either shy about meeting and making friends, or you’re not exactly sure
about how to do it. On the other hand, perhaps you’re already trying to meet
new people, but you’re getting the results you want, because you’re not using
the best strategies that could easily bring great people into your life.
In this article, I want to share
with you how you can stop shyness from sabotaging your social life, and how to
start meeting friends.
How
to Stop Being Shy – Competence over Confidence
If you want to “beat” your shyness
by learning to build confidence, it can take you a long time, because shyness
is deeply wired into your emotions.
Instead of trying to change your
shyness, I recommend that you focus on learning how to do what shyness is
preventing you from doing.
Social Competence is key. The more
you know about how the social world works, and how to socialize,
the less discouraging mistakes you’ll make, and the more friends you’ll have.
Here are a couple of tips you can
use:
Tip #1 – How to get comfortable in a
social situation
If you’re shy about going to a
party, or to a social gathering, then a simple switch that can help is to go
EARLY. If you do this, you’ll give yourself some time to get used to the
surrounding and feel comfortable gradually before it gets crowded with people.
If you know the host, then you could
offer to help out. That might allow you to be more comfortable by having
something to do.
Tip #2 – What to do when people
invite you, but you are nervous about accepting
Do you find yourself in the
situation of declining people’s invitations, but regretting it
afterwards, because you know you want to go?
What you can do in this situation,
is to accept the invitation, and have a back-up plan. This allows you to leave
the place if you get too nervous and can’t handle the social pressure. You can
tell the person that invited you that you don’t know how long you can stay,
because you’re expecting a call from someone and you may need to leave to help
him or her out with something.
This allows you to either stay if
you feel comfortable, or leave, if you don’t. Either way, you win.
Tip #3 – How to clearly express your
opinion, if you’re not used to it
Expressing your opinion is
important, but if you’re not used to doing it, it can feel scary. One way to
overcome this is to use humor. Offering ideas in a light or even silly manner
is less intimidating.
The more you focus on HOW to
socialize, the quicker you’ll find answers. I suggest that you stay open to new
ideas when it comes to social skills like keeping conversations going,
meeting people, and building your social circle.
How
to Meet New People and Make Friends
When you ask the average person what
they do to meet new friends, they often tell you that they leave it to chance,
and that “you can’t really control these things.” However, when you look at
their social life, you find that they’re not happy with the few
poor friendships they have.
If the people around you aren’t fun,
interesting to YOU, then you need to do something about it. If you leave it to
chance, it may never change.
Here are a couple of tips to get you
started:
Tip #1 – Meet people who are already
looking for friends
Instead of trying to meet people who
already have too many friends in their lives, connect with people who are also
looking for friends. These can be people who just came to the city (think
expats events), or people who go to meetups meetup.com. Also,
see if there is an internations.org group in your city.
Tip #2 – Don’t go befriending the
sharks!
If you’re shy or don’t have a lot of
social experience, don’t go make friends with people who are a thousand times
more socially apt than you are. Instead, you can find great people who are soft
spoken, introverted who would love to make friends with you.
Moreover, because you’ll be hanging
out with cool, interesting, introverted people, there is no risk
of embarrassment if you make a mistake. It’s ok if you make mistakes,
because that’s what helps you to learn.
Tip #3 – Learn To Get People
Interested In Making Friends with You
There are certain behaviors that
make some people more attractive to friends than others. It’s not just luck.
There are things that these “wanted” people do that makes everyone wants to
spend time with him or her… and it’s not about money, or looks…
It’s a combination of being
interested in what the other person says, sharing similar stories that happened
to you (or you just heard of), introducing people that you know to each other,
and focusing on what value you’re giving away…
These are just some ideas to get you
started…
…but if you want to really MASTER
this, to a point where you have a nice circle of highly interesting and fun
people, that not only are incredibly fun, but also support and listen to you,
then I recommend that you start setting up your Action-Plan to meet and new
friends.
The best time to start making new
friends is now.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-to-stop-being-
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