Have you always somehow felt that other people seem to think that you are weird?
You might have always thought that this stems from the fact that you suffer from a little bit of shyness and social anxiety, and this “aura” seems to give off a “vibe” that causes other people to avoid you.
You might not notice it at first, but slowly you will tend to feel that other people seem to be treating you a little bit different from others, and that people don’t seem to take you as seriously as others.
Over time this will get increasingly frustrating to the extent that you just want to pull out all of your hairs! Because you know that you are giving off a creeping vibe that seems to repel people, but you just don’t know what is wrong with you and how you are going to fix that!
This used to actually happen to me a lot, and boy can I tell you how frustrating it really was to not be able to pinpoint the exact reason even though I knew that I had a problem.
Luckily, thanks to two methods, I was able to get past some of these issues and not care about what other people think of me anymore, and feel less socially awkward.
Without further ado, here are the two simple methods:
1.Hone and tune your “Social Skills”
If you have ever had any friends who play the guitar for the first time, you would probably have heard them playing a guitar out of tune. Was that really fun to listen to? I betcha it wasn’t at all, one single bit!
An out-of-tune guitar will never be able to play a good song no matter how skilled the guitar player is, unless he tunes and maintains the guitar regularly. This analogy applies to your social skills too!
Do you sometimes feel that you always seem to try to find the correct words and phrases to say, but somehow your tone and choice of words just seem a bit “off”? Well, it’s the same problem as the guitar. The only solution here is to tune your social skills regularly!
So how do you actually tune your social skills regularly? Well, there is only really one way – and that is to talk to more people and more often. Imagine if you stay at home the whole day for one month without talking to more than 2 people a day. Do you think that your social skills would deteriorate by the end of the month? Of course it would!
If you actually take the time to carefully think about it, the people who seem the least weird and social awkward are actually just the ones who spend a lot of their time just talking to people. Think about the coolest guy in your class, do you think that he’s quiet, or does he actually go around talking to many people, even if just for a short while?
The reason why this works well is pretty simple. When you actually start talking to more people and spending a lot of time on it, you would slowly begin to develop a kind of intuition from what to say next, based on your experiences and what the other people in the conversation replies to you. It’s similar to playing a new music instrument or a new game, it might feel awkward and difficult the first few times you are doing it, but slowly over time you being to learn how to do it automatically.
So, if you really want to get over being socially awkward, then you definitely need to get out of your house right now and talk to more people! Even if it’s just asking the price of a piece of shirt at a departmental store!
The next method might seem a bit peculiar, but might ring a bell to some of you, and that is to :
2.Think of People As Mirrors
In my quest to overcome social anxiety and shyness, I have slowly begun to realize that the people around you are actually mirrors and just a reflection of yourself.
In the past, when I suffered from a great deal of anxiety and always felt anxious and tense around people, I would always seem to find that the people around me also seemed to become more cautious and defensive when they were around me. This caused me a great deal of difficulties in trying to make new friends.
But as I slowly took the steps to overcome my social anxiety and start to become more relaxed, people also slowly started to open up to me.
And this is the reason why I say people are like “mirrors” – how you feel inside would actually be reflected in other people’s behaviours towards you.
Therefore, it is extremely important for you to find ways and techniques to lessen your social anxiety when you are around people. If you always tend to feel nervous, anxious, depressed or sad when you are around other people, they will be able to feel it easily, and be repelled off by you even more.
If you understand all of these and want to get rid of your social anxiety once and for all, then you should definitely go ahead. If you do not know where to start, this article here: The Cure of Social Anxiety might be a good start for you.
I certainly hope that more people can become like me and leave their social anxiety behind and change their life for the better, just like how I have done it in the past!