I think this is good advice but it’s worth mentioning:
1. This kind of thing doesn’t come naturally for a lot of people (myself included)
2. It doesn’t always work even if you do it well. Perhaps the other people are also quite shy.
So the important thing is practice, and to kind of brace yourself going in: “If it doesn’t click with these specific people, I don’t care. This is a practice run and I’ll practice again until it works.”
I’ve found that, paradoxically, one of the things that makes relationships hard is wanting them. When you really desire a friendship or other relationship with someone new, you tend to come off as over-eager or awkward, and that’s off-putting for the other person. Conversely when you can be casual and unconcerned, it makes you seem confident and happy, which other people are drawn to.
So there really is a “fake it till you make it” thing going on, which is quite hard to learn IMO, but can be learned with practice.
Not sure why others are downvoting, this is really great advice for people who have social anxiety - low risk, real enough to be meaningful, usually narrowly focused on a shared interest, prepares you for the real thing. Downvote me as well if you like, but I’d be curious why people don’t agree
It's not at all clear to me that it does prepare you for the real thing. I think one could very plausibly argue the opposite: it's so massively easy-mode that it gets you used to social interactions being easy and low-friction, and through habit it raises the barrier to practising the real thing.
Agree, I think a simpler example of how this happens is remembering names. Everybody had zoom names on screen so had "easy mode" doing this for over a year, and most people I've talked to had some difficulty remembering names since.
1. This kind of thing doesn’t come naturally for a lot of people (myself included)
2. It doesn’t always work even if you do it well. Perhaps the other people are also quite shy.
So the important thing is practice, and to kind of brace yourself going in: “If it doesn’t click with these specific people, I don’t care. This is a practice run and I’ll practice again until it works.”
I’ve found that, paradoxically, one of the things that makes relationships hard is wanting them. When you really desire a friendship or other relationship with someone new, you tend to come off as over-eager or awkward, and that’s off-putting for the other person. Conversely when you can be casual and unconcerned, it makes you seem confident and happy, which other people are drawn to.
So there really is a “fake it till you make it” thing going on, which is quite hard to learn IMO, but can be learned with practice.