loony Posted October 6, 2005 Posted October 6, 2005 To be honest I do not really care what you or anyone else thinks is weird. I'm not the kind of person who spends his entire life living with a junior high school mindset, so you won't be seeing me terrified of what other people think of my opinions. Do you want advice or not? it seems contradictive if you want to know how people think on the one hand and then tell them that you don't care about their opinions on the other hand. A couple of posters told you that the comparison of people you interacted with to robots was a mistake and lacked humility as johan had confirmed (johan, good post by the way! I really liked the following: "You must forget the idea that you "deserve" anything at all, because life doesn't keep score." ), but you discard these objections as mere opinions that you don't have to pay attention to, because you're not in highschool anymore. If you honestly believe that aspiring to success in creating an awesome social life is naive, then I'm afraid there really isn't anything any advice of yours, at least along those lines, could offer me. I regret to inform you that I plan on remaining naive and accomplishing what you apparently believe to be a fool's quest. I call your idea of a "social life" naive. Do you want friends to have friends and connect with them on a genuine human level or do you want "friends" to boost your ego? How can you truly have friends if you're not willing to see that people are also human beings with flaws? Thank you, Angelina. You sound very sweet and thoughtful. Yep, totally unlike me.
Author Lights Posted October 8, 2005 Author Posted October 8, 2005 I call your idea of a "social life" naive. Do you want friends to have friends and connect with them on a genuine human level or do you want "friends" to boost your ego? How can you truly have friends if you're not willing to see that people are also human beings with flaws? I don't ever remember anything regarding having any intention of seeking "friends" in order to boost my ego. This appears to be an invention on your part earlier up on this page. Of course all people (naturally, myself included) are human beings with flaws. But I don't see why a man can't have his standards. Unless, of course, it's somehow unrealistic to seek out and look to be sought out by humans of a reasonably advanced degree of social skill, and to attempt to improve one's own social abilities to the point where real confidence can be achieved, leading to a virtuous instead of vicious circular effect. Lights, I'm in much the same boat as you. I started a thread about a similar situation a few weeks ago. A few thoughts: - it sounds to me like your body language and vocal intonation are conveying a very clear "keep away" to the people to whom you speak - another factor seems to be that you have a problem I don't: you also have difficulty tracking other people's body language as a way of determining if they are receptive to being approached I've occasionally tried checking my body language. Strangely, "opening up" my body language hasn't seemed to have any effect. You're absolutely right about the part about me having difficulty tracking other people's body language to determine their receptivity. What's worse about my experience with it though is that it seems nearly impossible to apply any of that in the first place. Almost always, either I'm moving too quickly or other people just pass by too quickly for that, or I or they are located in areas which aren't specifically meant for socializing, so no real signals of receptivity or lack thereof are exchanged at all. In those cases, if I feel like approaching I'd do so anyways for lack of any other choice--very few people have ever approached me. I've probably only twice ever seen clear, direct signals indicating receptiveness to approach (and I'll admit I screwed up those times). - where I'm unclear on what you do is what the context and purpose of the conversations you start is -- walking up to strangers and talking about nothing in particular requires a lot more social skill than meeting someone at an art gallery and having something intelligent to say about the painting you're both standing infront of - I agree about the confidence vicious cycle, though. I'm there too. If you discover how to crack that particular problem, let me know. I seek to be able to have a true belief that I will be successful to a reasonable extent in all such situations with most any context or purpose. There may be something available to talk about at the given place and time (as with your example of the art gallery), or there may not be (as with your example of dealing with a stranger chatting about nothing in particular). I definitely will let you know when I do--I know for a fact that this is possible. You must gain total faith in yourself that you are desirable, regardless of how you perceive the feedback you've gotten. You have to have faith that you won't let yourself down no matter what happens. You may not succeed, but you won't let yourself down. This is one thing that seems to be stopping me, as I wrote to the others--how does one maintain such a belief when everyday life and an overwhelming preponderance of past life experience shows one the contrary?
sanne Posted October 8, 2005 Posted October 8, 2005 you just have to ignore it man, there is no easy answer to that question. i suspect everyone here suffers from the same problem at times when we are feeling low. the most important thing is realizing that life is short, and anyday could be your last. that usually gets me out of those self-loathing moods.
Author Lights Posted October 26, 2005 Author Posted October 26, 2005 you just have to ignore it man, there is no easy answer to that question. i suspect everyone here suffers from the same problem at times when we are feeling low. the most important thing is realizing that life is short, and anyday could be your last. that usually gets me out of those self-loathing moods. I must not have explained the lack of confidence thing too well. What you have brought up is an effective method of spurring oneself out of inaction, but not necessarily of generating real confidence in one's abilities--these are very different things, although they can be correlated. More specifically, lack of confidence can do things besides merely cause people enough pain to choose inaction. For some particularly nasty examples, think of self-sabotage or of subconscious assumptions of rejection (I'm sure some people here have heard of people who've been waved to and the recipient of the wave looks behind him/her assuming that the wave couldn't have been to them). I've had a couple episodes like that in the past, although not as salient as looking behind myself when being waved to (the one I remember most recently was not realizing I should have smiled that split-second, only to find out too late that that split-second delay shot the encounter). If I were to gain real confidence in the effectiveness of my dating skills, subconscious behaviors like this would not exist in my life. (We've all heard that one should expect success, but it's difficult to subconsciously expect one's overtures to be accepted when one's known little but rejection, direct and indirect, for over a decade straight!) How does one get past this?
Recommended Posts