I notice that you’ve listed things you do that are not working. Can you think of people you interact with who seem to have achieved victory? What do they do? How do other people respond? It may be easier to decide if improv or rejection therapy is helping if you have more metrics to check to see if people are comfortable and/or enjoying conversations with you.
Feelings of confidence are an internal signal, and not a very trustworthy one, since you will feel unconfident when you’re experimenting. Look for some external signals like the body language of people you’re talking to (arms uncrossed, duchenne smiles, etc). Combine rejection therapy and data gathering and ask some friends outright what you could improve. (Tell them to be specific).
One thing that I did was to notice some people who seemed good at socializing and then just try to impersonate some aspects of what they did. Don’t mimic to the point of parody, but pick out a few specific things they do (relaxed, splayed leg body language, asks questions to draw out others, etc) and then just try them out for a week.
Other people seem to be able to sit down and assimilate themselves into a group conversation, when I do this I rarely end up saying anything.
Yeah, I think that feeling unconfident is largely the cause, so it’s something that I should try to avoid even though it is an especially poor internal signal. I should try to make myself update on some more reliable signals like those.
Yeah, I should try that more. My main issues with mimicing successful people is that I have trouble mustering the emotion to do it effectively.
I notice that you’ve listed things you do that are not working. Can you think of people you interact with who seem to have achieved victory? What do they do? How do other people respond? It may be easier to decide if improv or rejection therapy is helping if you have more metrics to check to see if people are comfortable and/or enjoying conversations with you.
Feelings of confidence are an internal signal, and not a very trustworthy one, since you will feel unconfident when you’re experimenting. Look for some external signals like the body language of people you’re talking to (arms uncrossed, duchenne smiles, etc). Combine rejection therapy and data gathering and ask some friends outright what you could improve. (Tell them to be specific).
One thing that I did was to notice some people who seemed good at socializing and then just try to impersonate some aspects of what they did. Don’t mimic to the point of parody, but pick out a few specific things they do (relaxed, splayed leg body language, asks questions to draw out others, etc) and then just try them out for a week.
Other people seem to be able to sit down and assimilate themselves into a group conversation, when I do this I rarely end up saying anything.
Yeah, I think that feeling unconfident is largely the cause, so it’s something that I should try to avoid even though it is an especially poor internal signal. I should try to make myself update on some more reliable signals like those.
Yeah, I should try that more. My main issues with mimicing successful people is that I have trouble mustering the emotion to do it effectively.