Other articles from “Get a Social Life From Scratch” series.
For the next several weeks, I’ll devote my time to writing on how you can become more social beginning at ground zero. The articles series will cover a range of topics including how to get out of your shell, how to feel more confident around people, how to become more outgoing, how to handle rejection, how you can reveal your hidden social abilities, improving your communication skills and many other social skills.
This article, which explains some key points for the subsequent articles, is an introduction to the whole series. The goal of this series is to arm you with information that helps you to build your social circle from the ground up to the degree at which you would feel “social enough”. I can’t teach you how to become a highly extroverted person and I don’t want to (as my strong belief is that you should honor your true personality).
The primary focus of the next few articles is to provide you quality advice that you can use to get an average social life (like a group of mates to hang out with on weekends). So, that in the end, you’d feel less anxious and needy and more comfortable and relaxed with your social issues overall.
We’ll begin with how you can get a social life without anyone’s help. I’ll provide you some important tips on how you can get started on enjoying a social life without any interference from anyone. What you’ll discover, as you do this, is that you are already a self-sustained person. This approach will enable us to build a solid foundation of the most basic social skills and gain vital “real world” experience. As a result, you’ll become more confident and less needy.
Once this is done, we’ll transition into establishing connections with other folks. During this step, we’ll cover how you can become more noticeable to other folks and devirtualization. There will be a lot of attention given to the topic of creating (or recreating) your social circle. We’ll be looking at the various ways you can make new friends and reconnect with old ones as well.
Another article will highlight the controversy of leaving some friends that you currently communicate with in order to attain the goal of having a social life. We’ll also look at how you can find the balance between the neediness of having a social life to the necessity of getting time alone.
The series comes on the heels of what I took while trying to become socialized. Thus, you will have personal, real-life stories and examples to work with.
When giving advice, I’ll try to make it as universal as I possibly can so anybody – man or woman – can use it. With that in mind, I’m not going to make use of general thoughts and phrases. With a step-by-step guide, you’ll get a tremendous amount of information and recommendations to help you on your way to gaining a social life.
Bear in mind that you probably won’t be able to apply the advice I give right away because of your own situation and circumstances. Thus, you can make adjustments in the way you feel it’s more effective for your predicaments.
What Happened When I Hit Rock Bottom
When my 19th birthday approached, I was completely broke socially. It was the most awful birthday I’d ever had. I was having difficulties in my studies at the university. I was suffering from panic attacks. And, because of that, I was waiting for them to strike at any point and unable to relax and be myself. I lost all my old friends and didn’t try making new ones. I literally felt like a social outsider.
It seemed like I had already missed the important parts of my life, never going to parties nor having a girlfriend. There was that strong feeling that my life was just passing me by and I was completely letting it.
Remember the phrase, “it’s always darkest just before dawn”? It was a phrase that people would use to cheer me up especially on this birthday. However, it was the starting point from which my social life began getting better.
Are you desperate about your current social issues? Do you spend your weekends at home… alone? Were you, at one time, a social person but lost all connections with your friends? Then, with the help of this series, I hope I can get you to improve your social situation.
You will face some obstacles along the way. And, you might become discouraged at some point. However, you have to keep going if you want to see an improvement in your social situation. It may take months or years, but you don’t want to give up at any point especially if you don’t get immediate results.
According to one proverb, “Hope dies last”. I’d rather say, “Persistence dies last” since it’ll take persistence to succeed. You may lose your hope; however, keep taking actions, day by day, and when the first results start to show up, the hope will come alive too.
I Sincerely Ask You for Feedback
Do you have a question, comment or just a thought regarding this series? Don’t hesitate and send it to me via my contact form. Your feedback will help me better understand what you’re interested in, what kind of value you expect to gain out of my articles and what issues I should pay more attention to while writing my next article.
If you’re reading this article in the year 2020, and have got a question – you can still contact! Why? Because, I plan on keeping this site up and running for as long as I can… just to help you and others like you.
June 2nd, 2012. Revised: July 31th, 2012