Money, health and productivity aren’t satisfying if you don’t have any friends. It can be even worse to be stuck inside a social group that doesn’t respect you, forces you to conform or discourages you from making improvements in your life. Social skills are vital, because our greatest victories and most sobering defeats will be with and through other people.
This is a longish article (~2000 words), exploring the idea of how to become more social, expanding on the ideas as I’ve written about them before. You might want to bookmark this post if you don’t have time to read it all now.
How to Be More Social
I became a lot more social when I moved from my smaller town to the larger city of Winnipeg. Before my move, I hadn’t built many strong relationships in my hometown. This was partially due to my personal development efforts, as I distanced myself from the crowd to work on myself. It was only after I moved that I realized I was missing a huge chunk of life, and I needed to take steps to fix it.
I’d like to go over the steps I took to become more outgoing. So far, nearly three years later, those steps have been very successful. I have several groups of friends, and any evening I spend by myself is a matter of choice, not a lack of options. Although this article is about becoming more social in general, the same principles I’ll talk about here have improved my dating life, including meeting the woman I’m seeing right now.
First, Make it a Priority
If your social life is bankrupt, in order to change, you need to make it your top priority. This means you actually need to invest time meeting people, spending time with new friends and being outgoing. This can be hard for people who are less naturally outgoing for two reasons.
The first is that you might not value social activities as much. I felt the same way when I went to University, believing that all the drinking and partying was mostly a waste of time. Unfortunately, that value system got me into the problem of being isolated in the first place. You don’t need to spend every night in the bar to make friends, but if you want to be more social you need to start spending time where people are. Long nights playing MMORPGs or studying for final exams won’t help you meet people face to face.
The second problem can be the energy you need to put in to be social. If you’ve been living a quiet life for awhile, your social muscles probably aren’t very strong. Mine certainly weren’t. This can be uncomfortable if you’re going to social events where everyone seems to be having effortless fun, while you feel drained and awkward just trying to keep up.
The solution to the first problem is to re-evaluate your priorities. If building a strong circle of meaningful friends is important to you, your time should reflect that. The solution to the second problem is to not worry about it. Just like going to the gym, you’ll build social muscles so what drains you out initially will be relaxed and fun later.
What if your entire life is a mess? Should you make social skills a priority? My answer to this question is no. Personal excellence always has to come first. Without that, it’s likely that you won’t have built a strong enough individual life to make social relationships meaningful.
However, if you have a decent grip on the other realms of your life, but are struggling to build relationships, I suggest making it a top priority. Building social skills has ripple effects that help you in your career, finances, health and productivity, so it’s an important investment.
Want to Have More Fun? Be More Fun.
Life is a mirror, it tends to reflect whoever we are back to us in the people we meet and experiences we have. Interesting experiences only happens to interesting people. Fun events only occur for fun people. And, success only happens to successful people. This is the first rule of winning in any part of life.
Especially in your social life, you need to become the very thing you’re trying to attract. If you want to meet fun, exciting people, then you need to be more fun and exciting. If you want people to approach and meet you, you need to approach and meet other people. If you want to have fun, be more fun.
This isn’t an easy step, so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t accomplish it immediately. If you’re in an unfamiliar environment, it’s only human nature to close yourself up and be tense. Just realize that 95% of the time you’re not getting the results you want, it is because you’re not putting out the energy you expect back from other people.
Be Friendly, Not Cool
There is a lot of advice on the internet about trying to be cool. Much of it is associated with how to pick up women. I’m not going to judge that content, because some of it can be useful. But I think if anything can be said, it’s that people who try to be cool usually aren’t cool.
The scenario goes like this: the unsocial person sees that cool people are standoffish or arrogant. Therefore, they mirror that attitude becoming standoffish or arrogant. But this follows the first rule, and as a result, their environment mirrors them, being unfriendly and hostile.
Social skills are a mostly unconscious process. I’m sure everyone here can remember a time where they met someone incredibly friendly, but who was also incredibly socially awkward. However, the only way you can shake the feelings of awkwardness is to get used to the social norms of the people you’re meeting. And the only way you can do that is practice. Trying to fake confidence or project a false attitude is incredibly transparent.
I think a much better approach is to follow the first rule and treat other people how you want to be treated. If you want other people to be nice, friendly and fun in meeting you, do the same. If you take this attitude, it doesn’t take long to realize that the cool people aren’t arrogant or standoffish. They are the people who are friendly and outgoing, who introduce themselves to new people with a smile and pay attention when other people talk.
Cultivate a habit of friendliness. Friendliness, more than anything else, will improve your social skills. This means be willing to initiate conversations, say hi to people, and make the first move. If you’re not used to it, it takes a lot of energy. But, if you start small you can build it into an automatic part of your life.
Start in Your Comfort Zone
You don’t need to start by doing the most daring event, completely outside your comfort zone to get started. Although drastic measures can help, I think the internal dialog for many people goes like this:
- They want to go meet people, so they think of the biggest, most anxiety-ridden step.
- They pump themselves up to do this, but fail.
- They beat themselves up for lacking the willpower and start back at step one.
There are plenty of ways to meet people. Some require a lot more confidence and suave, like stopping to talk to people during a busy event. Others are fairly easy, like going to a Toastmasters meeting (where you will probably be greeted by several people as you walk in).
My advice is this: start with the low-hanging fruit. Don’t try building your confidence on the most daring social endeavors. Start with the easy ways to meet people and work your way up. As you gain more natural confidence, you can eventually bite off the social tasks that scare you the most.
When I started working out at the gym, I picked an amount of weight I could lift comfortably and slowly moved up. I didn’t go back and forth from the gym, chastising myself because I didn’t start with 100 lbs. Pick easy targets, build your confidence and move up.
Dispel Personality Myths
The biggest myth that holds people back from creating satisfying social lives is that introverts can’t be outgoing. I’m an introvert. As much as I hate labels, I would fit that definition. I enjoy time by myself and prefer one-to-one conversations to large groups.
However, my status as an introvert has nothing to do with my ability to be outgoing. Many people mistake me for an extrovert when I gladly introduce myself to strangers join in group discussions. Innate personality differences do matter. But, remember, that your desire to form a particular social life is also an innate personality difference. The fact that you want a certain experience is more important than any past history of success or failure.
Don’t chase a social life you don’t want, just because you feel you should. I’m never going to be a pickup artist, simply because I don’t have the desire. I’d much rather have deeper, emotionally satisfying relationships. But, if you do want something, never let the results of a questionnaire or beliefs of your current friends define what you’re capable of.
Be Socially Independent
I’ve written about social independence before. If you’re interested in becoming more social, then I’d suggest reading this article. Improving any area of your life often involves a dip. You need to get worse before you can get better. Sacrifice what you have, to start fresh.
The same is true of socializing. If your social life is already filled with friends you don’t really connect with deep-down, you have a choice. Either you can work to rebuild those relationships and be more authentic, or you can let them slip. Letting them slip is sometimes the best decision, since it opens you up to form new relationships with people you’re more compatible with.
If you spend a lot of time investing in personal development, you’ll probably eventually outgrow your social group. Most people don’t change significantly, so if you’re making rapid changes to your life, the people you originally connected with might be the same people that hold you back. Loyalty to those people is dangerous, since it hurts your growth and builds resentment.
My suggestion isn’t to cut them off entirely (unless they are completely destructive to your life), but to free up time and start venturing out on your own. If you build a separate, more compatible social circle, you’ll naturally shift your time towards new people.
Build Relationships, Don’t Just Start Them
One mistake I made early on, was to confuse social skills with the ability to meet people. That’s like making the confusion of running an online business with registering the website name. Meeting people is only the start, and if you get really good at meeting people, that does nothing for your social life unless you build lasting friendships.
Once you meet people you connect with, follow up with them. Invite them to things you’re doing that they might be interested in. This is even easier nowadays with instant messaging and Facebook, allowing you to build relationships faster.
Unless you want to be socially promiscuous (meeting many people for one evening, and never seeing them again), I’d suggest that at least half of your time improving your social skills should be devoted to improving the connections you’ve already made. The joy of building a strong group, is that once you build more friends, those friends make it easier to meet new people.
The ultimate goal of becoming more social isn’t to sleep with the most attractive person at the bar, or to have a posse of friends who follow you. The point is to enrich your life with people that inspire you, challenge you and imbue life with a richness that can’t come from private successes alone. I believe that’s a goal worth striving for.
I'm a speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking university student.
Really good article.
I’ll throw in some quick points that helped me in this area:
-I found the key to me being more friendly and sociable was just to make a rule to talk to people more than I naturally would. e.g, at work, chatting to coworkers instead of passing them in the hall.
-I found that my social life improved either at a trickle or in a big leap. If you join the right club or meet the right person with a cool group of friends who are happy to take you in, then you’ve got a new social circle almost overnight. At other times it feels like you can’t get anything started.
-I also found my actual social skills improved slowly or a lot at once. With the right opportunity and environment you can learn a lot and get a lot of practice in really quickly. Traveling was big for me in that regard. Hanging out with people who are cool, and accepting of you, also helps, because you can learn so much from watching them and it boosts your confidence.
-Another key for me, without going into too much detail, was learning to lighten up, especially about little irksome things that happen in social situations. When you’re easygoing everything is simpler, instead of getting peeved at people being late or joking around or whatever.
-Last one: Related to lightening up, I used to almost have a bad attitudes towards the fun side of socializing: goofing around, making dumb jokes, being loud, being ’shallow’ etc. I had this image of myself being this sober, mature, intellectual. One day I realized just because someone slips into that “party” frame of mind, doesn’t mean something is wrong with them. Sometimes being serious is right for the situation, at other times you have to let loose more.
The whole article speaks about goal-seeking on a higher level. If you are interested in finding out your true intentions I would recommend the art of meditation. It will help you on all levels. It’s almost like a promise
Vipassana, for example, which is a great start for most of us.
One effective practice I integrated is each week is to have lunch with a new friend and lunch with an old friend.
Chris,
Great points, from the expert. I completely agree.
With regards to your last point, some of my happiest moments in life have been sharing loud, stupid and crass jokes with friends. No, it’s not deep and the jokes may not really be funny, but the laughter is real and the people are. Take your ideas and image too seriously and you can miss that.
-Scott
Scott,
Merry Christmas! Great post. I especially like how you end by emphasizing the building of relationships, not just starting them.
Danny
once again amazing post, i remember reading something similar that you wrote last year about socializing… keep these posts going Scott!
thanks
[...] How To Be More Social [...]
Thanks so much Scott, this is exactly the kind of advice I need right now. It’s easy to read and read to avoid the fear of getting more social, but like Steve Pavlina says in his article on Calibration, you’ve got to get out in the field and practice. The one thing I found most helpful there was embracing being a newbie, and actually being up-front about it rather than trying to hide. I think that’s one of the big detractors when you are actually ‘in the field’, because you feel so bad about having no skills, you just quit rather than persisting.
Another worthy idea I can think of, and this relates a little to Gustav’s suggestion for meditation, is to imagine your best self – being fun, playful, enjoying the moment. I know if I meditated on this prior to a social event, it would help to put me in that state.
Hi Scott,
Great, honest article. Totally agree with your point on maintaining/building friendships and not just making new ones. Social skills are really something you can learn and improve.
thanks.
[...] How to be More Social @ Scott H. Young [...]
Hey- Great article man, I am a first year student to *** University, and since I commute there it is harder for me to be more social, whereas all most of the other kids lives in dorms and stuff.
But Yea,
Thanks a lot for the article.
Great Read I really enjoyed it.
At the moment I have no friends and its similar to what you said. I had loads of friends as a young teenager but then I didnt like going out to late at night and getting drunk so all my friends that would ask I would say no. So I eventually lost them and now I have no friends. But the problem is that now I do want to go out and have fun and get on the booze but I have no friends to go with.
i really love what u said…it helps me refresh my mind a lot..i will try to learn from my mistake and be more outgoing with other people…
Hello Scott, your advices on socializing are great and I really like them. Besides, i would like to share a website explaining socializing through a more ‘big pictured’ and radical approach which also discussed the faults in the shortcuts and non-important aspects of most analytical (such as eye contact, body language) and non-analytical (such as be confident).
http://www.succeedsocially.com/
I might suggest that for those newbies who are serious in improving one’s social skills to check that website up, it’s totally dummy friendly.. :p
Danny,
Yes, Chris has a great website at SucceedSocially.com!
-Scott
This definitely inspires me.
hi, i stumbled across this while doing some internet aided soul searching. I was begining to think i was all wrong about myself and my goals and generally what i’ve been working at. to make a fairly long complicated story short…I have choosen a unique career path, have been trying to get started but havent really had much success yet…(its only been a couple months and i have only really taken the first steps now so it really that ive been frusterated in the past by potential problems and road bumps )I have not had very supportive friends who recently seem to have all fallen out of my life almost all in the past year and I recently broke up with a boyfriend, who himself broke up with me after reading a book about being a player or a game pick up artist or somthing?. Anyway i’ve just been confused about all of these situations and myself, questioning if my personality and goals were to outside the norm as dictated by these people in my life. this site is incredible, i feel much less alone in the universe and just wanted to say THANKS! I’m planning on spending the next year abroad working in development and I will definately continue to visit this site along the way!
Yeah I’m in a weird predicament where I feel I need to ditch ALL my friends and find new ones because I feel like I’m always putting in way more into the relationship than they are and it frustrates me. I don’t know if it’s because that’s who they are, or if I’m not socially “advanced enough” to persuade them to at least meet me halfway i.e. they want me to attend social events with them but give me excuses when I ask them to come to mine, if I ask for a ride (which I don’t but have in the past) they’ll make excuses and say the car has problems or they gotta do homework or some bs. This sucks because I’m 27 and I’m really realizing I need to take DRASTIC steps to improve my social life and I’m starting to think I’m going to have to go at this alone, like going to bars by myself and such, which I feel would suck. I know that this is something that is better if I take care of it sooner than later because Im already pretty self-conscious as it is, and I know it’ll only get worse if I don’t get this handled in the near future, maybe in the next 12 months??? It’s like with wisdom comes challenges of loosening up and not taking everything so seriously, which is something I have trouble with. But yeah I definitely think I need to worry about making friends first then move on to more physical relationships with women. I just hate being in a group of people where it seems like everyones married and has kids and here I am, I dont even have a number of a female friend i can call on the phone, and im 27. I don’t want to say I have it the worst but Im definitely on the bottom rungs when it comes to my social ability and calibration. I would kill to even be 3 years younger to face this problem but I know there may be a handful of people out there who would kill to be in my shoes at 27, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I heard 18, 19, 22 years old complaining about stuff I’m having trouble with now and it just makes me feel old and hopeless. I’m sure people in my shoes who are ATLEAST 27 and come from a small family (I have my mom, dad, my brother who’s married and recently had a kid, and that’s it because the rest of my family lives in another country. Im also like a 4 on a 1-10 scale in speaking my mom and dad’s native language and i can’t write or read it at all, so maybe that’s another issue altogether, but its hard to find the drive to do something you have to be really committed to when you feel you’re alone and a social reject.) I would love to hear from anyone who can relate to me on a deep level because I feel I could use people who I can connect with right now. Thanks all for reading my long ass letter! I hope I wasn’t too negative.
Hey everyone
well i think i am the youngest one to reply haha. i am in 10th grade and i just feel like i am too serious. my younger sister in only in 8th grade and she goes to more parties than i do, and she is always going out with her friends, leaving me to watch my two younger siblings ( i am the oldest of 4). I have one best friend (and i mean my BEST friend), but she goes to a different school and it is hard for us to always hang out. All of the kids at my school are so into drama, but at the same time, it seams like they have so much fun. i just feel to old for my age… like if i ever went to a party, i would be the one telling people to be careful, or cleaning up the mess, instead of having a good time. also i don’t really have any “hang out” friends. i am friends with everyone at my school, but not good enough to hang out, if that makes any sense at all haha. i think of myself as a very nice, considerate, and outgoing person, so i am not exactly sure what to do. This article was excellent, and i am sorry to be getting so into detail, but it just feels good to let it out. Thanks for listening everyone 