Transcription
Be awkward by being quiet. Be awkward by talking. Okay, I'm gonna teach y'all how to not be awkward. When your attention is in your own head, you will be awkward. And when your attention is not in your own head, you will be relaxed.
There's a very simple experiment you can run. Think about walking while you walk. Now I'm gonna put my right foot forward. Now I'm going to lift my knee. Now I'm going to do this. Now I'm going to relax my... I'm going to put the plantar surface of my foot down. Now the heel is going to touch. Think about all of the steps as you walk, and you will become the most awkward walker in existence.
So, this is the tricky thing. Is that when you try not to be awkward, where's your attention? It is in your mind. You are trying not to be awkward. You're not doing the thing. Now I'm... I'm thinking about how to do things, so I'm awkward over here. Now I'm thinking about this, so I'm even more awkward. So this is why getting awkward is such a trap. Because the less awkward you try to be, the more you step into your mind, and the more awkward you become. It's like, "Oh my God, there's a fire here! Quick, someone grabs some gasoline and pour the gasoline on top! Let's put out the fire because liquid puts out fire, right?" You do the very thing that makes you awkward, and that's how you end up with this lose-lose situation.
You think that, "Okay, if I'm quiet, I will not be awkward," or "If I talk, I will not be awkward." No, the awkwardness is within you. So no matter what you do, you will be awkward. But this is the really cool thing. If it's within you, you can actually change it. It's not about the behavior. It's not about, "Okay, what do I say or what do I not say? How do I be quiet? Should I speak now? Should I not speak now?" And that's what makes you awkward because now you're in your own head and you're not paying attention to the conversation.
So if you want to stop being awkward, absorb your mind in whatever is around you. Instead of thinking about what you should say or whether you should say something, pay attention to what the other person is saying. Listen to the other, other person. Listen to your surroundings. Externalize your awareness, and then you will not be awkward. And if we sort of think about it, we can see that we can prove it the other way too. When am I the least awkward? When I'm absorbed in something. Like if I get into bed at night and I grab a nice cool pillow and I lay down and I'm like, "Man, this feels amazing." I'm not thinking about, "Okay, how can I feel more comfortable? Is this comfortable enough? Is this not comfortable enough?" If my attention is on the pillow and on the bed, I will feel relaxed and it'll feel good.
And this is why people stay so awkward is because everyone's like, "What do I do?" It is not about doing. It is about where your attention is. And so people go looking for solutions. But any solution you try, your mind is still thinking about, "Okay, I should do this. I should do this. I should do this. I should do this." Your mind is pointing in the wrong way. So you end up being awkward. And then what happens? We end up feeling hopeless because, "I tried this and I tried this and I tried this, and I watched this video, and I paid for this course, and this pickup artist told me to do this." But the whole time, all that crap doesn't work because your mind is still focused here. And even for the stuff that does work, what do they successfully help you do? Externalize your mind. Focus externally. That's all it takes.
"Still got no social skills." Even when I don't think about myself. I mean, I'm sure that's true to a certain extent. I mean, I think you've got some social skills. Y'all are doing great over here. And then if you guys want more practical advice. So if you're paying attention to a conversation, you're trying to figure out, "How do I jump in?" Body language is really good. So I'll show you all this feels [ __ ] awkward until you practice it. But you can just go like this. "Yo." You can hold up a hand. It works really well. The other thing you can is, "Hey, can I jump in for a second? This reminds me of..." So you just signal to them, "Hey, I'm jumping in." Use body language, right? And then they'll stop. It's really bizarre. It's like there's some [ __ ] Jedi mind trick at play.
You can even interrupt someone. But if you... when you interrupt someone, if you're afraid of interrupting, because here's what happens, right? So there's like some awkward... there's like they say a sentence and there's a pause. But the pause isn't long enough for you to jump in. So they don't wait for you to speak. So you're not sure if you're supposed to speak. And then you start speaking and they start speaking at the same time. And then you're like, "Well, [ __ ]! Like, what do I say?"
So here's the thing. You want to ride over them. But you want to ride over them with an acknowledgment. So if you and someone else are speaking at the same time, what you should say is, "Hey, I, I'd love to share something with you." And if you start saying that and they start speaking, you just plow through. Because then you're kind of signaling them, "Hey, like, I'm speaking here." And it sort of makes it okay to like get them like if they stop talking, right? Because... you don't want to ride over someone with your story. You just want to acknowledge it. Does that kind of make sense? Like you kind of want to plow through, right? But... but since you're plowing through and you're acknowledging that you're plowing through, it makes it okay. And... and that's also where like you can say like, "Oh, wow, like that reminds me of a story." And then if someone else starts speaking, you can say like, you can either gesture to them, right? Like, "Do you want to go first?" And then like they'll gesture to you. It's like use gestures. Like hand signals. This is like the mark... the martial arts of the HG way is like the interruption. This is the block. And... and this is the... the giving the block and the giving. And then... and then you can also go like this. If you're like really upset with them, "Go ahead, please."
The other problem with people who are super socially anxious is they're like, "Oh my God, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. This person... when should I start talking? This person is talking so much." Socially anxious people struggle with socially oblivious people. This is what creates your anxiety. The more like a socially anxious person is hyper-aware, and the socially oblivious person is hypo-aware. And these two things fit really together. Because if someone is socially aware, they're going to acknowledge. They're going to recognize that, "Hey, I should stop talking at some point so that this other person can jump in." The problem is that socially anxious people think that they're screwing up. But that's because they're socially oblivious person you're talking to, who doesn't like think about when you should speak. And that a conversation is between two people. So stop beating yourselves up. If someone else doesn't know how to talk. And it's not something that we don't acknowledge, right? So like right now, when we think about social anxiety, we're like, "Oh my God, it's a problem in me. Fix me. Fix me. Fix me." But any social interaction involves two people. And oftentimes, socially anxious people grew up with oblivious communicators, you know? So if you want to really reduce your social anxiety, find other people who are like attuned to you. And that's what's really difficult. Is sometimes if you get too socially anxious, people... people... people are so hyper-attuned to each other that like that doesn't work out well, right? Because they're like, "Okay, no, no. Like, you talk. No, you. No, you. You talk. You talk. You talk." And then two socially anxious people are like, they're playing tennis with like, "Here, I'm gonna hit the ball across the court." "No, you." "No, you." "No, you." "No, you."
So the cool thing about social anxiety is if you're like, "No." "No." At some point, someone is like, "Okay, I will speak." And then you get to speak. And the other person is like, "Oh, thank God this person spoke. Because now that this person has spoke, I can speak. And I really want him to speak, but I couldn't speak first." Y'all get me? It's okay.