Transcription
The main thing about developing this skill though is very very simple. There's one step that you can do that will immediately improve your ability, and that is your level of desire.
How do I improve my social skills? But first of all, you have to realize the importance of social skills. 95% of your life involves interactions with people that have a tremendous impact on your emotions, on your well-being, on your health, right? And the thing is, we don't think of being in the world and being social and interacting with people as a skill. Unfortunately, we think of it. Even if you bring up this question, you're probably not taking it very seriously. You think of, "I'm just naturally. It's something I don't have to practice this. I don't have to learn anything about it. I just go out in the world and I interact and I do the best that I can." It's not like a skill like learning a piano or playing chess or shooting free throws or something like that. It's just being a human being.
Well, no, it is a skill. It is something you need to develop. And where we spend so much of our lives now in a virtual realm, it's a skill that is being degraded because it is a skill that depends on spending time interacting with people. So if you wanted to be a really good basketball player, you wouldn't sit there on your phone watching YouTube videos of the late Kobe Bryant doing all the stuff because it wouldn't lead to anything. Get out of your goddamn house and shoot hoops day and night. Spending all your time on the stupid phone isn't going to develop social skills. You have to go out to bars if you want to meet a man or a woman. You have to go mingle. You have to go out and interact with people more and more and more. Get out of the virtuality.
So the most important thing is to realize it is a skill, and it is a skill that will make your life so much easier. Because in your personal life, you'll be able to have a relationship that will be enriching, that won't be full of all this arguing, etc. You'll know how to choose the right partner, and you will know how to interact with them on a meaningful level. In your work world, you will be having all these clashes and antagonisms taking it home with you and going, "God, why that person say that?" etc., etc. You'll be able to let go of all the drama and release it. It'll free your mind up. So you want that skill.
The main thing about developing this skill though is very very simple. There's one step that you can do that will immediately improve your ability, and that is your level of desire. And what I mean by that is the following: When you're interacting with someone in a cafe, a bar, or at work, or in your home, you're normally half listening, a third listening, even a quarter listening or less. You're looking at your phone. You're thinking about your own problems. You're thinking about things in the past, or something they say triggers the thought and you're thinking about something that happened to you. You, you, you, you, you. Why? The reason is you're more interested in yourself than you are in other people. People. You're more interested in your own problems, in your own ideas, in your own experiences than those of others.
It's an important axiom to understand with humans is that we're drawn to things that are pleasurable, and we get away from things that are painful. So if we think of ourselves and our own ego and our own experiences as fun, as pleasurable, because we're a narcissist, and we all are narcissists, then you're never ever going to be paying attention to other people.
What I want you to think of is to reverse that into: Going being absorbed in your own thoughts, your own experiences, and your own ideas is actually very boring and very repetitive and very painful. It's the same thing day after day after day. The same problems, the same compulsions, the same worries, the same anxieties. I say to people, "Would you like to travel to a foreign country in which everything looks like the neighborhood that you live in?" No. You want to get out of yourself. So pain is being self-absorbed. Pleasure is other people, their stories, their experiences, their lives.
So if tomorrow you go to the supermarket and you're at the meat counter, you know, something I've thought about and I've done. Instead of thinking about my own life and absorbing myself, I'm going to focus on the person serving me and I'm going to try and think of what their life is like and what their story might be, what their family might be, where they might have come from. And I might even talk to them a little bit about this because I'm interested in it. People are weird. They're like a movie. They have fantasies, they have dreams, they have experiences that are not like yours. If you are interested in them, the whole game will change. You will find yourself wanting more of these interactions.
When you meet somebody at a cafe, you won't be on your phone. Won't be wasting your time like that. You won't be thinking about your own problems. You'll be going, "I want to know what this person's story is like. I want to know what their childhood was like. I want to know what it is to be them. I want to know what it feels like to be them." If you become that person that is interested in others, that talks to them in that way, that goes with the thought, "What is it like to be you?" people will be charmed by you. They will love it. They'll have a very powerful seductive impact. B, it will teach you incredible things, things about people. And C, it will develop this muscle and this skill in you, which you'll be able to practice it all of the time, and you will have tremendous social success.
So it's your self-absorption that is the great impediment to your level of social skills. I could talk until my face turns blue about the importance of not being so self-absorbed. The key is to find other people more interesting than yourself, however you can do that. That will unlock the secret to having a higher level of social skill.