I generally don't take days off from working on the mission that is the title of this blog. If I ever do, it'll only be because I absolutely have to.
That said, I started off this weekend by doing a little thinking about where I am, and what I need to do to take things to the next level. From my previous post, it was apparent that the main thing I need to work on is reducing my social inhibition. Amazingly, it seems that if I could just fix that one thing - and with all other things being the way they are now - I would be at about a normal level. Wow.
So I hopped on google, and feverishly searched for information about how to reduce social inhibition. Surprisingly, I found very, very little. My search led me to a few interesting issues, such as: how do I classify the general problem I'm trying to work on here? Is this what people call shyness? Starting out, I didn't think so. I came across numerous other possible terms, but none of them seemed to fit just right. As it turns out, this classification issue is pretty complicated, and will probably get its own blog entries later.
But I've digressed. A few of the sites I found on shyness and other issues helped me formulate a better idea of what may be causing this inhibition. According to a psychologist named Carducci, shyness "involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation." I decided that, whether it should be considered shyness or not, perhaps my social inhibition may be caused by some of the same things.
Now, the first thing I recognized is that my entries about my social interactions were accurate on the fact that I wasn't NEGATIVELY self-conscious. This means that negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation are out of the picture here, unless they're going on subconsciously (which I doubt).
That just leaves "excessive self-consciousness." I said before that I wasn't self-conscious at all, but at the time I was thinking of self-conscious as meaning thinking negatively. Now I think that maybe I was self-conscious, as in highly aware of my thoughts and actions, but without a negative spin on the awareness. I decided that maybe this non-negative self-consciousness was enough to cause, or at least contribute to, my inhibition in social situations.
Of course, this is so far just a theory of mine, but that's a big part of what this blog is about! I haven't found a good answer to the problem on Google, so therefore it is up to me to discover it and share it with everyone else in my situation.
I then proceeded to integrate my new theory into a short list of goals to focus on in upcoming interactions:
1. Try to (greatly) reduce my high level of inhibition, to the point that I'm as uninhibited talking to new people as I am talking to my best friend. Or at least close. Attempt this by mimicking the latter situation: try to minimize even noticing the thoughts you're having, and general awareness of yourself. Instead, just partake in the conversation while putting forth only minimal effort to come up with things to say. Don't put yourself under any pressure to think of what to say; it will have the opposite effect of what you want, making that more difficult.
The last point deserves further explanation. I wrote that after stumbling upon this gem from a site on shyness: "Feeling [uptight]?? First of all... just chill. The secret to knowing what to say is learning what to feel. According to the experts, if you feel positive, feelings of fear will not interfere with your ability to think of something to say."
2. Focus on gaining experience in social interactions, and don't concern myself with the results. For example, if I go on a date, I'm just happy to be getting that experience and doing my best with it; I won't concern myself with whether it is going well enough for there to be a second date, or anything like that. This should reduce anxiety even further.
3. Don't dwell on social interactions before or after. My dwelling kept resulting in long periods of anxiety in the aftermath, even though there was very little during the interactions. And similarly for some of the hours leading up to these activities.
Finally, I was able to try these things out on Sunday. As older posts reveal, I was once terrified of talking on the phone. Now, it has become my friend; a great tool in this mission.
I called up a girl from yahooPersonals who I've been e-mailing for about 10 days. Before dialing, I thought through item #1, and then tried to let go of my self-awareness and feel like I do when calling my best friend. It's difficult or impossible to describe how to do this...you just have to try it out.
No answer...she called back about 15 minutes later, and I answered with very little forethought. And then...success!! We talked for 20 minutes. The only self-awareness I recall was thinking that my voice sounded great, and this was amazingly working: It seemed extremely close to the feeling that I have when chatting with my best firiend. As usual I had a brief list of backup converstion topics, but I don't think I even looked at it. My mind was clear. This time, there was nothing blocking me from thinking of what to say. It was almost as automatic as talking to a friend or family member.
I won't celebrate too soon here, because maybe I just got lucky on this one. I will try the same thing next time though, and see if it results in a similar experience. And next time, I will also spend less time thinking and planning before I call. Just have a couple things in mind to talk about, relax, and chat.
So I ended the (rather relaxed) conversation by setting up a meeting...sweet. This time, I thought I'd try Starbucks (as in my 1st, platonic meeting), instead of going to dinner at a nice restaurant (as on the first 2 dates). It's set for Wednesday.
Lastly, tomorrow will be the third day since my last date, so I will call the girl up for a post-mortem on that. Honestly, I'm hoping not to hear another Friends Speech, but I'm keeping item #2 above in mind so those things should have minimal effect on me whenever I do encounter them.
I'll leave it at that for now...the mission is definitely in full-swing.
That said, I started off this weekend by doing a little thinking about where I am, and what I need to do to take things to the next level. From my previous post, it was apparent that the main thing I need to work on is reducing my social inhibition. Amazingly, it seems that if I could just fix that one thing - and with all other things being the way they are now - I would be at about a normal level. Wow.
So I hopped on google, and feverishly searched for information about how to reduce social inhibition. Surprisingly, I found very, very little. My search led me to a few interesting issues, such as: how do I classify the general problem I'm trying to work on here? Is this what people call shyness? Starting out, I didn't think so. I came across numerous other possible terms, but none of them seemed to fit just right. As it turns out, this classification issue is pretty complicated, and will probably get its own blog entries later.
But I've digressed. A few of the sites I found on shyness and other issues helped me formulate a better idea of what may be causing this inhibition. According to a psychologist named Carducci, shyness "involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation." I decided that, whether it should be considered shyness or not, perhaps my social inhibition may be caused by some of the same things.
Now, the first thing I recognized is that my entries about my social interactions were accurate on the fact that I wasn't NEGATIVELY self-conscious. This means that negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation are out of the picture here, unless they're going on subconsciously (which I doubt).
That just leaves "excessive self-consciousness." I said before that I wasn't self-conscious at all, but at the time I was thinking of self-conscious as meaning thinking negatively. Now I think that maybe I was self-conscious, as in highly aware of my thoughts and actions, but without a negative spin on the awareness. I decided that maybe this non-negative self-consciousness was enough to cause, or at least contribute to, my inhibition in social situations.
Of course, this is so far just a theory of mine, but that's a big part of what this blog is about! I haven't found a good answer to the problem on Google, so therefore it is up to me to discover it and share it with everyone else in my situation.
I then proceeded to integrate my new theory into a short list of goals to focus on in upcoming interactions:
1. Try to (greatly) reduce my high level of inhibition, to the point that I'm as uninhibited talking to new people as I am talking to my best friend. Or at least close. Attempt this by mimicking the latter situation: try to minimize even noticing the thoughts you're having, and general awareness of yourself. Instead, just partake in the conversation while putting forth only minimal effort to come up with things to say. Don't put yourself under any pressure to think of what to say; it will have the opposite effect of what you want, making that more difficult.
The last point deserves further explanation. I wrote that after stumbling upon this gem from a site on shyness: "Feeling [uptight]?? First of all... just chill. The secret to knowing what to say is learning what to feel. According to the experts, if you feel positive, feelings of fear will not interfere with your ability to think of something to say."
2. Focus on gaining experience in social interactions, and don't concern myself with the results. For example, if I go on a date, I'm just happy to be getting that experience and doing my best with it; I won't concern myself with whether it is going well enough for there to be a second date, or anything like that. This should reduce anxiety even further.
3. Don't dwell on social interactions before or after. My dwelling kept resulting in long periods of anxiety in the aftermath, even though there was very little during the interactions. And similarly for some of the hours leading up to these activities.
Finally, I was able to try these things out on Sunday. As older posts reveal, I was once terrified of talking on the phone. Now, it has become my friend; a great tool in this mission.
I called up a girl from yahooPersonals who I've been e-mailing for about 10 days. Before dialing, I thought through item #1, and then tried to let go of my self-awareness and feel like I do when calling my best friend. It's difficult or impossible to describe how to do this...you just have to try it out.
No answer...she called back about 15 minutes later, and I answered with very little forethought. And then...success!! We talked for 20 minutes. The only self-awareness I recall was thinking that my voice sounded great, and this was amazingly working: It seemed extremely close to the feeling that I have when chatting with my best firiend. As usual I had a brief list of backup converstion topics, but I don't think I even looked at it. My mind was clear. This time, there was nothing blocking me from thinking of what to say. It was almost as automatic as talking to a friend or family member.
I won't celebrate too soon here, because maybe I just got lucky on this one. I will try the same thing next time though, and see if it results in a similar experience. And next time, I will also spend less time thinking and planning before I call. Just have a couple things in mind to talk about, relax, and chat.
So I ended the (rather relaxed) conversation by setting up a meeting...sweet. This time, I thought I'd try Starbucks (as in my 1st, platonic meeting), instead of going to dinner at a nice restaurant (as on the first 2 dates). It's set for Wednesday.
Lastly, tomorrow will be the third day since my last date, so I will call the girl up for a post-mortem on that. Honestly, I'm hoping not to hear another Friends Speech, but I'm keeping item #2 above in mind so those things should have minimal effect on me whenever I do encounter them.
I'll leave it at that for now...the mission is definitely in full-swing.
1 comment:
This all sounds so familiar. I am very interested to see what you come up with for reducing inhibition.
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