Last night, I decided to take a look back on some of the old entries. When I started out with the first few 1-on-1 interactions, I wrote posts that listed everything that went well, and everything that needed improvement. The early entries were also filled with all sorts of specific strategies for dealing with pretty much every problem that I could encounter on my quest.
Skimming over those entries last night, it didn't take me long to realize that I had allowed history to repeat itself too many times. All the way up through my eleventh date, I repeated many of the same mistakes over and over again. Simply put, I should have reviewed my own writings.
I became somewhat perturbed last night, realizing that I haven't been making as much progress as I could have, if I'd just kept in mind all of the important things I learned from previous experiences as I proceeded.
(I'm rambling, but stick with me - this is important)
I've had a lot of things in mind lately about what to do - what to try - that would be different, and that might work here. I decided to revisit a book that I keep under my bed, called Conversationally Speaking. I've mentioned this book before, but I said that it only contains very basic info on conversation skills. Well, it turns out that I hadn't read the entire book. There's a chapter near the end entitled "Reucing Anxiety in Social Situations." To make a long story short, Garner's advice here validated a number of theories that I've had in mind lately, but that haven't yet made it to the blog (because I wanted to try them out first).
So this is the plan. I am going to do something different with the blog. I'm going to create a second running entry, in which I will write a single, integrated master plan containing every single useful point that I've come up with. I will still be in the process of trying out some of these things. That's okay - I will remove and add information as I go along. I'll also explain the important points from that chapter in Conversationally Speaking, but that book is going to be required reading for us all anyway. This way, I can review a single entry (instead of skimming 50!) before every practice session, ensuring that I make progress instead of just repeating the same past mistakes.
The end result (8 months, or hopefully a lot sooner) will be a single, clear solution for overcoming the shyness problem, or whatever it is from which I've been suffering.
The master plan entry is going to take a lot of work, but look for the beginnings of it late Monday night.
Skimming over those entries last night, it didn't take me long to realize that I had allowed history to repeat itself too many times. All the way up through my eleventh date, I repeated many of the same mistakes over and over again. Simply put, I should have reviewed my own writings.
I became somewhat perturbed last night, realizing that I haven't been making as much progress as I could have, if I'd just kept in mind all of the important things I learned from previous experiences as I proceeded.
(I'm rambling, but stick with me - this is important)
I've had a lot of things in mind lately about what to do - what to try - that would be different, and that might work here. I decided to revisit a book that I keep under my bed, called Conversationally Speaking. I've mentioned this book before, but I said that it only contains very basic info on conversation skills. Well, it turns out that I hadn't read the entire book. There's a chapter near the end entitled "Reucing Anxiety in Social Situations." To make a long story short, Garner's advice here validated a number of theories that I've had in mind lately, but that haven't yet made it to the blog (because I wanted to try them out first).
So this is the plan. I am going to do something different with the blog. I'm going to create a second running entry, in which I will write a single, integrated master plan containing every single useful point that I've come up with. I will still be in the process of trying out some of these things. That's okay - I will remove and add information as I go along. I'll also explain the important points from that chapter in Conversationally Speaking, but that book is going to be required reading for us all anyway. This way, I can review a single entry (instead of skimming 50!) before every practice session, ensuring that I make progress instead of just repeating the same past mistakes.
The end result (8 months, or hopefully a lot sooner) will be a single, clear solution for overcoming the shyness problem, or whatever it is from which I've been suffering.
The master plan entry is going to take a lot of work, but look for the beginnings of it late Monday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment