7 Ways To Enjoy Being More Social

Do you enjoy being social? Is it fun, engaging, absorbing and energizing for you? Or do you dread it, avoid it, endure it, or get through it with great effort and feel drained afterwards? It might not be your personality or that you're introverted or whatever story you're telling yourself. It might just be that you're doing it all wrong. And today you're going to learn seven powerful ways to to break through so you can enjoy social interactions on a whole new level for whatever reason. For friendships, relationships, networking, business, talking with colleagues, talking with women anywhere you want to use this. It can help you really start to enjoy social interactions.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be getting into seven ways to enjoy being more social. And this is incredibly important because either we're scared of it and we avoid it and we don't do it, or we can kind of. A lot of people I talk to kind of force themselves to be more social and then. But they don't enjoy it. And then they're in this kind of catch 22 or bad place, like caught between two bad options, right? Either I avoid it and I'm lonely and I don't have the life that I want, or I get out there and I do it, but then I'm drained and I'm not really enjoying it, so what's the point? And that's sort of there are two options and I want to help you break through that. And we're going to do that today in today's episode. If you want to jump into the show, call the hotline. Leave me a message on there. I will answer your questions in upcoming shows. 206338, 3176. You can also go for shrinkforthshyguy.com that's whatever. Shrinkforthshyguy.com and you can go on there and leave a message, etc. And one other thing, if you've been listening to the show for a little while and you like it and you appreciate this, please go to itunes and give it a review there. That helps us reach more people and expand the operation Mass Liberation movement. Touch as many people as we can to help them realize that they're not stuck. And maybe you've already realized that or you're starting to realize that as you listen to that. And I want to have you help me help us reach a lot of people so we can do that by reviewing the show. Thanks in advance for doing that. Let's now dive into seven ways to enjoy being more social. So what's the first way one is? Talk about what you want to talk about. Talk about what you want to talk about. Now, this might seem a little counterintuitive. Maybe you're like, I heard I was supposed to ask good questions. I heard people don't like people that talk about themselves too much. I heard that I'm supposed to be really polite and talk about what they want to talk about. But you know what that leads to? Boring, uncomfortable, unpleasant social interactions. Because here's the thing. If so much of the time we're. Especially if we're overcoming social fear and social anxiety, we're nervous to go talk to people. We have this core story of I'm not good enough, people aren't going to like me, blah, blah, blah. If you want to break through that, check out my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. Get it on Audible or Amazon. There's a whole thing in there about how to let go of that core. People aren't going to like me. I'm not good enough BS story. But so we're coming from that place. And when people start to overcome it, they'll be like, okay, I'm going to go into a conversation, but I got to do it just right and I got to make sure they like me. And so I got to talk about what they want to talk about and pretend like I'm really interested and just keep asking them question after question about what they want to talk about. And then they're going to like me and meh. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, because they'll feel your eager to please energy, which actually tends to repel people. But maybe they will. But maybe you won't enjoy yourself and then you're not going to want to do it again. And that doesn't help anyone. So we got to talk about what we want to talk about. And that doesn't mean that you just steamroll over everything that someone says and don't give them any chance to talk about themselves. But for example, someone is sharing something about their weekend, like, oh, we went to a lake and someone had a boat and we went water skiing, blah, blah, blah. And when you're listening to them, notice what they say and find the thing that interests you in there and talk about that. So they talk about going to a lake, they talk about having a boat, they talk about Water skiing. They talk about being in the mountains. For in this example, is there one of those four that's more interesting to you? Is there one of those four that you relate to more? So the first thing I think of is, just popped into my head is being in a mountain near Portland here, Portland, Oregon, called Mount Hood. And this is actually from last summer where we were driving back from somewhere and we stopped in Mount Hood, and it was this gorgeous lake called Frog Lake. That's the first image that popped into my mind. So I might ask them about what kind of lake they went to, or did it have these trees around it? I might even tell them, oh, that reminds me of. I love being out in the mountains. I went to this place called Frog Lake out in Mount Hood. Have you ever been there? Assuming I'm talking to someone local or something. So you see, now I can talk about what I want to talk about, and I can ask them a question, I can engage with them, but I'm not just like, wow, cool, and then what happened? Or just silently nodding or just letting you know. So you can insert yourself, you can bring up what you want to talk about, you can share stories that you want to share, you can ask the questions that you want to ask, and it can be related to what they're talking about, but it doesn't have to be. Only they're running the show. That's coming from being in a very passive place in conversations, which makes them really not that enjoyable. So tip one, talk about what you want to talk about. Tip two is relax. It's not a performance. Social interactions, conversations, chatting with people, talking in groups, none of it is a performance. So many people approach it with this performance mentality because they're evaluating the hell out of themselves in their heads. Is that good enough? Oh, my God. Do people like that? Was that funny? What if no one laughs? Did I say the right thing? Do they like what I'm saying? That wasn't good enough. And they're constantly giving themselves a grade in their head, and usually the grade is bad, C or below. And then they feel bad afterwards, oh, I didn't perform well enough. Well, I just don't like socializing. I'm just an introvert. It's just not my thing. And no, it's just because you're not in the moment enjoying yourself. You're beating yourself up. You're evaluating yourself. And when we're constantly evaluating ourselves for something, it's not fun. If you're playing basketball and you're always evaluating how you're doing. It's not fun. Any sport, any game, anything that you're doing when there's heavy evaluation of immediately sucks the joy out of it. So we gotta relax. You don't have to be amazing. This doesn't have to be a performance. And I had a client who I was telling this to and we were talking about this exact thing and he's like, well, if I'm not performing, then what am I doing in a conversation? That was a good question. So what do you think if you're not performing, if you just let. In fact, just take a deep breath in right now with me and let it out. Do that one more time in case you missed the first one. Take a deep breath in and just let it out slowly with a sigh. And as you do, just let go of needing to perform in any conversation with anyone. What would you do instead? What would it be about if it wasn't about a performance or an evaluation? What if it was about connection? About being curious, Curious about them. Wonder, interest, fascination? What if it was about expression? Sharing the joy of being seen by someone, of being known by someone? What if that's what it was about? What could it be about for you if it wasn't a performance? That's tip two. Relax. It's not a performance. We have five more and they're all awesome and they're all going to help liberate you. So stay tuned. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to get back right after this.

Okay, now it's my turn to talk. God, I'm so nervous. What was he saying? Okay, say something. Don't just sit here like an idiot. So what kind of work do you do? Tired of awkward conversations? Ready to master this area once and for all. Get yourself a copy of the confidence code, an all new updated version which teaches you how to maximize your self esteem and master all kinds of social interactions from introductions to engaging conversations to jumping into groups. Go to YourConfidenceCode.com now to learn more.

Welcome back. So what's the third way to enjoy being more social? Number three is there is no right thing to say. That's a really important one because so often people are nervous or uncomfortable interactions, they avoid interactions and I'll ask them why and they'll say, I didn't know what to say. Have you ever said that to yourself? I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know what to say to them. Go talk to that group of three people. I didn't know what to say to them. All those two people were talking. I just didn't know what to say, so I didn't do it. The I didn't know what to say is a cover for fear. We're scared of going over and talking to them. So that's helpful to peel the layer back there. But under that is this belief, it's an assumption about the world, that there is a right thing to say. I didn't know what to say implies that there was something right to say, and I didn't know what it was, so I didn't do it. But what if there is no right thing? Because there isn't. You can walk up and say anything to anyone. Just walk up, hey, guys, how you doing? Or you could go up and say, Do you like turkey? First thing that came to my mind. You could do that. There's a great game I played a friend called the lion game, where you go out with a group of several friends or just one friend, and you take turns and you have to go up to someone and say a specific line in a specific way that your friends create for you. And it could be for women, it could be for anyone. And so the idea is to do kind of ridiculous things and watch the other person do it. And it's incredibly liberating. So that actually could be from a line game. Do you like turkey? And then the person's going to be like, and. And then you can follow that up. So you can start a conversation with anything. It doesn't matter what you say, because it's your energy, it's your attitude, it's your ability to keep the conversation going. It's your ability to be spontaneous and fun and humorous and alive and expressive. That is what matters. And there is no right thing to say. So just let that go. There is no right thing to say. I can say anything. I can start a. Anything that I can think of to say to start a conversation is a good thing because it gets me into the conversation. The fourth tip is to get better at being social. That's a big one. Get better at being comfortable talking to people. Because when we are not good at something, we don't like it very much, right? So I am good with computers. And so someone's like, hey, you want to learn this program or this system or the software? I'm like, okay. And it could be fun for me, maybe. Depends on what it is, right? But for someone who doesn't know you use computers, it's overwhelming and freaks them out. For me, that's my Car. So someone is like. Or a better example. There was a guy. We're actually. My wife and I are getting a house with our little son there. It's awesome. It's this little, small, little place. Not that extravagant, but incredibly, like, a really nice yard. And we're very excited about it. And it's here in Portland, and we were having this guy look at, like, a contractor look at it before we got it, just to see what he thought about if we wanted to make one of the bedrooms a little bigger. And he was telling us all kinds of stuff, and he's like, yeah, well, you know, I could. You know, me and my team could take care of X, Y, and Z. Of course you. And he pointed at me, could do this. Blah, blah, blah. Your chimney in the house is no longer in use, so you could get a group of friends together and dismantle and take down, you know, collapse the chimney. Chimney, chim, chimney. And I was just, like, kind of looking at him, and I was like, yeah, no, I'm not gonna do that. And he's like, why not? I'm just like, I don't know. And the reality is I've never done anything like that. I suck at it. I'm not a construction guy. And maybe as a homeowner, I will learn or something, but you see that. See that energy that I have about it? I don't want to, and I'd rather not. And that's because I'm not good at it. And I didn't learn it growing up. My dad never showed me anything. He was, like an engineer turned businessman. So that's what I learned from him. But I didn't learn anything about how to repair something in my house or carpentry or any of that stuff. So I suck at it. So I don't like it. But this guy loves it, right? I mean, it's his bread and butter because that's what he does for work. So anything that we suck at, we typically don't like. And as we get better and better and better at something, we start to enjoy it more, don't we? Is there something in your life right now that you can think of that now you're good at it, and so you like it more a sport, an activity, a hobby. And maybe in drawing, for example, art, maybe when you first started, you weren't that good at it, and it wasn't as fun as it is now. So get better at socializing, having conversations. The question is, how do you get better? I think you know the answer to that. One by now. Just practice it. Practice it a lot. So just talk to people a lot, do it a lot. Get better at it, study it. Get my program, the confidence code. Actually, Confidence Code is entirely designed. The whole second module is about mastering your social interactions. How to start conversations, how to keep them going, how to know what to say, how to join into groups, all that stuff. So study it, invest in it, practice it, get better at it, and you'll start to like it more. Because it's like playing an instrument. When I play the guitar. When I first played the guitar, I liked it, actually, but it wasn't nearly. I couldn't pick it up and play something that sounded very good. And it's the same thing with social interactions. Once you can do it better, you can have these great engaging conversations that last all night with someone or for hours, or even just 10 minutes. But you're laughing and you're having a great time. And you can do that by getting better at it. The fifth way to enjoy being more social is be random. Be more random in your conversations. So many people are bored in their conversations. Shit, man. So many people are bored in their lives. They go to a job that they're kind of bored by. They do work that's sort of boring. They watch TV shows that are sort of entertaining for the moment, but not that exciting. Nothing's really that amazing. They have the same routines every day. Life's just kind of meh. It's kind of boring. And that's because there's no randomness. There's no unpredictability. There's no challenge or stress or growth. It's just the same thing. That's how conversations often are. How was your weekend? Cool. What did you do? Interesting. And we just kind of talk about the same stuff, and we just got to be random. You just got to say shit that comes into your mind. I do that all the time. So I'm talking to someone and I do what's called loose association. So they say something and it makes me think of something else, and I'll just say that. You know what that reminds me of is, do you remember Cabbage Patch Kids cards? Or I'll just say something like that and I'll ask them, and then they'll get engaged with that. They'll say yes or no. If they say no, I'll be like, really? And then I'll tell them about it with enthusiasm. If they say yes, then we can start talking about that. And it's fun and it's random and it makes people think and randomness is the key to being funny and humorous and making people laugh. So that's an incredibly valuable skill as well to be able to do that. And another thing about randomness is usually we don't do that because we're scared of taking risks and we're worried that people might not approve of what we said. And that's actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. That is another one of the seven tips. So for now, be random, just go for it, give it a shot. And if you're worried about that, then stay tuned because that's one of the upcoming tips is how to be free of that. So we're gonna take a quick break right now and when we get back, we're gonna get into the final two tips, one of which is probably the most important one, that doing the other six without having this last tip might be a little difficult. So you can, you can absolutely. But stay tuned. You don't want to listen to the rest of this because you're going to find out the final one which kind of ties them all together. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll get right back into it right after this.

If you don't think much of yourself, how do you imagine other people will think of you? You guessed it. If we want others to take us seriously, like us and be attracted to us, we must first master our self esteem. That's exactly what you'll learn how to do in Dr. Z's brand new version of the confidence code. Go to YourConfidenceCode.com now to learn more. And get your free copy of his ebook Radical Self. Three ways to Truly love Yourself in two weeks.

Welcome back. So what's the sixth way to enjoy being more social? By the way, what are you learning so far? What's standing out to you? Of the five that I listed, which one is the most like immediately Aha moment for you. Talk about what you want to talk about. Relax, it's not a performance. There's no right thing to say. Get better at having conversations and be random. Which one is kind of like, oh cool, I'm going to do that one and hopefully you're going to do all five. But which one is like, oh yeah, that makes sense to me. You're aha, the most valuable one so far for you. Cool. In fact, go to facebook.com SocialConfidence, which is the sort of hub for the shrink, for the shy guy as well as the whole social confidence center and just share. What is it? Which tip are you Going to start applying. How are you going to use it in your life? I just want to kind of help you think on these things because sometimes we can get in kind of this passive learning mode like we did in school. We're just sort of sitting there absorbing it. I want you to be really engaged with me here because it's like, sure, you're listening to this episode, but I want you to go out there and do something different in your life. That's the whole purpose of this. That's going to bring you in more and really think about how you're going to apply this stuff in your life. The sixth way to enjoy being more social is to amuse yourself. Amuse yourself. I remember one time I was hanging out in a dorm in college, and my roommate in college was Sam Timko. Confident son of a bitch, that guy was. Oh, how I hated him. I was so horribly insecure and stuck in shyness, and he was talking to women, and women were coming into our room and sleeping in his bed with him. And I was having no women. But anyway, I remember one time we were in this dorm room, and it was a friend's room down the hall, and there's maybe like five or six guys in there. We're all talking. And I remember I was just watching Sam, and I noticed, like, he'd make a joke or something that people may or may not have laughed at, but he was amused by what he was saying. His goal was not to get other people to laugh, although people often did at what he said. His goal was to amuse himself. So he'd say something and he'd kind of smirk or smile after he said it because he found it funny or engaging, even if the other person didn't get it, even if it went right over their head, even if other people didn't laugh. His focus was to amuse himself, to entertain himself, to enjoy himself in the conversation, as opposed to the more insecure, unconfident, anxious way of conversations, which is what I did at that time, which is, how do I make them like me? How do I make sure they're enjoying themselves? How do I make sure they're having a good time? And that's your whole focus. And what that does is it makes you enjoy yourself a lot less. So amuse yourself is the sixth way of being more comfortable and enjoying yourself more socially. What's the seventh one? This one is the most important one of all because we can spend so much of our energy and our focus in fear around taking risks. What if I say that and people don't like me. I don't want to be myself because what if they find something out about me that they won't like? I got to perform, so they like me. All the other things that I'm trying to help you let go of in today's show, come back to this one. So here's the seventh tip that's gonna set you free. Are you ready? If you're taking notes, by the way, hopefully you're writing these down. If not, I encourage that take notes during the show. I mean, this stuff is incredibly valuable. I don't know what other people are teaching out there in their podcast, but this is, like, exact stuff that I'm doing with people in sessions. This is incredibly valuable stuff that people pay me hundreds or thousands of dollars to learn each month. And I want to give this to you for free. But the way that you're going to change your life with it is to take notes and do it. So what's the seventh one? Seventh one is people are going to like you or they're not. That's it. People are going to like you or they're not. And there's not a whole lot that you're going to do about it. And I know we don't like that because we're like, but wait a minute. If I'm more confident and outgoing and funny, then more people will like me, right? Well, there's some truth to that, but really what's happening is the only thing we have control over is how much of ourselves we put out there, right? So you can show up and be really guarded and quiet and not talk to anyone. Then someone says, how you doing? You say, fine, fine, Right? And maybe they're not going to like you that much, but maybe they still will. You know, it's like, it's amazing how this stuff works, but they might not. Not because you're bad or something, but because they didn't connect with you. They couldn't connect with you that much. You didn't reveal much of yourself. But if you show up and you're just yourself, your quirky self, your funny self, your random self, and go back, and if you haven't listened to that confidence. I think the episode was called something like confidence transformation story or confidence success story. Matt's transformation. That's probably what it was. Go back and listen to that. That was a client that I worked with, and I interviewed him for the show just because he had so many great insights and his story was so inspiring. And anywhere in there, he realized he's got a quirky sense of humor. He's a funny guy, but he would kind of hide it because he thought it was too weird or too random. And the more he let it out, the more people loved him. So you got to let more of yourself out, take those risks, say those things, talk what you want to talk about. Just show up and not perform and connect with people. Just say whatever comes to mind and not be the right thing. Whatever your spontaneously arising thing to say is, let the random stuff that comes into your mind just come out of you. Just be more and more expressive and more and more yourself. And then people are gonna like you or they're not, and you don't have any control over it. And the more you can put yourself out there, the more people have an opportunity to connect with you. So more people will respond positively, but a fair amount won't. I mean, in any group of 10 people, let's say you're in a room of 10 people and you got a chance to talk to all of them and hang out with each of them one on one, and then do some small group stuff and then do a big group thing and really get to know these 10 people. Well, let's say there's 10 and you're one of them. So these nine other people, at the end of the day, if you were to say, hey, I want to go out to lunch or dinner with some people, would you equally want to sit next to all 10 or all nine? No. Right. There'd be some people that you're like, eh, they're okay, or eh, I don't really, I don't know. I didn't really like them that much. I just don't. I don't know, they're kind of boring to me or whatever. And there's gonna be those people, you're like, oh, yeah, that person's awesome. I want to hang out with him again. And you might not horribly dislike the other people, but you're just not that, eh, meh. And maybe one or two you would be like, ugh, I don't really like that person. And no one is bad, no one is wrong. That's just how humans are. I mean, how could you love everyone and want to spend time with everyone equally? I mean, there's an energetic thing, right? There's a resonance there. So people are going to like you or they're not. Just start putting yourself out there. Start doing it more and more and more. In fact, that brings us to our action step for today. Time for action. The action step for today is to put yourself out there more and more and more and these seven tips, these seven ways of enjoying being more social will help you do that. So to put yourself out there more, I'd say pick one of these ways, one of these tips and decide that you're gonna do that for at least several days, maybe a whole week. You can do more than that if you want, but I think sometimes you digesting things in bite sized chunks is more helpful. I suggest writing down all seven so you have them somewhere. Write it down on your phone or on your computer, on a sheet of paper or a notebook or a journal so you have all seven. You can go back to it. But for now just pick one and say I'm going to do that. I'm going to be more random this week or I'm going to talk about more of what I want to talk about this week or I'm going to amuse myself more in conversations this week. Whatever it is for you, choose it and apply it and then let us know how it goes. Go to facebook.com SocialConfidence and share about your experience. Go to shrinkforthshy guy as well. You can leave a message there and let us know how it goes. I'm so curious about your growth, about your progress, and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.