When it comes to skills that can improve your overall lifestyle and happiness, without considering specific technical skills that generate income for you, social skills are the easiest to learn. One of the main reasons is…
You are not physically limited
When compared to gaining muscle for example, you are limited by your body, you can’t gain that much muscle that quickly, especially as time goes on and as you become more muscular. You need to take time and rest, with proper recovery. You can’t train hard everyday because eventually you’ll get hurt doing that and your body just can’t take it.
Another example is learning to play an instrument, guitar for example: if your are starting out and play guitar for a while everyday you will get callous in your hands that will slow down progress. Or if you are trying to learn flute maybe you would be limited by your lung capacity.
So you don’t have any physical limiting factor and can practice everyday, anytime you want to. You don’t need any particular equipment or special logistics, you just need other people.
That being said…
You are limited by your fear of failing
Let’s take this example: you are trying to learn guitar and are practising a specific song to play live in a stage for some people.. You are by yourself and pick up the guitar for 1h a day for 2 weeks. After that time you learn the song. You go to the stage and nailed it in front of the audience.
You practised by yourself in a low pressure environment, learned little by little, and when it came to the decisive moment you were already well prepared for the situation. There was no pressure on you during the learning process, in terms of people judging you, and that allowed you to keep failing until you perfected your technique.
Now let’s say you tried to do all of that but from the very beginning you went on stage and tried to practice with a bunch of people looking at you from day 1. Would you be comfortable doing that? Probably not. Especially if you are more on the anxious/shy side of things or were a beginner guitar player, you might even not want to do it in the first place. You might not even want to practice guitar because that means that people are going to see you fail and that doesn’t feel good.
So it’s a good idea to practice first in a low pressure environment and only then put your skills to a real test.
Now you say “But I can’t practice social skills by myself until I get ready and then go practice on talking to people, it just doesn’t work like that”. Correct. You can’t practice social skills by yourself, and that’s why the first step to practice social skills, similar to the guitar example, is to…
Practice in situations were you “can’t fail”
Let’s assume that your objective is to be more confident at networking with people, so you can have better professional opportunities. You want to switch jobs or get more clients for your freelancing business on the side. Let’s say that you are shy and don’t really have experience doing that. If the thought of walking up to a stranger in a tech convention for example, and asking for a job opportunity is a terrifying idea to you then don’t start with that. My advice to you is start by just talking to people without expecting nothing in return. In that way you can’t fail.
Compare these two situations:
Situation 1: you asking everyone at a tech convention for their contact information in order to get in touch to schedule a interview so you can go work for their company.
Situation 2: you are just asking people how the event is going for them and what does their company do.
In the first situation the people may not be interested in giving you their contact details because they may not have a job for you. It is very possible and even likely for people to reject you.
In the second situation, unless you present yourself really bad or are terrible at basic human interaction, what’s there to reject? Nothing. You are just making casual conversation with people that are expecting you to do that and in an environment where that is kind of the point, to talk to people you don’t know.
The first step to learn social skills
So, to learn social skills, start with the more simple stuff. Start by making casual conversation with strangers that are kind of expecting for you to do that for example people working in shops or coffees and without asking for nothing in return.
Example: you are doing your daily life as usual and at shops you ask how the person’s day is going or how the business is going.
That way you are desensitizing yourself to talking to strangers and are practising to smile, to have good posture while talking, just practising basic social skills that are the foundation for more complex stuff.
Then, after practising the basics, you can go try to ask for something in return. Then you can put your skills to the test.
Similar to the guitar example, even if you practised a lot without people looking or without being afraid to fail, when it comes time to go on stage for the first time you will still be nervous. Because you never went on stage before. Even if your technical skills are on point you still need the experience of actually going on stage and playing in front of people.
And if you ever did something like that, whether it be playing music or doing a keynote or presentation, you know there is nothing like doing it for real.
There is nothing like actually practising in the real world. But before you did that you practised by yourself, and that’s my point.
Practising in the real world
After you are comfortable just making casual conversation then you can go ahead and start asking for things in return: asking for contact details at a trade show to get a interview or asking girls out on dates.
That will be a lot easier if you start with the basics.
Conclusion
If you want to get better with social skills, which you absolutely should in my opinion, then start small.
Start by talking to strangers without asking for anything in return, that way you don’t have the pressure of being afraid of failure. You can practice in a low pressure environment and little by little start to improve.
After that you can take more risks because you will be more prepared.