How To Socialize Effectively & End Social Anxiety

 

The ability to effectively socialize is essential to human beings. Our advanced ability to communicate played a grand role in our survival and development throughout history. The majority of our society’s functions depend on our ability to socialize with each other. Our social life is also heavily linked to happiness and mental health. Yet, a great portion of people are unable to socialize effectively and suffer greatly for it.

Socializing is a fundamental human need. Connecting with others in a way allows us to more deeply connect with ourselves and learn more about ourselves. The inability to connect with other people tends to put one’s development to a halt and make people feel unfulfilled. The reasons why people find difficult socializing falls into two categories : Internal and External.

The external problems are skill based. Some people just don’t know to properly listen and build rapport with other people. Below in this article, I list several fundamentals to effective communication that if followed, will dramatically improve your ability to communicate.

The internal problems are generally linked to social anxiety. Socializing makes some people automatically nervous and disables their ability to express themselves and listen to others. Social anxiety derives from insecurities, past negative experiences and other various factors.

Trying to communicate with others without having the confidence to do so can be quite difficult. It will take a lot of practice and failure to get there and all those failures can be rather discouraging. It is much more important to develop yourself internally first. The more confident you are in yourself, the more effortlessly you will be able to express yourself to others.

The thing with communication is that you are literally projecting yourself. Your words and actions are all a reflection of you… If you are nervous around people, it will show in your body language and tone of voice. When you are comfortable and confident, your body language is more relaxed and you find yourself saying things more freely and clearly.

Developing confidence is key to curing social anxiety. Socially anxious people are far too focused on themselves and constantly fear the perceptions of others. This in result puts up a wall between them and the other person and one can never effectively communicate in this manner.

1.So how would you go about dealing with the internal problems? There are two ways that you can do so and one is much easier than the other. Build up confidence by fully accepting yourself and loving who you already are. As I’ve written in this article about insecurities (highly recommend you read it), all of your insecurities are purely mental and can disappear by simply changing the way you perceive yourself. Desire to be who you already are and you will be who you want to be. This is the shortcut to feeling whole and being comfortable enough with yourself to freely express yourself around other people.

To do that takes daily dedication. You have built up certain beliefs about yourself for so many years that they have taken strong form in your subconscious mind. When changing the way you perceive yourself, your subconscious mind will refute your new perceptions and try to convince you that you “really are ugly,” “have too big of a nose,” or “too socially awkward.” Fight through those thoughts and will yourself into fully accepting everything about yourself, even the things about you that you perceive as flaws.  Feel it every single day until it breaks through your subconscious barriers and takes permanent form in your consciousness and becomes your new way of perceiving yourself.

You can do this by visualizing yourself as already being the person you want to be and also feel a deep love for yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror and practice accepting yourself every single day. Meditate or use brainwave audios to go into a relaxed state of mind (more relaxed your mind is, the more receptive it is to change) and repeat positive affirmations and visualize yourself in a positive manner.  If you think your nose is “too big,” then repeat “My nose is fine the way it is. I feel beautiful” and visualize this being the case as well too. You can listen to hypnosis audios as well to get the same effect. This method does take a long time and needs to be done every single day for you to see results.

2.There are three audios in the SapienMed youtube channel that can transform your state of being into a state of total acceptance and love for yourself. These three audios are clear subconscious limits, remove insecurities and extreme confidence. SapienMed’s audios are embedded with energy that directs the mind and body to change or behave in specific ways. If you listen to these three audios daily for several months, you will practically hack your mind and become the person you want to be.

Clear Subconscious Limits– Many of us have limiting beliefs that make us believe that it is impossible for us to socialize. Beliefs like “my nose is too big for people to like me,” “I’m too ugly,” “I never know what to say,” and so on. If you believe these things, then your subconscious mind will basically reflect that on to reality. You will feel like you are too ugly to talk to people or you really won’t know what to say when talking to someone. Our clear subconscious limits field clears limiting beliefs like these and opens your mind to new possibilities. It makes you feel like a kid again that believes anything is possible. This feeling is necessary to those with social anxiety who believe socializing isn’t possible for them.

Remove Insecurities– Our insecurities truly limit our experience in our lives and keep us from feeling whole. Insecurities essentially are feelings of emptiness within that you wish to fill by changing something about yourself. Truth is, the only way to remove your insecurity is to fully accept yourself and love yourself as you already are. Our remove insecurities audio pretty much does this. It removes your insecurities and replaces these insecurities with unconditional love for yourself.

Increase Confidence – Although the other two audios essentially increase your confidence, this audio is the icing of the cake. It will make you totally believe in yourself being capable of doing anything. You will feel proud to be who you are and this will allow you to more freely express yourself. You will not need approval from others and can finally just be yourself around others without worrying about how people will think of you. Our evolutionary energy based audios make it possible for you to skip the incessant desire to change yourself and just start enjoying being who you already are.

By listening to these three audios for several months, you would essentially get rid of your social anxiety and become more open to socializing with other people. And your newfound self-esteem will make your personality shine more than ever before.

5 Ways to Effectively Socialize

Listening

The most under looked aspect in communication is listening. The truth is that everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. So when you get them talking about themselves and intently listen, they will begin to feel more connected to you and open up more.

You will actually find that you naturally come up to say when you are more focused on the other person because you will work off what they just said and be in the flow of the conversation. When we think about what to say, it usually disrupts our focus of what they are saying and as a result, disrupts the flow of conversation…  Conversation is about communicating with someone else so of course, it is logical to purely focus on them.

It is also imperative that you do not interrupt the other person while they are speaking. Let them finish their thoughts and this in itself will show that you are actually listening to them. You’ll be surprised by how very few people are good listeners and how much of an effect it has on the conversation.  Showing that you are listening is essential to being a good listener and gets people to open up to you more as well.

• Ask questions that dig deeper into whatever the person is talking about. For example, if they mention that they went to the movies and saw “Get Out,” and you ask “How was the movie?” and they respond “it was great. Much better than I expected. Jordan Peele is a great film maker.” And then you can ask “I keep hearing it’s so good.. What did you find great about it?”This also ties back into purely focusing on what they are saying… If you intently listen, you will always find that you can expand on one of their statements or that they mentioned something that can be turned into another topic in the conversation. When the other person said “Jordan Peele is a great film maker,” you can go expand on that and ask “I’ll be the judge of that. Who are some of your most favorite filmmakers?”
• Repeat the last sentence someone said and then insert your own input. For example, your friend said “I really love going to all-inclusive resorts. They make me feel so free,” and you go “ah, so you feel free when you go to all inclusive resorts.. I would suppose you do when everything is free!,”  When you do this, people really get a sense they are being listened to because you are repeating what they said. It also gives you a second to think and better come up with a response to what was just said.  (Don’t overdo this or it will come off as unnatural)
• Make listening noises like “really?” or “oh wow” and listening gestures like nodding your head. (Don’t overdo this either)
• Have open and receptive body language. If you are standing with your arms crossed, then you are going to come off as uninterested in what the other person is saying. Be more loose and relaxed.
• Be enthusiastic about what they are saying. This is so key! It makes the conversation flow so much more easily if you are genuinely interested in what they are saying. If you really aren’t, then try to be! Be enthusiastic anyway and make the person feel like they are interesting. Communication thrives off reactions and if you react enthusiastically, it adds the necessary energy to make it flow fluidly. I highly recommend you develop a real interest in people and be open minded to their thoughts and ideas. It will make socializing a lot more fun and engaging for you. Be curious.

Open Mindedness

Often when we come across people who think differently, we tend to become defensive to their thoughts and block any type of rapport from ever occurring. It’s very limiting to just want to be around people who are just like you. Everyone’s minds are shaped by their respective environments and life experiences. We shouldn’t judge how people think because we would probably think the same way they do if we were in their shoes. We should seek to understand why people think the way they think and learn from them as well. The desire to learn from other people will make conversations with others much more engaging for the both of you.

People love to share their thoughts and beliefs… however crazy they may be. If you open your mind to their ideas, you might take something from it and learn something new. If they also give you feedback, sometimes it is good to step back and be receptive to feedback.

Communication is a two-way process and should remain like that. You should be able to open up to feedback from the other person and give honest feedback whenever you feel it is needed. Open mindedness in a receptivity to other person’s communication and the more receptive we are, the more easier the conversation will flow (unless the person is trying to harm you then you should of course not be receptive).

When you respect people’s viewpoints and ask questions to dig deeper into where they are coming from, they will feel more likely respect your beliefs as well. This goes back to my point on developing an interest on getting to know people. This is essential to being a good communicator because your genuine interest will allow you to easily connect with others. But even though you are open to someone else’s thoughts, you should still stay as true as possible to who you are.

Honesty

Be honest with yourself and express who you are. People generally have a great amount of respect for those who are “real.” Comics who do self-deprecating humor are well respected because of how honest they are about themselves.

People can connect to that because it shows how human they are. Nobody’s perfect and the majority people know that very well. So nobody is expecting you to be perfect either but when you come off as a genuine person, you will really stand out to them. When you are authentic to your personality, you will be able to express your thoughts more freely because you will actually say what you want to say. You always have things to say but some of us have kept our mouths shut for so long in fear that we would be judged that we stop ourselves from opening up.

If you aren’t true to yourself then people will be able to tell the second you open your mouth. Even if you get away with it, you will go home feeling a bit empty because people didn’t like you for who you are but you pretended to be.

Now, I’m not saying be brutally honest and tell someone they look ugly because you feel that way. That’s just disrespectful. Another important aspect to effective communication is knowing what not to say.. and it’s quite simple to know what not to say. Negative things. Stay away from negative topics and try to keep things positive. At the end of the day, you want a positive interaction so that people will remember you positively.

 Be assertive with your thoughts. Say what you want to say and mean it all the way. When you are confident in what you are saying, people will be more likely to listen to it and understand your point of view. Being able to effectively communicate is being able to get your point across and assertiveness ensures they get the message. If you haven’t developed enough confidence to be honest in communication then I highly recommend you refer to the steps above given to help with social anxiety.

Mirroring

Mirroring is when you and the person you are communicating with mirror each other’s body language, words and even tone of voice. It happens when you are in rapport with someone. Rapport basically means “I am like you. We understand each other.” When you and the other person get into a state of commonality, this tends to naturally happen. But if you intentionally do it, you will gain instant rapport with the other person as well.

• Match another person’s body language. Mirror their posture, movements, expressions, and so forth. But don’t do this too closely or it will come off as weird. This is supposed to have an unconscious effect therefore it should appear to be subtle. A very advanced and powerful thing you also can do is match the rate at which they are breathing.
• Match the amount of eye contact they give you. If you give you eye contact, give it to them right back and do not look away until they look away. Some people say that you should always give people a lot of eye contact but don’t listen to that… Not everyone is comfortable with getting a lot of eye contact. In fact most people aren’t. Match the level of eye contact they give you and it will synch the both of you.
• Use words or phrases that they use. Match their tonality of voice, speech patterns and even the speed at which they speak.
•  If you find commonality in something, dig deeper into it. If you find out he/she is also into something that you are into then it’s a great opportunity on connect on something. Try not to stay on that one topic forever though or the person will only know you as “that guy that also likes __”.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings with another person. When you have empathy, it means you can understand what a person is feeling in a given moment, and understand why other people’s actions made sense to them. Empathy helps us to communicate our ideas in a way that makes sense to others, and it helps us understand others when they communicate with us. To be empathetic simply requires us to open ourselves up to people and allow ourselves to feel what they are feeling. In our brains, we actually have mirror neurons that mirror the emotions of other people.

 So if someone that you are close to hurt themselves by slipping and falling, a part of you would like OUCH, that must have hurt. You kind of feel how they would felt when they hurt themselves and that is what these mirror neurons do. They allow us to feel what other people feel and this is meant to create a greater connection between two other people.

So when people share a story, put yourself in their shoes. Allow yourself to feel what they feel. When you do this, you develop a true understanding of where they are coming from. Better yet, they will sense that you can really get where they are coming from and open up to you more. Empathy is the basis of human connection. But most of us have closed ourselves from feeling anything for another person unless it’s someone who you already built a connection with.

Well… empathy is how you will be able to build connection with others and establish great long lasting relationships. If they talk about how they are telling you a story, just imagine if you were the one in that story and how it would have felt for you. Even if it’s a negative story… When you do this, you will be feeling what they feel and be totally in synch. They will feel like “wow, someone actually gets me. I like being around this person” Mirroring someone’s body language is powerful but mirroring their emotions is on another level of establishing connection. Empathy, in my opinion, is the most important aspect of effective communication.  

Conclusion & Shortcut

To effectively socialize is to be able to freely express yourself and connect with other people. Freely expressing yourself is quite difficult to some people but can be made better made possible when you are self-actualized and have a good sense of self-esteem. I would highly recommend you listen to the SapienMed audios recommended above to gain the necessary confidence to freely express yourself and have wholesome relationships with others.

And even if you don’t, just following the tips I gave on how to effectively socialize will dramatically improve your social skills. And there is also a shortcut that will remove your social anxieties and also make you an excellent communicator…

We have recently released a social mastery field that would transform your social skills to a whole other level. You will become naturally adept at talking and connecting with others with this field. It is one of our most powerful fields to date and the effects are quite noticeable.