Having A Realistic Idea Of The Effects Of Improving Your Social Skills
Working on your people skills will make your life better if you're currently weak in that area, but it does only go so far:
You may never becoming a super outgoing, confident, social butterfly
Why? Because you may just not be that motivated. You could be the kind of person that's perfectly happy with two very close friends, a healthy relationship, some more interesting plans on the weekends, and relief from the unhappiness and low self-esteem your so-so interpersonal skills previously caused. Being the fun, charismatic guy with 50 friends may not do it for you.
I believe if you work at it, you probably could become super outgoing and confident, but I think everyone's first priority should be getting good enough to get by; to be happy with yourself and your life and eliminate your most painful problem areas.
Then, if you want, you can try to go to that next level. There are undeniably benefits to it. But you may never want to get there. Maybe it'll forever remain as a 'should', something that would logically be nice to have, but that your innate character isn't all that interested in attaining.
You'll never become socially flawless or impermeable to harm
When you improve your people skills, the social world will be easier to navigate, but you'll never become totally immune to its difficulties.
- You'll never totally avoid rejection, or not care about it.
- You'll never hit it off with everyone you meet, or get everyone to like you.
- You'll never totally avoid bouts of poor self-confidence or negative thinking.
- Not every conversation will go perfectly.
- You'll never totally eliminate your nerves in certain situations.
- You'll still make mistakes and say stupid things.
- You'll still be shy or inhibited sometimes.
Also, sometimes you'll know you should do x,y,z to act more socially adept, but you won't feel like it. This comes down to being human. No one is going to follow the advice they've read all the time. You may go to a party one day and just decide to be less social, and that you can live with the consequences. Or you'll be in a bad mood and not do what you logically know is ideal. Everyone has days like this, socially or in regards to other things.
No matter how much you improve you'll still occasionally backslide into your old ways
I'd like to think I get along fairly well with most of the people I meet these days. But occasionally I'll meet a new group and I'll come off as awkward and withdrawn around them. Sometimes my thinking will digress into its old negative, unproductive ways. Sometimes I forget how to have a proper conversation. Sometimes my nerves and inhibitions keep me from doing something I'm usually comfortable with.
It's not great when this happens, but everyone has their off days. The good news is that you'll recover from these hiccups pretty quickly.
Improving your people skills won't make your life perfect
Since I started this site, I've been under a fair amount of stress in an area of my life totally unrelated to the interpersonal realm. The fact that I'm better than I was at chatting to people at parties has nothing to do with it. You'll still have other problems too: with your career, with what you want to do with your life, with your personality, with your friends and family, with your partner, with money, with your health, you name it. Social skills are important and reach into many areas of your life, but there are other factors in play too.
And if you think about it for half a second, you'll easily come up with a few people who have great social skills, but who still have problems in their lives. A way with people doesn't guarantee you'll act in a psychologically optimal manner in other personal areas either. You could be charismatic and self-assured but still be self-destructive, flighty, unmotivated, prone to certain mental illnesses or addictions, jealous, lazy, unhappy, or directionless. I remember thinking, without really thinking about it, that if I could get my social skills together I'd somehow become this calm, centered self-help master overall. But things like impulse control, self-discipline, conscientiousness, and being organized are in their own category of personal effectiveness.
You can still get anxious, depressed, or stressed out
Like I said, since I started this site, I've had a period of being stressed about an area in another part of my life. This stress made me quite anxious, to the point where I went to see my doctor about it. It wasn't social anxiety, I've never had that, it was more general in nature. Like I'd get a little jittery before events that used to never bother me, or I found myself avoiding certain situations because I had a hard time handling the nervous symptoms they aroused in me. Anyways, my being better with people was irrelevant. A certain life event started the ball rolling, some vicious circles were set into place, some negative thinking patterns became entrenched, and my sympathetic nervous system and various stress chemicals started to get the better of me. And I've always been pre-disposed to anxiety. It runs in my family and I always had a nervous disposition as a kid. My nerves around people probably contributed to my getting behind socially when I was younger. This current anxiety was different and worse from that though and I went to other people to try and get a handle on it.
The same could be said of depression. You could have the world's best people skills and still get depressed if something bad happens in your life. Ditto with stress. Get laid off with no savings or get divorced and you're gonna get stressed. What's it matter if you're witty and interesting?
You'll never totally alter your old traits or interests, and you shouldn't want to
Some of your natural interests or tendencies can unquestionably hold you back socially. If you play World of Warcraft for fifteen hours a day, you need to cut down, assuming you have other priorities in life. But nothing is wrong at all with liking video games or fantasy worlds or gaining precious, precious levels. Nothing is wrong with enjoying your alone time, or being interested in geology, or having a slightly weird sense of humor either. If you're thoughtful, rational, and intellectual, why would you want to give those strengths up?
Your natural tendencies are part of who you are. You can't ever totally change them anyways, so why bother? Your innate interests bring you happiness, why get rid of them? Yeah, you may need to turn down the knob on certain aspects of yourself, but moderation beats total abstinence.
The best thing is that improving your people skills and personality gives you more leeway to indulge in the interests you're naturally drawn towards. When I had no life, I'd feel like a loser if I played games all weekend. And in a way, I really should have been out there trying to make friends or something. Now I'm like, "I have my act more of less together, who cares if I play some game for a few hours after work today?" And if you come across as cool and well-adjusted, no one will hold it against you if you do some "nerdy" stuff in your spare time.
Actually, there are lots of people out there who like quirky types, or cerebral thoughtful people, just not hardcore, weirdo shut-ins. They want to hang around dorky people who can still have a fun conversation or have a good time on the weekend. Those social traits are minimum requirements, but once those are met, they prefer those who are smart, different, have a slightly warped sense of humor, and who can pull their weight in a conversation about politics or alternative comics.
The causes of your social difficulties could be seen as a life-long manageable disease
Or at least how that's I think of them, not to deride all the people out there with asthma and diabetes. I'm a loner at heart. I can be insecure. I can be anxious. Not to mention weird, negative, and unsociable. I think these things will always be with me to some extent. It's kind of annoying, but I feel some tasks will always be a little harder for me. Sometimes my shyness or anxiety is going to well up and sabotage me, or make me struggle harder to keep things on an even keel. Maybe on the outside I'll be indistinguishable from anyone else, but internally I'll be working that much more, or something will be that much more unnatural for me.
I think of it as just being born unlucky in that department. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I'm healthy, I'm mentally sharp, I'm naturally skilled at particular hobbies. Maybe someone else is predisposed to being socially astute and confident, but they have a bad memory, anger problems, dyslexia, alcoholism, ADHD, or something else that makes certain parts of their life hard going.
Something I think about is whether I'll ever be the same as someone who's a 'natural' socially. I don't know how they subjectively experience the world, but I think my social skills will always be held together with duct tape on some level. I had to scratch and claw to learn these things late in the game. That's a very different history from someone who was a naturally confident kid and learned everything through experience from the time they were six. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I'm out and everything comes to me easily, but my hunch is that I'll always be that square peg to some degree. Oh well, I get by well enough.
Changing takes time, there's no magic instant cure
I feel like a broken record saying this. If I hadn't mentioned that there was no magic bullet, or that social skills are still skills that must be built up gradually like any other, in seventeen other places on this site I may go into more detail. But yeah, it takes time. No insight, epiphany, mental attitude, trick, or realization will make everything fall into place all at once.
You can't have your cake and eat it too
In my day I've run into a couple of books/products/systems that have implied that you can remain the way you are (i.e., weird, awkward, paralyzed with fear in social situations), but still get friends/romantic success/happiness easily through the application of whatever all-powerful secret knowledge the author was selling. I don't think it works like that. If you want to do better socially you've got to improve yourself as a person all around. It's not like you can spend seven days arguing on forums about some fan boy minutia then venture out of your mom's basement for an hour and whip out some bag of tricks to make everyone you meet like you instantly.
Sometimes you have to work on the fundamentals before you can get to flashy stuff
As you can tell, I'm all about developing a strong social foundation and letting your interactions flow from that. At times this means that you may have to work on the less-glamourous, not-immediately-gratifying tasks before you're positioned to more easily tackle the goals you're really interested in. An example would be a guy who wants a large circle of fun, interesting friends, but who doesn't have the personality or mental space to attract such a group into his life. He may have to work on himself a bit before he can realistically have the kind of social circle he wants.