Why do certain people thrive when socialising while others become drained and uncommunicative? People who suffer from loneliness and depression are far more likely to get tired by interactions, much like exercise can tire out someone who doesn’t go regularly. Being drained by these situations means that they spend less time socialising on the whole.

If we acknowledge this need to recharge, how can people who suffer from loneliness balance their need to be alone with the need to meet people?

How downtime affects your uptime

I have observed extroverts who can attend social events that start at 5pm, and still be full of energy and surrounded by people by 1am. Such people have huge capacities for engaging with people and it seems like they feed off the energy of other people (without taking anything away from them!). This ability may have been trained over time, or it could simply be a natural trait.

I am more inclined to believe that this behavior can be trained, since I have seen a great many people who were previously introverted, working their way up to becoming the life of the party.

Regardless of the explanation, people who are approaching the topic of socialising for the first time or who have an introverted trait, will often need some time alone alongside going out and meeting people.

This time is useful of dealing with disorienting or new situations. I believe that some of this ‘downtime’ is also used to consolidate learning as well.

When we read a book or a watch TV or surf the Internet, we are in complete control of the interaction. In a social situation, there is no overall control, with the environment and people forming the situation as it happens.

This unpredictability and variety is exactly what we need, and the brain needs time to consolidate these experiences.

Using your downtime effectively

What activities can you do during downtime that can help you during uptime?

How about:

• Simply sitting in a quiet place for ten minutes
• Listening to some calming music
• Going for a short walk alone
• Having a hot bath
• Meditating
• Watering plants
• Painting a picture
• Playing an instrument you are proficient at
• Playing a simple game on your mobile

During this time, try to allow whatever thoughts you have in your mind to come to the surface.

The other benefit of this type of activity is that when we are introduced to different or stressful situations, our bodies automatically react by pumping adrenaline. With downtime, you are able to give your body some time to down regulate the adrenaline in your body and regain a normal perspective.

This downtime behavior is perfectly natural for many, however for those that are unaware (especially those who find socialising easy and effortless), it can be seen as withdrawal, shyness, anger or even unfriendliness.

If you find that situations get too intolerable often, it is useful to practice a polite way to end a conversation and retreat for a few minutes. Remember however, to not get too good at this! If you structure your retreats, such that you aim to always go back to the interaction when you are ready, you keep the momentum going.

Tips for keeping the social momentum going

Here are a few pointers for balancing solitude and sociability;

• Acknowledge that not everyone can be “up” and sociable all the time – only the rare few. Many of us new to this skill need to balance uptime with solitude.
• The amount of time we need for downtime will vary, but we must always try to be conscious of trying to reduce the time we think we need.
• A lot of the vital learning and consolidation of social skills takes place during downtime, especially for introverts, so it’s important to respect that this time is an essential part of social development.
• The skills of socialising are built upon momentum. If you go out regularly for five days, the interaction on your sixth day will seem easy. However if you wait a week, you will find your social skills will have retreated back a little.
• Once the retreating of social skills has taken place, you may find that you need more alone time again to compensate. It typically takes less time to get back up to speed however.

The best analogy for this balance of solitude and sociability is the exercise analogy. To get better you train harder at regular intervals. If you stop, the longer you wait until the next session, the weaker you get. Finally, if you don’t take regular rest, you will eventually burn out!

People who have poor interpersonal communication don’t do well in social situations. Many will believe “that’s just the way I am” or “I’m just a quiet person”, resigning themselves to their perceived fate. However, like any skill, effective communication can both be taught and learned.

So why is it important to learn social skills in the first place and what is the best way?

The benefits of social skills

Good communicators tend to do much better in life socially than the rest, because they understand that communication is a two way process. Good communicators are also good listeners. When someone takes the time to listen to you, you are more likely to listen to that person, because they have shown that they value what you are saying, and hence validate you as a person.

As such, good communicators tend to achieve far more friendships and relationships than anyone else. They understand the balance of making people feel valuable and getting their personality and point across.

Good communicators will have had many conversations with a diverse range of people and will know the best approach to meeting people for the first time.

Through this experience, they cultivate a balance of speaking and listening, which results in better engagement with their group. Their experience also helps them to spot patterns in the people that they talk to and this gives them a better insight into how best to communicate.

Just like good communication can be learned however, poor communication can also be learned. In fact, by refusing to meet or talk to people on a regular basis, the skills of poor communication can also become perfected too!

The biggest reason why people fail to put themselves out in front of new people is that they fear embarrassment, and often its because they don’t have much faith in their ability to communicate. This lack of confidence in communication hinders their ability to contribute, and shapes their view of socialising in general.

How to quickly get better at socialising

The best way to get better at socialising is to take action and put yourself in a situation where you will fail at socialising. This is the only way to do it.

Regardless of how many books your read, or audio programs you hear, how many therapists you see or how many friends you seek advice from, it’s the only way. There is no magic bullet when it comes to improving personal communications, other than practicing.

If you are really finding it hard to come up with ideas for practicing this skill, why not take action and try some of the following activities?

You could try learning:

• Personal selling, or take on a sales job
• Acting
• Singing
• Dancing
• Public speaking
• Professional networking
• Debating
• Vocal training

All of these activities if chosen carefully and stuck with will dramatically enhance your ability to communicate.

Make no mistake however, you will fail at these tasks initially but the true benefit comes from understanding that you learn from those failures and constantly improve and adapt, until it becomes natural, much like learning to ride a bicycle or drive a car.

Taking communication further

We have learned the importance of good interpersonal communication. It is critical in feeling confident about socialising and gives us the greatest results in terms of making connections with people for the first time.

Here are a few points to remember:

• By respecting that communication itself is a behaviour that can be improved, we allow ourselves to improve. We also increase our ability to show respect to others by choosing to improve in this area.
• Immerse yourself in an unknown social situation and use people’s reactions to you to measure your communication skills. Also take note of good communicators and aim to make friends and connect.
• Meet with and be around good communicators on a regular basis and remember to ask them what they did to get good at it. Do what they do.
• Monitor which communications activities you find easy or challenging. Choose to concentrate on those areas that give you the most benefit.

This blog will feature many in-depth techniques for socialising, so don’t worry if you feel like you don’t yet have the tools to fully immerse yourself in a new interaction just yet.

This first step is more like dipping your toes into the water to get a feel for the ocean. We will cover the techniques that will help you swim, but you must first get used to the temperature of the water.

Now go forth and socialise!

Most people appear to have high self-esteem. In fact humans actually tend to over estimate our abilities on the whole. For the lonely person however, this is usually not the case. So what exactly is self-esteem and how can we raise it? What anxieties surround sociability and how does self-esteem contribute to social performance?

Exploring validity

I think that self-esteem is the belief that the self is valid. The self is put under scrutiny by the constant recollection of times when personal goals or expectations were failed, met or exceeded. These failures or achievements and the way we focus on them make up the overall balance of guilt and satisfaction in our own performance.  The resulting state is our overall self-esteem.

A high self esteem individual is more likely to form the belief that a new, never seen before task is achievable. Their personal bias on prior tasks, which resulted in success give them the motivation and edge to take on new challenges.

On the other hand, a person with low self-esteem has two challenges when faced with a new situation; first, there is the constant worry of inadequacy, which serves to distract individuals from processing new, potentially rewarding tasks. Secondly there forms either a strong lack of self-belief or even a straightforward dismissal of being faced with the new task and its potential disappointment. This “shutting down” feature is especially common with introverts or hsp’s (highly sensitive people) when faced with new social situations.

In other words when it comes to meeting people, the odds are stacked against a person with low self-esteem, because their thoughts are ruled by the background state that has been formed from the habitual nature of this negative focus.

Anxieties surrounding sociability

There are several worries that people suffering from loneliness have, centred around meeting new people.

Some of these might be:

• Fear of people
• Embarrassment
• Safety concerns
• Fear of being judged
• Bullying
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of something bad happening that happened before

Focussing on these above issues is sure to result in failure. Even a person with high self esteem, encouraged to focus on these issues would perform well below their natural sociable self given a new social situation.

It is important to develop the habit of challenging these thoughts with powerful positive images.

How about seeing socialising an opportunity to:

• Make a great impression on someone that results in a lifelong friendship, or even a partner?
• Get to know people who have conquered greater fears and who empower you to do the same?
• Know more people, and mutually look out for one another other, increasing your social safety, strength and influence?
• Meet people who are not judgemental and accept you for who you are?
• Practice your inner confidence and be un-wavered by people who attempt to intimidate you?
• Experience both rejection and success and learn from both, by subjecting yourself to their causes and effects?
• Learn to take control of the present and create outcomes on your terms?
• Contribute to others in your own way?

Self-esteem and sociability

We can see how self-esteem can lead to the belief that taking some action is or is not worth the effort. For a person with low self-esteem, it can be very hard to find a reason to become more sociable, when its perceived that there is so much to lose by interaction.

The levels of personal satisfaction or guilt, the internal dialog that frames past goals in a negative or positive light to create the background “state”, the anxiety and worry about taking an action with an uncertain outcome and finally previous held beliefs about socialising all feed into how sociable a person actually feels at the time.

An easy way to remember how self-esteem affects sociability is that the level of self-esteem tells a person how valuable they are to themselves. If you have a high level of personal value then you are more likely to take on value-adding activities, because you believe that you are worth of deserving the benefits they could bring. The opposite is true in the case of the low self-esteem individual.

What actions can I take to raise self-esteem and hence, sociability?

Alongside challenging negative perceptions, below are some exercises you can try yourself to raise your self-esteem, work through worries and indirectly increase your sociability:

• Write down fifty things that you have achieved. This can be any achievement from the mundane to the complex. Almost everyone has learned to speak for example.
• For each of those achievements remind yourself of the effort you put in and the reward you received. Recognise that you have the capability to achieve in unexpected situations.
• Write out a list of your worries surrounding socialising. For each of these worries, think about the options you have. For example, do you continue to feel lonely, or take some specific action? Then for each worry, go through the options, select one to act upon and cross off the rest. Then act.
• List your failures. Now try to find something that you learned about yourself for each one of them. Failure is part of everone’s personality but it doesn’t have to rule it. Acknowledge that you will make many more.
• As you develop a high sense of self worth, others will notice and give you the credit you give yourself, and often much more. Carefully observe your self-esteem increasing.

We have learned that it is possible to train ourselves to focus on the positive and raise our self-esteem over time. We have also learned to counter some of the anxious thoughts that surround socialising, opening up awareness to its inherent positive opportunities. Finally we have covered some practical exercises that you can follow to raise self-esteem and gain a better understanding of how your self worth contributes to sociability.

Mr Loneli

If you have any questions about any of these topics, or simply want to get in touch please feel free to email me at:

mr@loneli.com

Did you know that around one person in every five on this planet suffers from loneliness?

The number of people reporting feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression are on the increase worldwide. How and why does this happen? And what can we do to prevent this trend?

It’s a feeling

Loneliness doesn’t just affect the lonely. Even people who may on the surface seem popular can suffer when alone. This is because loneliness is a feeling. It’s a chemical message that reminds us that a critical need is not being met.

There are a great number of reasons and theories on why people can suffer from loneliness:

• Shyness and social anxiety
• Emotional or physical abuse
• Loss or bereavement
• Victims of discrimination or prejudice
• Depression, isolation or paranoia
• Contempt or prejudice against people, society at large or even socialising itself

One of the reasons given for loneliness in otherwise crowded modern cities is that people are increasingly isolated from one another. People prefer staying in and passively stimulating their feelings with solo activities like watching TV, eating or surfing the net, rather than interacting with their fellow human beings.

Loneliness is a communication problem

Many lonely people typically suffer from both internal and external communication difficulties.

People who suffer from recurring loneliness may find that they seem to ask themselves the same questions over and over again, for example: Why am I alone? Why do I feel so lonely?

The answers usually appear as painful memories from the past, or self-deprecating statements, or even self-blame that aims to explain away or rationalise these unwanted feelings.

This ongoing internal dialog affects the lonely person, because there is no one else present to discuss, air or qualify these feeling-led responses and hence no outlet.

The second type of communication is that between the lonely person and the outside world. Lonely people tend to be introverted, and are easily tired by social interactions, often needing some “downtime” to recover from meeting people.  Coupled with less experience in social skills, for many being and feeling lonely can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What skills can the lonely person build upon to improve their well being?

While we may not be able to stop all the issues that lead to feelings of loneliness, we still have control over the skills, behaviours and knowledge surrounding social interaction, and most importantly the ability to take postive action.

Typical advice given to lonely people is to “be more sociable, meet people, join a religion or group, be nicer to people etc.” but in my view, this advice is counter-intuitive.

There are underlying reasons for chronic loneliness that must be addressed before putting oneself in such situations. Especially if you are a vulnerable or sensitive person for whom’s throwing yourself in at the deep end could harm your view of interaction permanently.

In my experience, I believe that there are several practical skills that lonely people lack that if focused upon, could dramatically improve sociability, before they even step into a crowded room full of strangers.

These skills are:

• Self confidence – carefully developing a high self esteem and belief in oneself and ones abilities
• Confidence in social situations – self confidence that stays grounded when faced with complicated social interactions or challenging personalities
• A practical understanding of human psychology – learning about the different ways that people think and interact in the world
• The desire to interact – developing an overwhelming desire and curiousity to meet new people
• Tolerance and a non-judgemental attitude – to become more accepting of other people’s behaviours or attitudes, without compromising your own philosophy of living
• The skill of giving – a strong desire to give some part of yourself or your skills to others, without expecting anything in return

Through a consistent focus on each of these six issues and plenty of practice, I believe that the average lonely person can become a powerful social force to be reckoned with!

So what have we learned?

Here are the key points about how to combat loneliness:

• Internal communication must be re-framed and aired in order to break the patterns of loneliness that people imprison themselves within.
• It’s important to understand and accept that external communication and the desire to communicate are both practical skills and outlooks that can be learned.
• When we truly realise that all people are valuable in some way, our natural curiousity for people can be used as a neverending fuel to motivate ourselves to talk to others.
• By monitoring our natural behaviours or traits, we can identify moments where they prevent us from social success and find alternative ways to reach the same goal.
• We all can make gradual and consistent changes or improvements in our lives by taking small actions in each of these areas.
• Through this consistent effort, feelings of loneliness can be overcome in both ourselves and others.

This blog aims to explore, the topics of loneliness, social interaction and provide practical advice for growing the meaningful connections you have with your fellow human beings.

If you are fascinated by this topic as much as I am, I invite you to subscribe to my blog below and join me on this journey:

Mr. Loneli

If you have any questions about any of these topics, or simply want to get in touch please feel free to email me at:

mr@loneli.com