How to Become Comfortable Socializing

“Everyone wears metaphorical masks during their lives. We all have different faces we show to work colleagues, or friends, or family. Sometimes we wear so many masks, we forget who we are underneath it all, but you have to find the courage to drop all the bullshit and reveal your true self.” ― Leisa Rayven

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Why Being Comfortable in Social Settings Matters

The Confidence Building Benefits of Being Social

Confidence is a belief in oneself, the conviction that one has the ability to meet life's challenges and to succeed - and the willingness to act accordingly. Being confident requires a realistic sense of one's capabilities and feeling secure in that knowledge.

While it may be true that feeling confident increases your chances of being comfortable in social settings, the inverse is also true. Being in social settings and creating meaningful relationships will increase your confidence.

It's important to build confidence in social settings because it will make you more desirable and likable. People gravitate towards confidence and are pushed away by insecurity and over-confidence.

The Health Benefits of Being Social

Aside from confidence building, there are many health benefits of placing yourself in social settings. Social interactions have been a significant part of cognitive development from the day you were born.

Relationships and interactions during your formative years with parents, siblings, friends and others taught you how to talk, interpret and express emotions, and learn about the environment around you.

As an adult, being social is just as important in keeping your brain active and healthy. Creating meaningful social networks and participating in activities with others are like exercises for your mind because they serve to keep you agile and improve cognitive function.

The Professional Benefits of Being Social

From my personal experience, learning to become more social also has professional benefits. When you are more comfortable socializing with coworkers you will maintain better relationships, experience less friction, and feel happier within the work environment.

According to research, social connection is one of the greatest predictors of reduced stress in the workplace. Having lower levels of stress will allow you to complete more work in less time and have a more enjoyable experience overall.

Those who have learned to be more social also have a more abundant amount of, and easier access to support. Social support can act as a buffer against stress as research shows that being on the receiving end lowers the amount of cortisol in the body.

Social support also lowers your risk of running into burnout, which I've previously written about, and thus enables you to be more productive and be promoted easier.

What Prevents You From Being Comfortable in Social Settings

The causes of what prevents you from being comfortable in social settings can be many, but from my experience those causes can always be reduced to only a few main issues.

Being an Introvert

It can be challenging for introverts to make new friends because getting to know someone takes a lot of energy and an introvert may not always be in the mood to be surrounded by others because of the innate need for personal space.

There are many benefits to being introverted such as independence and simplicity, but every human being has social needs. Maintaining a balance between time spent in solitude and activities with others is critical to building confidence in the presence of others.

Having Social Anxiety

Social anxiety manifests in situations such as talking to strangers, speaking in public, dating, making eye contact, and going to parties. In general, social anxiety is the fear of being judged or watched by others, being embarrassed or humiliated, accidentally offending someone, or being the center of attention.

While the effects of social anxiety, such as sweating, blushing, and muscle tensions are real, it is important to remember your body is responding in a way it was conditioned to, and that response can be reprogrammed with the proper awareness.

Missing the Courage to Be Authentic

The times I am most uncomfortable in social settings is whenever I feel I'm not being true to myself. For example, I may be amongst people talking badly about others, I may be participating in an activity that harms someone, or I may be encouraged to treat my body in a way that won't improve how it feels tomorrow.

Having the courage to be authentic is absolutely critical to feeling comfortable when you're surrounded by others because being authentic is just another way of implying sticking to your personal boundaries, and when you know and maintain your personal boundaries you feel confident.

My Story of Finding Confidence

The truth is that I've felt alone for the majority of my life. Especially when I was younger, I had a difficult time relating to others and feeling a sense of belonging. This pattern repeated itself over and over again until I grew the awareness to change my beliefs and behavior.

Computers turned out to be my salvation when I was around eight years old. My actions ranged from taking apart my mom's work PC down to the motherboard all the way to putting together my own hardware and dual booting linux and hackintosh. I didn't play much soccer or interact with many other kids my age.

After leaving my parents' house, I found plenty other ways to keep myself busy. Just before emigrating to the United States, I spent all of my free time running, swimming, biking, and exercising in order to prepare for the physical aptitude testing done by the Air Force. I don't recall regularly seeing any friends at the time.

Once being established in the United States during my military service, I still had not discovered what the emptiness inside of me was. I made no attempt to create friendships that extended beyond the work environment, and I certainly didn't have the character of someone desirable to friends.

Things somewhat started changing for me once I discharged and moved to Denver. I now had more free time on my hands and began wondering why I was doing so much alone. Eventually I started to become more comfortable with myself and I noticed as my confidence grew, so did my social network.

The pattern embedded in all these examples is that I didn't feel confident in my ability to connect authentically with others. I believed no-one wanted to be friends with me and so I sought ways to keep myself busy and distracted. Once I started doing the work on myself, I started attracting people.

Doing the Work

Confidence and Courage

The first step to becoming more comfortable in social settings is gaining an understanding of yourself and your boundaries. Knowing who you are and what your boundaries are will allow you to interact much more authentically with others.

I may still feel social anxiety, but it gets nowhere near as bad as it used to because I asked myself the though questions about who I am as a person.

Understanding a particular subject at great depth, such as a codebase or language, increases our confidence. Similarly, understanding your own personality, triggers, desires, and boundaries will make you feel confident in yourself.

Equally important to confidence is courage, which is the ability to act authentically in spite of the presence of fear. You may have the confidence to know what you like, but you should also develop the courage to act on it.

You can build confidence by getting to know yourself, and courage by doing something that makes you slightly uncomfortable on a daily basis such as talking to a stranger, going to a party, or even by taking a cold plunge.

How to Build Momentum

Make small talk whenever you get the opportunity. In the past, I despised meaningless conversation with strangers or acquaintances but the truth is that making small talk will become less awkward over time and makes you feel more confident.

Make eye contact and smile in order to make others feel like they have your full attention. Eye contact can be intimidating to maintain but it is a skill you can easily practice every day.

Share things about yourself to make yourself relatable to others and to find areas of mutual interest.

Discover what people are passionate about by asking them about their hobbies, work, family, or something they appear interested in. Remember, the easiest subject for us to talk about is ourselves.

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