Improve Your Social Skills cover

Improve Your Social Skills

Daniel Wendler

Highlights

  • Your fear in social interactions is almost purely physical fear, not true fear. You might be afraid that you will do or say something awkward, or that others won’t like you, or that others might judge you. But you know what? Probably none of those things will happen. And even if that does happens, it’s ok. Say it with me. It’s ok.
  • Social interaction is supposed to be fun, and failure is not a big deal. Read that again. Failure is not a big deal. If you mess up in one social interaction, no permanent harm will be done.
  • Your neck is home to many nerve endings that, when rubbed, will lower your heart rate and comfort you. When people are uncomfortable, they will unconsciously touch their necks so that these nerves will activate and help to calm them.
  • There are also nerve endings in your face, so some people will rub their face to comfort themselves. Look for rubbing the forehead, rubbing the eyes, playing with the hair, rubbing lips—all of these are behaviors people use to calm themselves down.
  • When your words and your body are sending different messages, people will tend to go with the message that your body is sending. If you didn’t mean to send that message, trouble ensues.
  • Remember, an invitation is when you say something that explicitly lets your partner know it is their turn to speak. And an inspiration is when you say something that makes your partner want to speak unbidden. Without an invitation or an inspiration, your partner might not know what to say or whether to respond. That’s why you want to be deliberate to offer invitations and inspirations to your partner.
  • An invitation is something you say that: Communicates very clearly that it is now your partner’s turn to talk, and Gives a strong suggestion for what your partner should talk about.
  • When you invite your partner to share in this way, something powerful happens. Not only does inviting your partner to share help the conversation to flow, but it also gives you an opportunity to show your partner that you are interested in them.
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  • The trick is to start superficial, and then slowly go more intimate while keeping an eye on the other person’s comfort level. If you find that they start giving signs of discomfort, then you should ask less intimate questions.
  • Second, if you ask the other person more intimate questions, you should share more intimate things about yourself. If the other person is opening up to you but you are not opening up to them, they will quickly become uncomfortable.
  • In a nutshell, you inspire me when something that you share makes me want to share something, too.
  • When you want to inspire your partner, be deliberate to share something that might inspire them to share their curiosity, their thoughts, or their story.
  • The best way to inspire your partner to share their story is to share your own story.
  • The best solution is to move smoothly between invitation and inspiration, depending on the needs of the conversation. Invitations add guidance and structure to a conversation, and inspirations add intimacy and flexibility.
  • In general, this means you should start conversations with mostly invitations, and use more inspirations as the conversation progresses. If you find the person is not responding to your inspirations, or the conversation has an awkward pause, then return to using more invitations until the conversation is moving again.
  • You want to start conversations with mostly invitations and then move to mostly inspirations, because this starts with the focus on your partner, not on you.
  • Each time that you speak, either give your partner an explicit invitation to speak, or share something that inspires your partner to share in return.
  • When you’re starting a conversation with someone, reference your social context for your first topic.
  • Don’t let your mouth move faster than your mind. Instead of talking when you’re not sure what to say, pause for a moment and collect your thoughts. Nobody will mind a short delay, and when you speak, you’ll sound much more polished.
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  • Get the other person to share stories, not facts. “Where do you work?” is asking them for a fact. “What’s it like to work there?” will encourage them to share a story with you.
  • Give yourself permission to fail. Not every conversation is going to be flawless – I still make social mistakes sometimes, and I teach social skills for a living.
  • You can normally tell whether a group is open or closed by looking at their body language. For instance, a closed group will close off from the crowd—they will move closer together, plug the gaps in between members of the group, and turn directly towards each other.
  • Open groups are groups that don’t mind new people joining them. They have a “the more the merrier” mindset, and people might flow in and out of these groups naturally. These are the groups you want to target.
  • One open person will be facing the crowd and not busy. Look for full facings—their feet, torso and face all pointed towards the center of the room or towards the crowd. They will look alert and excited, and ready for someone to come over. In
  • For a pair or trio of people talking, look at how they face one another. If group members are facing directly towards each other, they are more likely to be closed. In contrast, if group members are angled away from one another, they might be happy to have you join their group.
  • For large groups, pay attention to the shape of the group. Open groups have gaps large enough for you to walk through. Look for something like a horseshoe shape – the gap in the horseshoe is where you can stand to enter the conversation. Groups with no large gaps between their members are closed off, and you will have a difficult time breaking into them.
  • Groups formed around a public space are almost always open groups, and it will usually be socially acceptable to join them.
  • Walk up to the group and wait for a brief pause in the conversation or for attention to turn to you. Then, introduce yourself and immediately ask a follow-up question.
  • It’s still important to share something that inspires others to share as well, but with multiple participants the conversation is likely to continue even if you don’t inspire anyone else to share.
  • Periodically, try to make invitations to those who have not spoken much, so they have the opportunity to join the conversation. Ask them a question, or their opinion, or say something like, “Oh yeah, Jack had an experience like that – Jack, why don’t you tell us about the time you…”
  • When you make an effort to invite people to participate in the conversation, you not only encourage the conversation to flow, but you might spark the beginning of a friendship.
  • Empathy is the art of seeing the world as someone else sees it. 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.
  • Well, if your partner is high-energy, try to be high-energy. And if your partner is low-energy, try to be low-energy.
  • When you connect with someone on a person-to-person level, you lift the interaction beyond the functional level and allow real connection to take place.
  • Your life holds endless opportunities to connect with others. Make the extra effort to recognize the personhood of the people you encounter, and you will find yourself making connections you never thought possible.
  • When a friend comes to you, they are normally looking for support, not solutions.
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© 2025 Alessandro Desantis