social

I want to say that I’ve been here, and it’s not a fun place to be.

When you think about it…did you always hate people? Were you born hating people? Babies don’t hate, so it just leads me to believe there was something that made you hate people – possibly someone violating your trust / abuse / trauma / unfair treatment etc.

I’m not a therapist or any type of doctor, so I can only share my experience of how I genuinely went from hating people to …creating a course on loving them and bringing them in.

The “I hate people” phase really amped up for me in high school and briefly in college. I never said it out loud either…who can you tell this to? especially without them taking it personally, but it was an attitude I carried around. Honestly, at the time I don’t think I wanted it to change either…it was like a me-against-the-world kinda thing and something about me liked that.

The Secret

In college I actually went to a counselor for depression. For quite a while it was pretty much just vent sessions for me. It was right here where I found the DVD The Secret. The actual DVD didn’t do much for me until I listened to the DVD commentary with Paul Harrington and Rhonda Byrne. Then it was like whooooosh! new life from that point. I bought a copy for the counselor and never went back.

That was really the start of conscious self care. I remember a recommendation in that DVD to do whatever you must do to feel good, so that day I really took inventory of what was making me feel good and what did not make me feel good or was neutral. Endless video games weren’t making me feel good, but music did make me feel good. So I listened to music as much as I could that day – upbeat and positive because I noticed that depressing or angry music made me feel depressed and angry along with the music. I noticed I got so much done that day and felt better about it.

That DVD also recommended meditation and that helped with all this too! I’m very thankful that from there I stumbled on some Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. It woke me up to all these dark, negative thoughts I was having about myself and others so often everyday…basically beating me down. After a while of doing this I said to myself “dang…I’m using a lot of energy feeling hate / resentment / anger / frustration and it’s only hurting me!”

So…just carving out some time everyday to turn my mind off (meditation!) gave me a LOT of relief and eventually got me to neutral or 0. The visualization / audio books / positive people and self care pushed it to positive.

Since meditation and positive music and visualization (also recommended in the DVD) had really changed things in a big way, it led me to really dig deep into self care. The things listed below were just more aspects of self care that were extremely impactful for me later:

• Recovering from an addiction to sugar and flour and cleaning up my diet (biggest impact)
• Healing wounds that were caused by others violating boundaries and trust
• Letting my guard down with safe people who could be trusted and sharing more of the real me with them
• Realizing that all people / reality weren’t like those who violated boundaries and trust
• Learning from people who had gone from hate to love, and seeing how they overcame it
• Feeling and believing that I didn’t have to let the past define the present
• Hanging around people who have the complete opposite outlook than I did socially, people who love other people and want them around
• Seeking professional help if needed IS a part of self care! It was a part of my own self care.

If you hate people, implementing social skills will be that much harder. This is one of the main reasons I put self care before social skills. I know that consistently hating people (or other consistent negative emotions) will show up in your social interactions if not addressed.

Take inventory of your feelings throughout a typical day. What are you feeling throughout most of the day? What could actions could you take to feel good each day? What are you doing now that doesn’t make you feel good? Do more of what makes you feel good and do less of what doesn’t. Prioritize your own fun!

You come first! Take care of yourself.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.” – Albert Einstein

Can Social Skills be Learned?

Hell yeah! and when the student is ready, the teacher will appear!

So how do you get ready for the teacher?

The best way I could describe this process is surrender.  Surrendering your way of thinking about the problem and what it could be.  Meditation, visualization, coaching, courses/classes, attending events could all be tools to get you to a state where you’re not in your head and relying on your own thinking.

Have you ever lost your keys? like…really lost them.  It feels like you’ve looked everywhere!  You’ve looked under the couches and in between the cushions.  You’ve looked under the seats in your car and under the bed.  You’ve checked every flat surface you can think to check.

They’re gone.  You give up looking for them and go on living life without them – only for those keys that you lost to show up days/weeks/months/years later!

Replace the word “keys” with anything.  This is how I learned.  I wasn’t trying to learn anything about social skills!  I wasn’t thinking about it all, but somewhere deep in the back of my mind I did wonder why there were people who had large social circles and were really popular and had lots of fun, and people who had the complete opposite experience – very small social circles and always struggling with little fun.

Check out this article about the Law of Detachment.  I don’t think I could describe what happened better than that article.

I imagine this might be the case with you.  Try as best you can to relax your conditioning and assumptions.  In your head, you might be thinking “I need to learn social skills”.  This might not be what you need at all though!  The answer to your social skills problem might come from left field somewhere.

What does the teacher do? – the way I learned social skills and how you can learn too!

What my “teacher” (a high school friend) did for me was primarily drag me out of the house.  If left up to me, I would have kept to myself and done introverted things (audiobooks, video games, movies, Youtube videos or any other type of home entertainment).  BUT he was always pushing me to get out of the house and do things I would do alone as a social activity.   I was very resistant, so I’m glad I was put with a person who was very persistent.  We would go to bars, clubs, restaurants, coffee shops, meet ups, friends houses, pools, local events, parks, soccer fields etc.  It eventually became conditioned as a habit to just seek social activities way more often.  There were only a few times I regretted going out, but for the most part it was great.

How did I find this friend?  You could say I was attracted to this friend.  It was where preparation met opportunity.  He was an old friend from high school that called me out of the blue.  What he was looking for is a positive person who was moving and already working to live with him.  I had come off 30 days of meditation and visualization and was looking for somewhere to stay, so we matched.

The teacher is going to resolve the tension you feel because, for the teacher, it’s easy – like water flowing downhill.  The teacher will give you a new perspective that will be much more effective in getting what you want and/or what you need.

If you want to be more confident in your social skills, you’re going to have to use them right? What better way to learn social skills than to engage with people in different social situations?  The more you engage with people in different social situations the more confident you’ll be in your social skills.  You’ll learn what to do and what not to do.  You’ll learn what to say and when to say it.  It will be like working out your social skill muscles so they get stronger.

I had to have someone practically drag me out of the house, but honestly, you can do this yourself.  Set 30 days aside where you’ll go out each day to some establishment and engage with at least one person you don’t know.  Try some venues you wouldn’t normally go to.  You might even attract a friend like I had to accelerate the learning.

Can you learn social skills?  Of course!  Stay open and curious, and detached from how you learn social skills.  And get out of your comfy ass house 😉

I was talking with an accountability buddy of mine about times where felt I was playing too much defense socially about different interests and values I had and how I resolved those situations.  She eventually said, “You should write about this”.  So…I’m writing about this 😉

Most people experience acceptance on some level, but it can feel so normal they don’t even know how much acceptance they’re already experiencing.

All the current and potential attributes of your character can truly be accepted, encouraged and celebrated by the right people.  Put these different attributes of your character “out there” and you’ll be more likely to be found by those right people.

Exclusion

The first time I noticed not feeling accepted was being very young and fat.  In fact, this might be the highest level of exclusion I’ve ever experienced to this day.  Society treats you different if you’re fat – especially a fat kid.  Thinking about all the unnecessary ordeals (teasing, bullying, horrific PE classes, parents who don’t have a clue on how to solve it, not to mention all the craziness that comes from eating the food that caused the overweight) kids have to go through, through no fault of their own is the only thing that instantly can bring me to tears.

The acceptance level went through the roof when I joined a 12-step program for food addiction as an adult, but this was decades later.  People there had similar stories and most people had overcome similar issues.  One thing I’d love to see is young kids feeling the level of acceptance I do now for being fat and to know that there is a real, practical solution to having a right-sized body for them.

Think about the country you’re from.   If you were born and raised in that country you might not even be aware of the acceptance you’re experiencing by living in that country.  I didn’t realize this culture/location – based acceptance until I went to another country where I didn’t know the language.  It took this exclusion for me to be reminded of how included I actually was in the United States.

Going against the herd

“Whenever you find that you’re on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause & reflect.” – Mark Twain, 1904.

It can be especially difficult if you’re in some way consciously and deliberately moving away from something the group you’re in holds sacred or might just feel is normal.  Maybe there’s a lifestyle choice or behavior or way of thinking the group feels is normal, but you have this higher awareness / intuitive feeling / suspicion / inner voice that is telling you that this “normal” thing is not a good fit for you and might not be serving them either.

You might feel torn between an either/or decision here.  Either move away from the heard to this new interest /  more aligned value, but be alone, or stay with group and be accepted while tolerating this discomforting feeling that something is wrong.

Defense and examples

What you might not be aware of are all the people who would celebrate this interest / value you have.  They might even have it as a prerequisite to be a member of a group they’re in.  It might feel so normal to them that they don’t even talk about it because everyone around them has that same interest / value.

Is there something you’re interested in or a value that others around you aren’t interested in or don’t value?  How are people relating to you about it?  Are they teasing you about that thing?  Are they indifferent towards it?  Are they actively opposing it?  Do you find yourself rolling your eyes at it all?  Would you rather this interest or value you have be accepted vs. teased and attacked?  A little bit of teasing and playing around is expected, but too much of this and you’ll find yourself in defense about it or you’ll just stop talking about it because it will mean you’re subjected to endless debates, excessive teasing, and/or varying degrees of opposition.

I remember feeling like this when I was working at a job and decided to start juicing.  Everyone was usually eating junk food to get some high or escape from the hours of dull, repetitive work of our job.  I had secretly been watching lots of people juicing on YouTube and on Netflix (Angela Stokes, Matt Monarch, Philip McCluskey and Joe Cross) for a long time before I decided to go to a raw vegan restaurant.  After visiting the raw vegan restaurant, I was so motivated to just jump in and start juicing – so I did.  I didn’t say anything to anyone, but did begin to decline invitations to eat junk food, and people saw me drink a lot of different juices at the job.  Some were interested in this experiment and why I was doing it, but I noticed there was so much teasing, debate, and even anger and attack (wtf?).  I thought to myself – I’m really being attacked for this new thing I want to try? Why? I think because my diet was so clean I heard my intuition a lot louder.  I heard this distinct message in me saying “you need to find more like-minded people”.

I also felt this me-against-the-world attitude for not wanting to have a 9-5 job – but everyone around me had one. My family and friends were mainly all employees, so I’ve gotten lots of teasing, attacks and opposition there.  It was why I was at that job in the first place.  Me taking that job of repetitive, dull and boring work was a result of me giving in to all the pressure and opposition around me who also felt repetitive, dull and boring work was just the thing to do.

This feeling like I was being attacked didn’t change until I went to a workshop by Steve Pavlina – for finding a way to do heart-centered work for $10,000 / month.  All the attendees in the workshop had been readers of his blog prior to signing up, so we all shared similar values and connected through his work.

Well – it turns out he’s been vegan for a while and written quite a bit about different health experiments he’s done – so many attendees were also vegan and had also tried their own health experiments.

When I went to this workshop, I was surprised that I didn’t have to defend any of my food choices.  What a relief! In fact, we all ate together and everyone had similar food choices to me and we were all interested in each other’s choices.  Some were vegan, others were vegetarian, some were juicing, some were drinking smoothies.  All of a sudden, all the prior experiments with food I had done isolated and alone were interesting and of value to other people.  I just had to find these people who resonated with these things.

At that workshop, I also didn’t have to defend my choice of not wanting a heartless, 9-5 job since the main reason we were there was to find a heart-centered way to make $10,000 / month.  There, we were talking about passive income and starting businesses and all the different ways we could create value for people.  Are you kidding me?  Do you know how many employees hating their jobs have told me to just “get a job” when I didn’t have one back at home?

You are accepted

That experience broke my reality to pieces.  I had never met people who accepted me on so many levels.  At that point, I realized I was tolerating too much opposition back in Texas, and it raised my standards.  At that point, I also knew I needed to hold on to this vibe.  This workshop was in Las Vegas, Nevada, so I went back home thinking “I’ve gotta recreate this vibe in Texas somehow”.

And I did.  I joined a 12-step program for food addiction and found the same acceptance there and it was amazing – which led me start attending spanking parties and workshops and found an even greater level of acceptance there because it’s so against the norm.

Then I felt like other people needed to feel this amazing feeling of acceptance too – so I made Social Expansion 🙂

After going through several rounds of this social expansion process, you’ll get to this point where you feel – I am accepted.  No matter what interest you decide to take a deep dive in or what value you adopt, there will be people who accept, encourage, resonate with, and celebrate it.  I think you’ll feel that it’s so worth it to find them and connect with those individuals.

This whole process I went through created space between me and the people who were originally teasing/attacking/resisting me.  When we reconnected and they saw me 100+ pounds lighter, for the most part, they related to this aspect about me way differently than they originally did. There wasn’t too much debate.  There was way more interest from them when they saw the results I was having.  There was still some teasing about all the vegetables I was eating, but it bounced off me because I was so certain that this was a waaay better way to live for me.  Internally, it felt like I was a lot stronger and more confident about this part of my lifestyle.

Playing offense to get home

That feeling of being socially accepted feels amazing.  So amazing, that now, if I feel like I’m playing too much defense, I know I need to play more offense and be more proactive in finding like-minded people.

When you open the door of social acceptance, it feels like you’re coming home – especially if you’ve been feeling socially rejected.  It’s not only validation and confirmation, but it’s light and easy.  It’s depth in your connection with the group.  It’s mutual respect because everyone involved knows what it was like to step up and put this part of yourself out there amidst opposition.  It’s a breath of fresh air you can take while you relax and just be yourself with others who are also relaxing and just being themselves.

I say throughout this course that I learned social skills from a friend.

I look back on that experience being around him, and I can say for sure I had a completely different outlook on relationships / people / social skills after being around this guy.  So, what did he really teach me that I could share with you.

When I really break it down, the main component was trust.  Trust in his own ability.  Trust in his own intuition.  Trust in God.  Trust in his instincts.  Trust to dive deeper into his own interests.  Trust to share his talents.  Trust that the right thing to say will come at the right moment.  Trust to act on that right thing that comes up.  Trust in his ability to find answers if he didn’t know them.  Trust in other people and their talents and abilities.  Trust to know when to give and take.  Trust that his investments in people would pay off.

It wasn’t all smooth and many times he’d miss the mark, but it made for such a dynamic life, and he had everyone’s respect around him for trusting at such a high level.

Much of the trust came from work, practice and experience.  It’s a lot easier to trust in your abilities when you’ve consciously worked to build up those abilities and you’ve failed and learned lessons and asked for help when needed and overcame obstacles.  The more you do these things, the more trust you develop in skill building too!

I started to trust at a much higher level after we went separate ways, and of course I started having results I saw him have. I trusted reality and reality trusted me right back.  People trusted me enough to let their guard down around me.   People trusted me with resources.  Reality started giving me great answers to questions I had for years!  People started giving me help and support!  I want you to experience these results and way more.  They will blow your mind!

Trust can leave you vulnerable!  People can hurt you and violate your trust.  People have hurt me and violated my trust.  These can leave some wounds and really leave you hesitant to trust again and be vulnerable.  You can also heal those wounds.  You might need to seek professional help.  I am not a doctor, but I know that there are 7 billion people in the world and they are not all like the people that violated your trust.

I invite you, just as someone invited me, to lean a little more into trust – whatever that means for you.

How can you lean into more trust?  What is your intuition telling you right now?  Are you open for answers to come in?  Do you trust them enough to act on them when they do?  Do you trust other people?  Do you hang around people you trust more often than people you don’t trust?  Do you trust in your own abilities?  Do you trust your intuition?  Do you trust this reality?

Because we live in a social world. You could live a life like Chuck Noland from the movie Cast Away, but why?  There are so many great experiences you can have in a world of more than 7 billion people.

I devalued social skills until I met people with great social circles. Things just flowed easier for them, it was easier to get needs met – to the point they didn’t have to think about getting their needs met as much, which led them to more service and contributing more, which made life better for everyone!

I feel thankful for the years of social isolation and all its struggles.  It helped me appreciate witnessing and experiencing a dynamic social life so much more.

If you think about evolution, to me, it’s easy to believe we’re wired to be social.  If we are wired to be social, then social skills are vital, not only for survival but quality of life.  It’s like you’re fighting against yourself if you don’t develop these skills and put them to good use.