How to Be More Social (And Enjoy It)

Have you ever been stuck in a conversation with the most boring human being of this planet that all you wanted from life was him to disappear from your sight?

Probably you have experienced this first-hand or, worse, you have behaved this way yourself!

Does It Sound Like You?

Maybe that’s exactly what you do in most social settings, you can’t relax and enjoy the moment as you’d like to. The problem is that this tension is preventing you from really connecting with people you interact with and guess what, you’ll push them away sooner or later.

Social interactions can be scary for many of us at the beginning, even if having successful social encounters is one of the most profound and most essential needs of us humans. It’s paradoxical how we are usually afraid of interactions while we still need them like we need water.

That’s because most people don’t understand that socialization should be fun, in fact, if you don’t have fun during socializing, you are doing it WRONG.

This does not mean that you should make fun of other people and laugh like Jim Carrey in the mask in every social occurrence you have.

What You’ll Learn From This Article

By reading this post, you are going to:

1: Discover the secrets of how true socialization has to occur based on how we are hardwired;

2: Change the perspective you were holding up to now;

3: Enjoy socializing once forever.

Stay tuned because learning the principles contained in here will help you both in your personal and professional life.

Before we start, a little question:

How can we always have fun in social interactions?

What People Do Wrong

Many people try to look cool, severe and composed when they are in social interactions because they think that this is what will make the other person tick.

The fact that trying to look always serious is attractive is actually a myth, in fact, that’s something that can be considered attractive when embedded in somebody’s natural character and personality.

Why?

Because every social interaction between people is supposed to be fun and positive. Deep inside we all want to create good connections and enjoy our time with others, the problem is that we either don’t know this or we don’t know how to.

This is also true in business relationships.

At equal conditions, would you rather do business with someone you have an incredibly good time with or with somebody that doesn’t leave any taste in your mouth after he goes away?

My Story: Behaving Like a Secret Agent In College

During my college years, when I was learning how human interactions worked, I started to do some social experiments to see how people were responding to me based on the premise that I put into the social interaction.

First, I started my experiment by putting the mask of the cool and serious guy on myself, pretending to be always composed, busy and important (I know, I was a dick). I was basically imitating cool people from movies to try to achieve their sort of powerful aura.

With this experiment, at first I was seeing new people I met being attracted to this detached behavior, especially during the first minutes of the interaction but then they seemed to lose interest in me because I was being too severe and probably also because of the incongruence this behavior had with my creative personality.

I was also hanging around with a good friend of mine at the time that was considered very serious and reserved. We were basically two people hanging around being the ugly James Bond’s copies of our college.

This period was also the one when I was experimenting with pickup, you can imagine the cocktail that came out of that.

A funny event occurred one day when I started talking to two girls that were studying in the same room where my friend and I were. At first, they were quite skeptical and worried about us, but I could not understand why.

I mean, I had never given this impression before to a woman. Anyway me and my friend kept talking to them until they opened up.

The Truth Came Out Unexpectedly

They basically told us that they and some other friends of theirs had always been intimidated by our attitude because of the serious appearance we were projecting and that they felt scared when we approached them.

Then, taken by the curiosity of the fact, my friend and I started asking around other people that we met if they had the same opinion of us and almost everybody said the same thing.

This was like being hit by a hammer for me as nobody had ever told me something like that.

I quickly realized that trying to look cool was not the key to social success and soon dismissed that approach. I was also spoiling my image by doing this experiment, so I quit immediately.

I spent some time thinking about why being cool didn’t work.

After all, James Bond is cool, and still, everybody likes him! Well, that’s true only on the big screen, real life works under an entirely different set of rules.

Authenticity – What Truly Works

“What the hell works then?” was my big question. The understanding came little by little.

What was the factor that repelled social interactions?

The answer to my question seemed only one: Heaviness and trying to look cool.

I started to understand that people were naturally repelled by heaviness in social interactions both if I put them on me, them or on the interaction itself, making it seem like a big deal. (Oh really Salvatore? You are a pure genius having discovered that).

Wait, because I still I see TOO MANY people shooting themselves in their feet by trying to behave in a cool way to copy somebody they’re not, most of the times being bad like Argentinian actors at doing it.

Why? Because probably they still don’t know how things really work.

I started to questions all the role models that I saw on TV and my belief system as well.

Maybe what made people tick was not the constructed image of coolness but something else.

If heaviness and being socially locked was repelling people what could actually attract them?

Of course, the opposite: Lightheartedness and Being Authentic.

I started to experiment this time with lightheartedness in my new social settings. I was not giving too much importance to delivering a cool image this time, but I was present with a genuine authenticity that, by magic, made people more attracted to me.

After that I arrived at a straightforward conclusion:

Life Is a Yacht Party

We are all in a big yacht party, and we are here to have as much good time as possible with the best possible people for us and whoever ruins the party, better to be thrown away from the yacht!

Having a good time with others is one of our most intimate desires, and that’s why usually people avoid others with which they cannot share good vibes as that’s not what we are instinctively looking for.

That’s why we hang out with those people we like, and we can have a good time with. This does not necessarily mean having those Jim Carrey super fun conversations but just feeling good around somebody can be enough.

What the hell! And what about professional relationships? Should they be this way as well?

If we talk business, it does not mean that we are talking with robots, even if most of the times that’s what it seems like. In business relationships, we are still relating to real people that make decisions based on emotions rather than logic.

For that reason, the human component is fundamental also in this case to maximize our success in social relationships.

How You Can Have Fun And Win

Then, how can we get all the benefits of social interactions without being afraid of them?

Hint: Getting drunk and socializing is not the solution.

There are some simple, actionable steps you can use now to maximize your success rate.

Here they are:

#1: Learn To Express Yourself

Whatever positive emotion you are feeling when in the presence of somebody, accept it and express it without trying to resist to it. This will make you more natural and genuine, and people will like and trust you more. Don’t be afraid to smile or laugh if you feel like, that’s being authentic.

#2: Deeply Understand That People Wanna Have Fun

As said before, understand that almost everybody at the end wants to connect and have the best possible social experience. No matter if you meet them on Tinder or at a bar. If you can produce this shift in your beliefs, your actions will come from the right place.

Reframe social interactions as events that are supposed to be genuine and natural and not as something cool and perfect.

#3: Kill Perfectionism

You don’t have to try to look perfect in front of people, you’ll only look fake by doing this. You are not perfect like everybody in this world.

Moreover, your being imperfect makes you already perfect the way you are if you genuinely can accept your true self. The only time you are not perfect is when you try to look perfect. Keep this in mind.

#4: Listen To Your Body

This means not overthinking and overanalyzing every social interaction you experience when you experience it. It means being present and fully aware of your feelings rather than of your thoughts.

You’ll have a much deeper experience this way, believe me. The best interactions are the ones where you are able to feel instead of the ones where you merely think.

#5: Remove Expectations

Don’t force the direction of your social interactions. Even if you have a clear goal to achieve, like a business one or a romantic one, it is good to have in mind the destination as trying to over-control the interaction will put too much pressure on it and will inevitably make you fail on your expectation, apart from preventing you from enjoying it.

Your Take Away From This Article

It’s the belief that you hold about social interactions that will produce a specific behavior. When you understand that most people want to have fun and enjoy socializing, your internal perspective and your external reality will change.

I now close this post with a perfect quote for the occasion.

“It is good people who make good places.” Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

Did you ever think about socializing under this perspective?

Comment below with your thoughts.