I Improved My Social Skills as Fast as I Could - Here's How

What I'm going to cover here comes from over 15 years of me working on my social skills. This isn't from some books. To be honest, I haven't found any good books when it comes to social skills. It's terrible. It's a lot of speculation, a lot of academic thinking, a lot of what sounds good in your mind, but it doesn't come from real life experience. I'm someone who from 2006 on went out in the real world, not in books, real world, and started interacting with people. I've talked to more people than the average person normally would in their entire life. I've talked to more people than probably all of you combined. No joke. And this here is part one of getting good socially. It will come down to a lot of inner work, but there is an external side where, hey, you got to work on yourself. That's the authenticity part. But then you have to also work on the connecting to others part. You want to connect to others. You better know how to read others, how to read them emotionally, how to put yourself in their shoes. It's called empathy, advanced empathy, and how to know exactly what would make sense, what wouldn't make sense, what would connect, what wouldn't, and calibrate to them. The only way you're going to develop this feel is by talking to a lot of people and knowing exactly what to look for and recognizing the different patterns between all of those people. So keep that in mind. You want to get good talking to people, talk to a lot of people, take charge of your social life and talk to more people than you naturally should. Say you were to talk to 30 people a day. Time passes. Guess what? That's a lot of experience under your belt. As I mentioned, that will be on the connecting side. On the expression authenticity side, that is work that you will have to do on the inside because it's the foundation. Meaning if you go out and you're anxious and you're scared and you start pretending to be someone that you're not, you start putting on this front, you start trying to act confident or act fake, well then guess what? Will those references help? No, because they will all be coming from the front, not you. Even in terms of seeing what clicks or not, you're not going to know authentically if you click and with who. Even in terms of getting good references, it's not you who's getting validated, but the front. So it will actually hurt your self-esteem and hurt your confidence. It's going to keep saying, I am only liked when I'm pretending to be this versus I'm liked for me. So you'll have to learn how to crack open that front, tap into the real you. You've been disconnected from a very long time. This is also why advice like be yourself is very accurate, but most people don't know how to be themselves. Who you think yourself is, isn't really you. It's the front that you've put on and been the majority of your life. So letting go internally, unleashing authenticity, and then from there getting a lot of reference experiences. At a most basic level, you can break down social skills as, okay, social skills, you have on one side, 80% of what I call emotional skills. And on the other side, it's 20% of what I call analytical skills. Emotional skills, analytical skills. Emotional is everything that has to do with the vibe. Okay? For example, if you're someone who is very anxious, that's an emotional skill. If you're someone who gets stuck in your head, that's an emotional skill. If you run out of things to say, that's an emotional skill. If you can't have fun, that's an emotional skill. If you can't express your true self, that's an emotional skill. Analytical skill, as we talked about, this is the foundation. This you will develop through the right reference experiences. This will come down to, you could say, polishing that natural vibe. If you've ever heard the term social natural before, it's a thing. Someone who's gone through a certain conditioning, a certain life, and they just feel very comfortable socially. You might have some friends like that. No matter where you go, they can easily talk to people. Everyone just likes them, likes talking to them. They gravitate towards them. You know, if that person comes out to a dinner or something, they're going to make it fun, right? A social natural. That's the emotional skills. Emotional skills alone will get you to that point of being social natural. You can kind of just be loose, be yourself. But then you do need, as we talked about, the analytical to make sure it connects with others and to even polish that expression of you. And this here, you could simplify it as content. Vibe, content. Big mistake people do is they try to work on the vibe and the emotional skills using their analytical mind. No. That looks like, okay, I run out of things to say. What are some, if I analyze this and think, some ways I can not run out of things to say? What are maybe some stories I can memorize or some things I could fall back on, et cetera, et cetera. Terrible. That doesn't solve anything. What solves the emotional skills? One thing and one thing alone. It's two words. Yes. Letting go. Letting go is what gets you to become a social natural. All of you were born as social naturals. All of you. All of you were way less sifled as children versus you here today. All of you were. This isn't something that's missing within you. It's something that you've buried inside. As you started growing up, you started getting a bit more worried. What do people think of me? Well, is that how I sound? No baby is, well, is that how I sound? No, no kids thinking that. That comes later on. You started judging yourself. Trauma happened. And ultimately you started disowning and hiding your true self and putting on this front that you've now basically become. Who am I? The front. And you've lost touch with authenticity. Letting go gets you back in touch with that. Letting go, guess what? Allows you to no longer get triggered. Social anxiety, that's you getting triggered. Until you identify why you get triggered, where that comes from, the original trauma, nothing's going to change. You can try to progressively desensitize yourself, which is sadly what most people do, and that'll give you some results, but it's not all the way, and it's not permanent. As soon as you stop doing your little challenges, you fall back. Letting go, that's the foundation, and it'll get you 80% of the way. It's actually the highest ROI thing you could do with talking to a lot of people, is actually letting go. And sometimes it baffles me when people are like, oh, I like this letting go stuff, Julian, but what about the social skills? That is social skills. If you can't see, letting go gets you 80% of the way, then you're too far gone and your IQ is far too low, okay? And this is also very important. When I say the biggest ROI thing you can do, vibe is more important than content. You can also analyze in terms of socially, if you're someone who's just very, very analytical, hey, you need to do a lot of letting go and work on the emotional skills. You need to learn, especially socially, to get out of your head, to unlock what I call your full instrument, meaning not just speaking like this, with the mouth and the lips, but with the body. Notice that, with the body. That there, old me, right, back in 2006, all shy, stifled, I couldn't do that. No technique, no line is gonna get me to do that. You can't force that. Forcing that would look like, with the body. That's forcing it. Very different, no? You can sense there's not that same depth to it, and it's a lot more at you. With the body. Hey, everyone, you like how loud I am? Does it make sense? Like, you liked it with the body. With the body. One, the voice is going, like, grounded, the voice goes down. With the body. With the body. My voice is actually shooting down here. Loud. Shooting down. Yet, it projects a lot more. Reels people in more. This isn't something that happens by force. It comes from letting go. Okay? You could think of it, too, as taking a ----. People are constipated as ****, and they're trying to ----. Socially. They're, like, really stifled. Like, that's their instrument. It's, like, super constipated, and they're, like, come on. Come on. Express yourself. And you'll hear their voice. Literally, it's like a little string of ----. Going, like, hey. My name's Jeremiah. Come on, ----. Get out of my mouth. And then they might try to be loud. Like, hey. Hey. Hey, there. Trying to shoot the ---- out. And they're, like, maybe more just forcing it. Terrible. People sense that. It's weird. It's too much. It's off-putting. And you can just sense that person's constipated. On the flip side, you also see people constipated who just suck it up. There's, like, I'm just too shy to even try to express it. So, you'll either have the person, like, super constipated not talking or constipated trying to force a little string out. Letting go dilutes the anus so that it just naturally, effortlessly just all comes out. And that's when you tap into your true power. That is the best way to illustrate this. Are you trying to force out your vibe? Or are you diluting and just letting it out? Just that's power. That's also getting out of your head because then you're not wasting all that energy trying to force something out. Then you can allocate that energy to pattern recognition. Putting yourself in the other person's shoes. To forward willpower. This is important. If you're really shy and anxious and stifled, you're trying to hide all that, you're trying to micromanage how people think, there's all that worry, you're burning a ton of energy and willpower. Energy and willpower that is necessary if you want to truly express yourself and make sure it connects with someone. Guess what? Right now, this event, am I using a lot of energy and willpower speaking right now? Yes or no? Yes. Kidding me? Yes. To craft a speech like this requires a lot of concentration and willpower. It has to make sense. Like, as I'm talking now, I'm already, just like playing chess, thinking three, four moves ahead of how this is going to link to what I say then. I'm also thinking, okay, for them to understand this concept, I need to say this first. I need to say it in this order. I'm going to use this story. I'm going to use this joke. It's a ton. It's very mentally intense. What allows me to do this while also remaining flowy and fun and at ease is by having access to all of my energy, focus, and willpower. I can't be burning it backwards, fighting against myself, stuffing stuff down. That's why people mess up. If all your energy is like, oh, be cool. Oh, don't show the anxiety. Like you have like 10% left on what you're saying and forward focused. Good luck with that. 10% left in terms of even analyzing your references. Most people don't even remember their references. How are you going to grow from that? So letting go is also what gets you out of that, reclaiming all that power, which really accelerates your growth. And then in terms of what reels people in on a charismatic level, we always get so obsessed with the content, right? Like what are some cool stories to say that's going to reel someone in? Oh, give me the little cool stories, the words. It's like, it's the vibe. It's literally the vibe. Five is 80%. Of course you can refine and what I call polish the wording, but what comes first, what draws someone in is the energy that they put out. You lost you. Is that your spot? Yes. Okay. Favorite example is this. Okay. Sure. I'm gonna have to kick you out. Okay. Yes. Again, this social awareness to two in your head. You can't even notice you're disrupting an event. Be aware that number one, less of you wake up, be aware. Okay. Now the big test that I was like bringing this back to is this. Say you take two people and there's two scripts for a commercial selling you on this pen person. Number one, they did a ton of test studies on the different words that resonate with the audience. Oh, if you say the word moist, when talking about this pen, it'll really resonate. So it's all studied and it's this carefully crafted marketing experts came in. Like the script is perfect. The content is perfect, but let's just say that person's vibe is at a 50% take someone else their script. Let's just say there is no study. It's 50% as good as the other one or worse script, but vibe is a hundred percent. Who's going to be more appealing and captivating divide vibe comes first master that 80% of the way there. Then of course, add on the content. And this is how you see people got it the wrong way, but like working all these words, but it just comes off weird, hollow, even the words itself, what you're saying, what is it supposed to highlight the vibe? And this is the other big shift is that most people try to go out and socialize and put this front and hide behind this front to distract people from who they are. Hey, if I learn these tips and tricks, people won't see that I have nothing to say. If I learn these stories, people will think I'm interesting. If I hide my anxiety, people will think I'm confident. So everything you're saying or doing is designed to distract people. We call this being a social scammer. Sadly, most people, a social master. Yes, there are still some tips and tricks involved in the 20%, but they're not meant to distract people from who you are. They're meant to highlight who you are saying something. Even the story is meant to highlight how awesome your vibe is. Make sense. Are you, and this is an audit for all of you. Whenever you're talking to someone, are you trying to bring their awareness to who you are or hide and bring it to something that you're not? And at the most basic level, this starts by going first and just being real off the bat. If you're going out and you're like, okay, I need to have more fun. And even try to jump up to have some more fun. It's better than nothing, but you're still scamming. Why are you not having fun by default? Why do you need to do that to have fun? Okay. I need to build my momentum. No, you don't need momentum. Is there such a thing as momentum? Of course, but it should play a small role. Meaning I do still get affected by momentum, but my starting point is really damn high. And the momentum just takes me those extra couple percents. For most people, they have nothing. They're all momentum. Not good. That's still scamming. That's the whole, I'm not in state. Now what? Why are you not in state? Let go. And you don't need to make momentum your go-to foundation. If you notice, guess what? I could be quietly standing at the back. I walk up, Hey, how's it going? I don't need momentum. I don't need to warm up. I don't need to do my two, three minutes. I'm going to talk a little bit for two, three minutes and warm up. No, because I've done the inner work. There's nothing blocking it. There's nothing I need to fight against. And then here's the other trap. If you're relying on momentum, even if you're relying on different stories or things that you say, that's becomes your source of confidence. It's not coming from you. It's hurting core confidence. There was a comment recently on a video that I put out. Someone's like, Oh, I love that. That bit of advice. It was a, just an advice when it comes to conversation skills. It's like, Oh, I like that bit of advice. I feel like if you give a lot more bits of advice like that, it's going to help people with anxiety. Cause then they have all these little bits of tips and tricks they can rely on. And I'm like, okay, well, that's great. They have their spot. Yes. But you don't want that to be your foundation. Cause what is it going to say that you are nothing without all the tips and tricks. That's your source of confidence. That's your source of power, not who you are. You'll always feel not confident without it. Your self esteem will never move up because the good response, say the good reference, the good reaction. It's not because of who I am. It's because of the little story. It's because of the tip and trick I saw on YouTube. It actually hurts you. You want your source of power and confidence just come from who you are. Hey, you know what? I can be interesting with a great script. I can be interesting with a boring script, bring it. And if you're someone who relies way too much on the content, give yourself a challenge, go out and try to talk about the most boring things yet make them interesting. And you will be amazed even on a deeper level, what defines something that is interesting. If you find it interesting, if you're interested in it, that vibe, that passion will transfer onto the other person. They'll be interested in it too. Right? I actually have a friend acquaintance who lives in San Francisco. I'm like friend, more of an acquaintance. I'll see him every now and then he lives in San Francisco. He's a great guy though. And he works in the bar scene, restaurant scene. And he's the type of guy where if you go out and you eat something or he orders a drink or something, he'll describe kind of like how if you go to a Michelin star dinner, like in great detail, all the subtleties that went into it. So say we're at a restaurant, it's like, Oh, did you know that that dish, they got this from that thing. And this, and the way he talks content wise. I mean, even if you actually go to a Michelin restaurant, they give you the description. You don't even understand half of what they're saying. You're just like, Ooh, like the vibe affects you. Content wise. I don't really care what he's saying about this. Oh, and then the fish, they got it there. Okay. Cool story. But it actually makes the meal way more enjoyable. And I get sucked into what he's saying. Oh, did you know that this drink was infused with it? It's like, I don't give a ****, but because you're into it, I actually kind of do. And I like it. So keep talking about it. Same here. Whatever you're actually at a most basic level, I would focus on that. Instead of looking for little cool stories, say, Hey, what are some real stories from my life that light me up? What are some topics that I could just talk about forever? And try going out and talking about that. See what happens. Try prioritizing the vibe. Anything you say, it's because it highlights and amplifies the vibe. And you'll be surprised. There was even someone, this is many years ago. I still have the video somewhere. He was, might be in Transformation Mastery too. He's, it was in Eastern Europe. It was this older guy, very stifled, very sad, Eastern Europe. And, you know, he's like, Oh, Hey, like just all down. I'm like, when's the last time you smiled? He's like, what's that? And I'm like, okay, when's the last time you were excited? He's like, I don't know. So I'm like, give me one thing you find really interesting, really exciting. And he's like, Game of Thrones. This was before the finale. And, uh, and he was like really into, I'm like, okay, tell me why you like to tell the whole crowd, you know, tell the whole crowd why you like Game of Thrones. And he starts talking. He's like the Game of Thrones. And at first it's just kind of meek, but suddenly, and you see it in the video, the guy starts getting carried away. He's like, you know, and the writer, they thought about it. And he started, he starts getting louder and louder. And everyone's like, he's like, they thought about this. And there's this character, this character named Hodor. He's like, yes. And they thought about it for all these years that hold the door is Hodor. Hold on. And he starts going nuts. Everyone's like, who is this? Because he picked a topic that just lit him up. If he does that while out, that is much more charismatic and appealing than him thinking, what would be something that someone else would like to hear about? Maybe I'll interest them with a little bit of content. No, you interest them by being interested in it. You interest them with your vibe.