Introvert going social (maybe)

If you’re nervous about events, it’s often because of their unpredictability. Will you know someone there? When’s a good time to arrive? Will I be expected to do something? The best way out of this is to organise your own. These problems disappear. Other problems arrive but we’ll solve them below.

Grab your journal and make a list of the things your friends do that give you the feeling of being valued and connected. Then list the things that you do to demonstrate your commitment to your friends. Are there things you can do more of? Have you ever asked a friend what actions they appreciate the most as a demonstration of caring and dedication?

Rules also make your event feel like ‘a thing’ and that is half the battle. If you give an event a name (even something as boring as Coffee Morning), make it regular and invent some rules, it will become ‘a thing’.

What draws us to leave home and attend a party or social gathering isn’t merely a sense of duty; it is the desire to connect deeply with other humans, to attenuate a perhaps painful sense of isolation and to find an echo of our fears and longings in the eyes of others.

If you haven’t got a thing, you need an excuse. Most social occasions are just chats around an excuse. If you ask people to come over to your house and talk, they’ll think you’re strange. If you say it’s for a dinner party or poker or Grand Theft Auto, they’re perfectly happy.

Having friends in close proximity transforms a generic neighborhood into an extended home.

The best presentations don’t just tell people something—they tell them the same thing again and again but in different ways. They use analogies to help people understand.

In my own experience, for example, I long noticed I was triggered by people who were loud and overly expressive. I eventually realized that this was because there is some part of me that wanted to be more expressive, to take up more space, but I feared people’s judgment, in the same way I was judging others.