#64 - How to feel less nervous in social situations?

Summary

Did you get to learn about social skills when you went to school? Did someone teach you how to interact with others and feel confident?

One of the problems with the school system is that it doesn't focus on the skill that might be the most important of all, social skills. How to feel more confident talking to new people? How to feel less nervous in social situations?

Today we are diving into the challenges that we have had in our social life. This episode is focused on exploring Emil's struggles with feeling nervous and awkward around new people and social situations. What he did to come over it, how long it took and what are his best tips to learn social skills.

Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik and Emil explore topics about how to grow as a person.

We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective. We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from.

This episode was spontaneous and unplanned. We wanted to keep the conversation as real and genuine as possible and instead of planning, we dove into it. The focus became on exploring how Emil locked himself into a bubble of online poker for 10 years and during this time just stayed in his comfort zone.

When his girlfriend broke up with him he had to start socializing with others and found that he couldn't even talk to women. He asked himself "How to feel less nervous in social situations?" and "How to feel more confident talking to new people?"

He started challenging himself, growing his comfort zone, had friends to learn together with, and went from being socially challenged to someone who now loves social situations, meeting new people, and values his social skills as one of his main talents.

Transcript

[00:00:49] Are you feeling anxious in social situations? Do you feel this pressure to fit in? And is it hard to learn social skills?

[00:01:03] These are all some of the questions we touched upon when we started preparing for this episode. And that was roughly twenty seven point three seconds ago. But we felt that we ended up in a really very real conversation about the mistakes and the challenges that we have been going through, mainly in our teenage years. And Amy has shared things that I haven't heard before. I felt like, wow, this was really real. How about we just go into the podcast studio record and see what comes up? So this is a spontaneous episode that we're not really sure what's going to come out of it, but it felt like we could find gold here. Yes. Yes. So I'm here with you, I mean, the host of the great dot.com podcast, my very long term good friend, but not teenage long. Yeah. Kind of teenage kind of thing. That's cool. Teenage daughter. And the first guy joining me into great Ask.com.

[00:01:59] How you doing, man? I am feeling a little bit cold. I'm not eating today, which means that my energy could be. I do very good. Or I could be a little bit slow. It could kind of go either way. But yeah, I have a good little bit little bit of a nervous feeling in my body as well. That's good. Now is this good? And I'm here with Eric Bergman, the founder of Great.

[00:02:29] Together we are doing there becoming a podcast for everyone who wants to make their world or use their own lives better through personal development and entrepreneurship. How are you today, my friend? I'm doing very well. I'm also a bit nervous. It's tricky when we're not preparing. And still some of the best episodes we've done have been the unprepared ones. I'm excited about this. And the reason we don't want to prepare this is not because of late snice, even though we're for sure our lazy people.

[00:03:00] It's because it's so if Eric is going to ask me about something emotional I went through as a teenager and he already know that experience than some of the magic is gonna get lost in the podcasts. So it's better for. Do listening that we do it this way.

[00:03:17] We want to invite you on the same treasure hunt that I'm on.

[00:03:22] So that's what we're going for, for a teenage socially awkward treasure hunt. Yeah. And.

[00:03:30] We got into this topic because we started doing an episode about social skills and our belief is that someone that starts off with lower social skills or someone that is facing challenges in that if they build up enough pressure that I want to change this and they get on the path of personal development and especially the path of how can I improve my social skills? That person, when that person is 30 or 40, is going to be better socially, I believe, than someone I was naturally good when they were in their teens. And yeah, I think that is a very important message.

[00:04:10] Yeah. No one has taught you social well. You're supposed to learn from your parents and if they are super good at social skills, then you're lucky. If they're not, then no one is really taught you in school, doesn't teach you. So let's let's dive into this. Let's. That's so socially. Who was airmailed when he was 14.

[00:04:34] When I was 14.

[00:04:38] I would say I was.

[00:04:41] Kind of cool in some areas and some areas. I didn't feel so cool, so I was redrawing a lot. And. I think I would look very normal on the outside, but inside I felt. Like a social like a social pressure, often that.

[00:05:02] I felt like there was expectations on me to be in a certain way to fit in, to be valuable in the group.

[00:05:11] Um, yeah.

[00:05:13] What were those expectations? How did you feel those? Feltlike.

[00:05:20] I wanted to fit in. I wanted. I was seeking approval and. I know that I felt. A sense of lack in inherent value. If that makes sense, that.

[00:05:36] For me to be valuable, it was important that other people that I judged as valuable.

[00:05:44] Included me, your took me a apart in the hierarchy that I was imagining.

[00:05:50] Okay, so for you to feel good about yourself, you needed to feel that other people felt good about you.

[00:05:57] Yeah, you could put it that way. Can you remember a certain situation around that age where you felt that you were struggling with us some some situation where you felt awkward or misplaced?

[00:06:13] So system since I wasn't that.

[00:06:15] Confident in myself and didn't feel that valuable, my psyche was going back and forth between a sense of superiority and a sense of inferiority.

[00:06:26] So, OK, let's translate that into you. Your personal belief system went from feeling I'm super good to. I'm super about.

[00:06:36] Yes, exactly. So in some situations where I was naturally competent, like I was playing floor ball, a Swedish sport, and I was pretty good at it in that situation, I felt like I could be confident. And then that took its place. Me being. I was a mean to others, often almost like a bully. And in other situations. Yeah. I would feel very in superior. And then I would withdraw from the situation. I would be very silent. I would be very nervous. Like we'd be sweating. Alot would be. Yeah, like just nervous looking. What are the people doing, you sort of cafferty this.

[00:07:19] Is it okay if I do that? So interesting.

[00:07:24] Trying to think back, if I was if I had situations where I've felt superior and other situations where I felt inferior. I can't see it that clearly. I can see. I was always trying to make myself intellectually superior. I wanted to show that I was smart. I think that was my way of doing it. I was fairly good at sports, but never really good.

[00:07:51] I didn't really have to think intellectually. That was my kind of arena. And trying to play out something. Mm hmm. So how did how did this shift over time, if this was 14 year old who were Yamila at 18 19?

[00:08:08] At 18, 19, I started playing poker professionally and I got an office out in Knacker where I was coming from in Sweden, and I started spending all of my time playing poker. And that was one of those areas where I was naturally excelling. So that was a place that I could be confident and. I see now that that allowed me to be confident in that area. But it also she me off from being exposed to other areas where I didn't feel socially confident. So you met me through poker, which means that you probably got to see this side of me that felt somewhat confident and maybe even superior. Yeah. So you might have experienced me. Yes. Almost like a little bit of mean or inconsiderate sometimes.

[00:09:03] Not that I can recall, but I think that's an interesting perspective. So let's say 14 year old Yamhill experienced both the inferiority and the floor ball, almost bully kind of guy. Mm hmm. And then 19 year old Emily could suddenly decide which situation he was in. So then it sounds to me like you took away the inferior aspects of things and you were always in the confidence kind of you choose to be in those areas. I avoided all of those situations and all the other situations. Would you say that you were mean to people within the poker world as well?

[00:09:40] Not so much just when I was a teenager. And, you know, there were sports and peer pressure because I remember I was always looking socially. I was looking through the lens of a hierarchy. Yes. If I went to a party, I could see, which was the coolest people in school, I could see that. And I naturally looked more to them and naturally want to engage more with them than the people that I deem thus. Less important here.

[00:10:05] Yeah. And you did that in poker as well on our.

[00:10:10] Yeah, I would say so. But I also isolated so my social skills when I was 25, I would say it was.

[00:10:18] Very, not very. But, yeah, I would say they were very poor, very important, because I started playing poker and I was 16 and then I dedicated.

[00:10:28] Eight something years of my life. Twelve hours per day playing this logical line card game. And I and I isolated myself from having to learn people skills.

[00:10:41] Yeah. And you didn't have to because you were confident in your little bubble.

[00:10:46] Yeah. And I had a relationship with a woman for six years.

[00:10:49] Yeah. Okay. So you're twenty five now. You haven't been doing anything socially scary for seven years. Then I signed in your comfort zone for seven years and.

[00:11:04] You're still then socially probably more socially awkward.

[00:11:07] Nicole, before I was the same, but you would have expected me to grow up, right, in comparison. Yes. Yeah. So how did that change? What did you do to her?

[00:11:17] Did you want to change it? Were you aware of this at all?

[00:11:22] Yeah.

[00:11:22] I wanted to change, and it especially started when because when I was a woman for six years. Yeah. And she broke up with me because we she had started in another city. We'd been apart for two years. And like her lives changed a lot. My life stayed exactly the same. So very understandable. She wanted to move on and.

[00:11:46] First, when we broke up, I was very depressed for maybe six months or something, and I isolated myself more and more and more. I remember I had three months for a barely left the house. I was only playing poker nonstop. And I was very unhappy. I remember Googling how to be happy. Questionmark. Oh, yeah. Because I hadn't felt that feeling in a long time, I thought, because 99 percent of my focus was in poker. And I really figured that if I'm doing well in poker, at least then I'm gonna be happy. But then as poker comes up, must go down.

[00:12:24] That's a game of luck. Yeah. So. Well, it's a game of swings.

[00:12:27] So I had a rough period there. And then it felt like everything in my life was horrible. And I remember I hadn't really.

[00:12:36] Ok. So for a long time, for six years or so, then your life probably consisted of two things. Your girlfriend and poker. Mm hmm. And then your girlfriend left you. And what was left was poker. So your entire self-worth was in poker sites. And then poker went badly for a while, which poker does every now and then. So that meant that your entire universe, which was only consisting of a card game, then felt horrible.

[00:13:02] So then my life felt horrible and. And there's another 24 here, something 24 like that. And so then I started going out. And then it became fair, obviously, when I was obvious, when I was trying to talk with women that I cannot relate to people because I've only been doing one thing for six years.

[00:13:25] So I had not I had nothing to talk with people about what happens. No one could relate to me. And I didn't know what was happening in people's lives because I was so much in a bubble.

[00:13:35] Okay, so you went up and talked with a woman. What happened?

[00:13:39] I was super nervous. Didn't know what to say.

[00:13:45] It took me a long time to even have the courage to talk to someone in the first place. And then when I did, I.

[00:13:51] I had no idea what to say.

[00:13:59] So how did this this change? This wasn't, I guess, the first time you kind of realized that you were back in the.

[00:14:07] Well, inferiority. So to say Kenya protected you, so. Yeah.

[00:14:13] And I realized also that I had become too rusty. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know how to talk with people anymore. And it became a wakeup call that something is wrong.

[00:14:24] I don't know. I don't know what to say to a stranger. Yeah. It wasn't that bad. So what's happened after that? How do you guess you wanted to do something about this?

[00:14:35] Yeah. So the good part is by going kind of into the darkness, that's a slingshot. Is that when you start moving forward, you kind of gain momentum? Yes. I realized then and there that I need to I have a big problem here that I wasn't aware of until it became very obvious that I mainly that I couldn't.

[00:14:58] No girls wanted to speak with me because I had no papers. That's never fun. No, it's not a fun thing.

[00:15:04] And that was causing a lot of pain, of course, and a desire to change. Yeah.

[00:15:09] So, yeah, I started I started building social skills by going to a place that I think can be quite dark for many men. And that is pickup meaning Googling how I can't meet women. How can I meet that woman? Right. And I think a lot of. Men in those communities can be. In a place where they are quite sad and disappointed and don't have the best intentions. They are trying to.

[00:15:41] Lift, manipulate to get a certain outcome. And I was definitely one of them.

[00:15:47] As powerful he is to say that you were one of them. Does that kind of shows where that it's at? If you come from a place of social inferiority, you know, and you don't really know what to do. This is the community you find. Yeah.

[00:16:03] So it's a good kind of be aware of that red flag that this can be a place where there is tricky values and people who feel probably displaced in society.

[00:16:17] Yeah.

[00:16:19] But you and extract and their self-worth from how good they are at getting women to interact with them. And that. Psyche's again, coming from a place where they at least that's how I felt, I felt I wasn't good enough. But if I can get a reaction from a woman, that means that I'm probably good enough. Yeah, that can be done. I'm manipulating to make myself to increase my self-worth. Yeah. You're kind of turning women into the new poker here. Yeah, exactly. It's a super indirect way to feel valuable.

[00:16:54] Yeah. If I can only get her attention, that means that I mean something. Exactly. OK. But it sounded good.

[00:17:02] And that made me so nervous when I was speaking to women because I was well when I was walking up and talking with someone instead of being like, OK, I can go up. I tried to be polite. If she doesn't, like, meet them, I have something to do with her, not me. Those thoughts weren't even in my head. I was like since I had now I connected my self-worth with the responses I get. I was so nervous when I was talking with someone because if they. Don't approve of me, that means that there is something wrong with me.

[00:17:32] Yeah, that makes sense. I really like what you said before the episode, that if you've had a social interaction that didn't go well, it's easy to fall into what's wrong with me. Yeah, well, while a better question would be what did I do wrong? That's actually not me. And now you're taking this to third level. What might it be in their life going on right now that made them don't want to interact with it? You might not even be what you did wrong or definitely not who you are. Yeah. Know something. Third level that you have no. No way to control.

[00:18:06] Yeah. I think in general, probably at least half of how people react has nothing to do with, you know, it's because they're stressed or hungry or angry or whatever.

[00:18:17] And I think that's a key thing to understand when it comes to social interactions. Yeah. So many times there's nothing to do with you. OK. But at least you got into this new area of a pickup where there's usually men trying to get in bed with women. That's the idea of it. But you learn still valuable things as well.

[00:18:39] Right? Oh, yeah, for sure. The main one is that I can't get better.

[00:18:44] So you came to the inside that this is this is something I can learn. This is something I can practice skill, not a personality trait. Go to sleep. That's a skill, not a personality trait. You're not born with people skills. You learn them. Yeah. And just like football or poker, anyone can learn them for sure.

[00:19:03] And some people just happen to get better at this skill from parents or environment or whatever. Or maybe they are like some people have an easier time learning the guitar than others. But everyone can learn to play if you just practice how you can be socially talented.

[00:19:20] Yeah, sure. And then it's easier. Yes. Those who give me talented with a with a football or with a guitar that anyone can learn to at least do it well, maybe not perfectly well, but. Well, yeah, for sure. OK. So the first insight was I can't get better.

[00:19:35] Well and totally good enough to be able to play the guitar in this example so that it sounds good. Like yeah. No one sucks so much that they cannot learn to play at least. So it sounds good. Yeah. Anyone can play Wonderwall if they just practice. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I guess it would give you the insight I can learn. What did you start to practice.

[00:19:58] So the main thing is that that community tells me that I think is so valuable is to voluntarily expose myself to social suffering.

[00:20:13] Meaning put myself in situations where I need to talk to someone, even though I'm awkward. Exactly.

[00:20:19] Look for those situates exactly as if if I now have based myself value on how women react to me. And that is causing anxiety when I speak. If I expose myself to that anxiety, at some point, I get used to it. And the intensity of it starts to dwindle. Yes.

[00:20:38] So basically play the guitar, even though it sounds horrible. Yeah. And that's how you learn is your side in social interactions. If you interact horribly, it's going to cause a lot of anxiety and social pain. Yeah. Exactly. And you still need to go through it.

[00:20:54] Exactly. And before my strategy was to try to be as normal as possible to avoid that feeling.

[00:21:00] But now. Yeah. That US approach instead is to kind of put myself into weird situations. So I get to feel that feeling. And if I expose myself to it for long enough, I will start to feel relaxed in a social environment instead of what was a social situation that you put yourself to. It could be like in the beginning, it's going up and talked to a woman was cost a lot of anxiety.

[00:21:28] Do you have any advice to give it to someone who wants to do that but is scared to do it? Yes. And this might be tricky if you're struggling to find friends. But if you find a friend or find someone that is struggling equally as you do and pair up, get an accountability and idea that holds here. I said, OK, we too right now could be better at social skills. It's a skill. So let's practice high level social skills. It's a skill. So let's practice. Yeah.

[00:22:01] Let's go out once per week together. And if you want to go to a bar, that's fine. If you want to go to like a salsa dancing thing. That's fine. If you want to go out talking with people on the streets during the day.

[00:22:14] Could be men, women, old ladies, whatever. Let's pick a time. Go and then say, OK. What feels uncomfortable in my body? And can I expose myself to that feeling voluntarily?

[00:22:28] And then you'll just get used to it. You get used to it. You realize it's not so scary for sure. You get used to it. OK, so that's what you started doing. You just started going up and talking to people with a friend or without a friend. You kind of hold each other accountable to do it.

[00:22:44] And I only did it with women, which in hindsight was not so helpful, because then it comes with a lot of negative associations to women, I think.

[00:22:58] And I started objectifying women, which I really don't like looking back at it, because the community I was learning from, from my perspective now is to a big extent quite unhealthy. Yeah. So if I were to do it again, I would say, how can I just practice being uncomfortable socially? And I could do that by talking to any stranger and I would do it more in the daytime as well.

[00:23:21] See, the difference there is probably either you practice social skills, which would include all genders, all people, old, young, whatever. That's what you practice, social skills or your practice pick up, which is basically practice how to get late. Yeah. And that's usually what men, including myself, would go looking for.

[00:23:42] The good thing about pickup is that the time that I really wanted a reward for being good at it. So that created a lot of incentive to try to be better. So what I'm good at doing is, OK, I'm going to pain voluntarily. But it could mean something that I really want.

[00:23:59] So it was helpful that way.

[00:24:09] He started maybe just having a lot of interactions. Looking back, you see some mistakes. You did a lot that you could help someone avoid.

[00:24:22] Oh, yeah. I mean, I was totally coming from a manipulative place where I was saying things to get a certain effect out of people.

[00:24:31] I didn't have something that I think is super crucial social skill, which is which is a genuine interest in other people. And I think that is a skill that can be learned as well.

[00:24:45] You can learn how to be more interested because you were saying things to get a certain reaction, you know, get them to be interested in you. Exactly. But you didn't come from a curiosity of I want to know what's going on in this person's life.

[00:25:00] Yeah.

[00:25:01] One of the best sentences that I have learned ever, I think, is it's better to be interested than interesting.

[00:25:09] Yeah, it's from that one I want to get down has changed my perspective a lot. Dale Carnegie says you will make more friends in two months trying to be interested in others than you will be in two years, trying to be interesting. And I think that's so key that everything is about showing that you care about someone else. Yeah, I'm not trying to be cool, but actually be caring and people that are caring. I go, yeah, I realize now. Yeah. Yeah. Ironically, the people who care there are the ones that people want to be around, maybe not in high school, but the older you get, the more you want to be around the people who care about you. Exactly.

[00:25:47] And I was a high school kid, 25 years old, can push myself a little bit extra to catch up with normal people.

[00:25:56] Okay. So if you could have done that differently, you would have had the say you had had a lot of interactions, but you would focus more on who is this person? What could I possibly learn from them or add to their lives or this and that rather than a specific outcome of them being interested in me?

[00:26:13] Yeah, that's good. And to counteract me having to. Get a certain effect to feel good about myself. I would start looking at what can I do to increase my sense of self-worth that is separate from other people.

[00:26:34] Ok, so this becomes a whole other area then, so you have the social area and practice that thing. And at the same time you could start looking in a completely different direction. What can I do to be more happy with myself, you know, outside of social interactions? Because if you are more happy with yourself, you will feel less need of getting the validation from someone else.

[00:27:00] Exactly. So I was the glass was half full and going to people. Hey, can you top up my glasses? Yeah. Compared to someone that who has a full glass that is maybe overspilling as they have some of my drink. Plenty.

[00:27:13] That's a beautifully put. So basically you went in your interactions from a place of I need something from you. Yeah. Which people can sense. Yeah. Rather than I have something to give to you. Yeah. Okay. So if you could go back to twenty five year old Amy then and say hey immediately, this are some things that you could do to feel better about yourself.

[00:27:37] That doesn't require outside validation. What would you tell him?

[00:27:43] So I actually, when I was 24, 25, found exactly that, which was a spiritual book by a teacher that is called Echo Toli. And for me, spirituality really helped to make myself feel better about myself.

[00:27:55] And I think Natoli is a very, very good teacher. The power of now, the power of now is that book. I think that's a good place to start. And there are many other teachers, of course. And if you don't like spirituality, like you learned a lot from Tony Robbins, for example. Yes. And the teacher that is teaching you how to feel better about yourself. And I think all of those teachers are teaching quite similar concepts, but in their own unique way. So find someone on YouTube that you resonate with. We just did an episode about how to find inspiring people in social media. And I think that episode would be really good to check out if you want to hear more about who you could find. We mention at least 10 specific people there.

[00:28:42] Yeah. One thing that I believe that.

[00:28:46] I haven't done much in my life that I started doing recently is writing down things I appreciate about myself. Yes, on a daily basis, I write down at least one thing with pen and paper like this is something I appreciate about myself. And it's surprisingly how little time I spent in my life looking for good things about myself and instead looking for how can I get other people to say good to see those things.

[00:29:16] And it's so crucial.

[00:29:18] I give a set, see them to yourself, look for them yourself instead of trying to get someone else to see them. And it's a very indirect way to.

[00:29:28] Find s love the same way as me talking with girls was a very indirect way to feel good about myself and the more direct we can be with ourselves. I think the easier it is to meet our own needs. Yeah. So that's a beautiful example. I do the same practice still to this day, like most evenings before I go to bed.

[00:29:46] I find things that I'm grateful for about myself or my life in general. And this one, I think, has worked very well for me.

[00:29:55] And that is to find three things that I have done well today. I like that one. I don't do it regularly, but I have done it every now and then.

[00:30:05] Yeah, I do it maybe every third night, but I need it still because if I don't say to myself what I'm doing, well, I'm gonna look for other people to do it for me. And then I'm becoming that guy again with a half glass. Yeah. I think that's a crucial.

[00:30:27] Ok, so let's see if we can recap this. It's easy to end up in a place where you are socially awkward and basically haven't been taught social interactions. That's not something they teach in school. Well, we're supposed to learn it on our own. And one of the good things by realizing that is that it's skill that you can learn. And it's not that hard to learn. It just takes time. Like the guitar. It's not that hard. It just takes time. And two ways of doing that is to put yourself in a lot of social situations, preferably with someone who can help you out. And. In other ways, making sure that you kind of give yourself a lot of validation and self-love because then you're not looking for it externally, which means that if I'm coming from a place of knowing that I'm valuable, I don't need you to tell me. And you're going to sense that I'm not going to come there with my half full glass. Instead, I'm gonna come and been filling my own space in a sense and have more to give. So these are all insights that came to you during the journey. So where where are you today in your social life?

[00:31:37] One thing that I want to add to not only is that skills we're not learning in schools, it's skills that gets worse if we don't practice them. Yeah, and I experienced I feel uncomfortable in these situations, so I'm withdrawing from them.

[00:31:51] And then I'm getting worse and worse and worse or worse because I'm not practicing like you would do with a guitar excitement playing for seven years. You're gonna get really bad. Exactly. Or if I'm afraid of singing and I don't sing for seven, eight years like I did, then I'm gonna get sucked super bad when I try. And I'm going to reaffirm to myself that I'm a bad singer. Well, that's a valuable point as well. Yeah. You don't practice for seven years and then you try and you're really bad. Yeah. Then that becomes your truth. Yeah. I have no social skills. Yeah. Because I can't talk to unemployed would people. Yeah. I can't talk with people. Yeah. And then isolate you because you haven't tried for seven years and then isolate further staying away from that emotion.

[00:32:30] And it's a very clear downward spiral. Yeah.

[00:32:35] Ok. So getting back to that, my previous question, where where are you today? How how have your journey one here? Because if you were awkward, you were struggling, you learned how is this developed?

[00:32:49] To me, the biggest insight is still that it's a skill that can be improved on. So today I would say my social skills are.

[00:33:01] We said that's one of my strongest sides as a person.

[00:33:06] And I still want to get better all the time because.

[00:33:11] When I'm 40, I'm 31 now. I want to be so much better than today. Like so much better. I don't think there is any truth to how much you're able to connect with people, how clear you can express yourself. How. And also with the spiritual part, how good you can feel about yourself and the world you're in. I don't think you can always hone that skill in. That's the power of being in the darkness. It's like that slingshot again. Pull it back into darkness. And then there's still so much energy from the frustration I felt. And that is propelling me forward to this day. And I want to get better.

[00:33:53] And comparing that with someone who haven't struggled socially, then probably never felt the energy to get better. Exactly. So if you've been awkward, you can might even excel and I'll do the people who us social.

[00:34:07] I think you will for sure. And that's something I'm seeing now. And I'm 31 one is that. And that's something was said before. Restarted this episode to that.

[00:34:18] The people that were natural at social skills there are. You had that guy in class. Yes, yes. Not so seamless around everyone, always so liked.

[00:34:28] I have some people like that in my life. And day now when we're 30, you can see that they are starting to lag behind a little bit, not because they have changed. It's just that they haven't changed. Yeah. So the people that are changing and are trying to get better are and now have a better understanding of social dynamics because they try to learn. Yeah. It's just learning all the time. And you can learn from the best on YouTube these days.

[00:34:53] Yeah. So if you give someone a guitar when they're seven and they keep play on their own, they get pretty good. Yeah. But it's someone who take out a teacher who actively search for information, even if the. So the first person has his talent. They're just trying to play and they it out. But the other person has no talent but gets good teachers, gets very convicted to actually learning.

[00:35:16] Sooner or later, that person without talent will outperform the person with the outperform and especially the YouTube times where you can not own. It's not just one teacher. You find a best teacher there is out of seven billion people. Yes, of course. When you practice with that person, which you can do, you are gonna get better. Better than the person not practicing.

[00:35:40] So do you still feel awkward in social situations? Not at all. Never.

[00:35:45] Very rarely. Very rarely. And if I do, I'm having a different relationship to that feeling. Now address more of our curiosity instead of panic. It's curiosity. Exactly. I like that. There's almost like an inner.

[00:36:03] And in they're giggling as the one I know that I'm gonna be put in some socially awkward situation.

[00:36:09] So I think that summarizes very well where I was going with a question. Where are you today?

[00:36:15] That.

[00:36:17] Before, if you were in a social situation, you felt awkward. That led to panic withdrawal. I'm not worthy. Today you're in the same city situation. And even if you feel a little bit awkward in that situation, it's curiosity like wonder wanted. What is going on here? And in most situations, you don't feel awkward at all. Yeah. Which to me is such a test on such a proof to how you have developed what you have learned. Going from feeling socially incapable in your own poker bubble to being so confident in pretty much every social situation.

[00:36:55] And there is room in my glass to really care about that. And you can spill over some think. What do you need rather than what do I need? And it's it's not something it's natural.

[00:37:07] Yeah, because you have that. I have what I need. So then I can think of. What do you need.

[00:37:14] And it's easy. It's easy. Effortless.

[00:37:22] I think that wraps this up well, I think so, too. And if you're listening to this and feel awkward, go for it. And you're not alone. You're not alone. So and so. And so many young men, I think, especially as I show around as young women, I would like to know more about the. I. Same here.

[00:37:39] So your potential to improve your social skills is so high. Yeah.

[00:37:47] I mean, just listening to this, this is a five year journey. You went from feeling completely socially awkward to never awkward. Yeah.

[00:37:55] And you have met the woman of your dreams, which was a big part of that would never have happened if it wasn't for effort. Yeah. And it came from learning a skill. Yeah, I like that.

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