Cultivating Social Skill through Awareness
Socializing is an activity at which you can become more effective. The ability to create what you wish through communication and action can be cultivated and improved.
Interaction with another being is a multifaceted event with an amazing array of active dynamics (of which you can be more or less aware).
We often take for granted the importance of relating to another. I want to suggest that this skill is of utmost importance to you and can be developed to bring great benefits in many aspects of life.
This article is written for those who:
- Feel something holding their expression back. There is more to be said and expressed bodily, but for whatever reason they cannot put themselves out there.
- Feel ingenuine, or inauthentic. They may feel that despite their best efforts, there is a persistent feeling of unreality to their expression.
- Don’t know how to relate to others. Because the other’s mind is unknown, their relationship to it is also unknown. This creates uncertainty and fear, thus hampering any chance of a powerfully effective communication.
- Seldom achieve intended results during interactions (arouse emotions, generate support, seduce, explain, humor, respect, etc.). They may go to a job interview and come off as awkward, go on a date and fail to show appropriate interest or try to make a friend but come off as needy.
A Lack of Awareness and Skill
The domain of social interaction can be learned, understood, and mastered through intent, study, and practice.
In order to become what you want; you must first see clearly what any interaction consists of. Without this awareness you cannot interact properly with what’s there because you don’t actually know.
We tend to fabricate the reality of others in a social context based on assumptions we’ve unknowingly adopted. This traps us in a world of our own imagination, as opposed to a direct relationship with the event in front of us.
When this imagined context is the basis for judgement and action, you are unable to see or act in alignment with the truth of any given social event.
As a result of this blindness, your skill/grace of interaction will be diminished. Intended outcomes are not consistent because you are unable to consciously do what’s necessary.
If you intend to create positive and genuine relationships, but unknowingly relate to others as negative and inauthentic, you—on some level— are failing to actualize this intention. This is due to a lack of awareness.
When you fail to see what the event truly is, you will not act in accordance with the principles and dynamics that allow for the intended effects.
Humans are Social Creatures
The domain of social interaction dominates our concerns and dictates much of what we call life. Because of this, it is important to address the topic with as much skill and consciousness as possible.
Our self-concept is generated largely as a function of social interaction and exists to fulfill this drive. Our life activities and our success in the world is largely dependent upon our ability to relate to others.
To be adept socially is to be powerful. To be powerful is to be free and freedom allows you to be authentic. Authenticity, I suggest, is the highest good for a person’s expression.
Setting the Stage
It is important to realize that we often operate out of deep unconscious drives and programs. As a result of those drives, we act from a pre-formed template rather than in relationship to the live event.
In order to change this, we must be open to the possibility that what we currently understand as communication, social interaction, self, mind and other, is not true. In other words, what you think of as reality may be a fabrication.
Once you are open to this, it becomes possible to let go of old ways of socializing for the sake ofupdating and reworking your system.
In the end we must conform to what is most true, and to do this we must know what that truth is.
In order to know, we must first admit that we don’t know.
Once this is established, our intention to know and grow will move us in the direction of truth and effectiveness.
How You Will Transform your Experience:
- New distinctions are made in the event of social interaction. This allows you to experience new subtleties, dynamics, feelings, and patterns. When more perception is created, the truth of the event is experienced more fully, and your relationship to it becomes more complete.
- Ineffective patterns are let go of as their consequences are seen and felt. Our awareness of this suffering enables us to drop the behavioral and mental activities which
cause it. - You begin to consciously create the way you relate to others. Before you wereoperating on programs that you adopted in a state of ignorance and fear. New personas, dispositions, feeling-states, and concepts begin to dominate your experience. These new creations serve your conscious purpose rather than one you inherited or made ignorantly.
- At deeper levels of investigation, you will confront the truth of your own condition. This is where social really occurs, and so is the truth of any interaction as well. If, for example self and other turn out to be the exact same event, not separate in any way, your disposition will likely change to accommodate this fact. The endeavor to become socially proficient means becoming wise, and becoming wise means becoming happy.
This work might help you learn to be happy!
How Do I Begin this Process?
I suggest a holistic approach which addresses every facet of your social existence.
- The most important subject: YOU.
a. You must become keenly aware of your feelings, thoughts, and programs in order to assess your role in any relationship. This data is your compass and gauge. It allows empathetic mirroring (you experience what the other experiences), which is essential for accurate relating.
b. The more work you do, the more accurate your interpretations will become, allowing you to act appropriately in relationship to them.
c. You are the storehouse of all programs, assumptions, and concepts that dominate your experience of other and social. It is within your self that all hindrances reside (fear-based concepts of self and world), and it is here that your transformation must occur.
d. By looking into your own system, you begin to uncover the sources of your ineffectiveness, bad feelings, and limiting concepts.
e. Take time out of each day to confront yourself and get in touch with what you hold to be true. Contemplate yourself and intend to become aware of what you exist as. - Pay close attention to others.
a. Normally we keep our attention on ourselves in order to make sure we are acting appropriately. This self-obsession prevents us from seeing others clearly. When we fail to see the other, we cannot relate to them.
b. Instead of worrying so much about how you look, put far more attention on others. This makes you more sensitive to their experience, which is imperative for becoming more effective. You will learn many valuable lessons about the life of others and begin to realize that much of what you do is pointless, inauthentic, unconscious, and manipulative. c. There are many lessons you must learn in order to powerfully interact. The only teacher you have is the other person involved. if you listen to and observe this teacher, you will learn. - Research.
a. If you want to accelerate your understanding of social interactions, I suggest you invest time learning from others who have mastered the domain. There are people who have invested massive amounts of time and effort into making distinctions and learning lessons required to be effective.
b. Use books, videos, and mentors to evolve at an accelerated rate. Trial and error works but requires a lot of valuable time. Bypass this by utilizing the masters.
c.Check out my list of top resources for acquiring social mastery. - Practice.
a. Unless you attempt to learn from every interaction and become more effective, you will not change or progress. Go into the world as if it were a classroom and treat every interaction as a lesson.
By doing this you cut through layers of concept and thought, digging deeper into a more authentic you. This helps reestablish an accurate experience of your own truth as well as others truth, both of which are necessary for real communication and relating.
DISCLAIMER: Never believe that merely learning something is enough to empower you. You must actually understand and embody any given principle for it to be real for you.
You must ask yourself if you are being as effective as you can be. If not, assess the event for issues and recalibrate your expression.
Through this you begin to make real progress.
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