A lot of people think that social skills somehow just magically appear out of thin air and the children will automatically learn them.
That is true for some.
However, there is also a large portion of people who don’t know how to communicate well.
They might not know what to say or might say things that make the situation awkward.
My social skills in high school could be said to be below average.
This made me avoid interacting with strangers.
I would reject invites to go to social gatherings or to meeting new people.
This led me not having the opportunity to polish and learn social skills which again led to me avoiding social interaction because I wasn’t good at it.
The cycle continued.
This was the way I lived up until I graduated from high school.
Awareness of the problem
The first few days of college were the times for self-introductions and meeting new people.
One of the rare friends attending the same college as me made a comment after seeing how I interacted with the new batchmates.
Why can’t you even introduce yourself properly? You hunch over like you were trying to escape and your voice was so soft.
How are you going to survive in the future if you continue on like this?
This sentence shocked me awake from my stupor.
Was it really that bad? That obvious?
If I didn’t do something about it, would I continue to interact with people via this method forever?
I was disgusted with that part of myself.
The insecure, unconfident, pathetic part.
And when one’s pain of staying the same became higher than the pain of changing, that’s where tremendous growth will happen.
So I began my 2nd experiment.
Deconstructing my previous self and reconstructing it into someone I wanted to be.
