If you're bored then you're boring, pt.II
October 21st 2006 10:10
"If you're bored then you're boring"
The fear of being boring is very closely related to the fear of rejection or disapproval. We’ve experienced the awkwardness that comes about when you’re in an interaction and you’re not connecting with the other people or person. We know that this generally leads to an abrupt end of the said interaction. Being boring, or awkward, does have some very real and undesirable consequences; not caring what other people think can be quite an unpleasant path to take.
It's easy for people on the social outer to go to a club, see a whole bunch of people in groups laughing and dancing about, observe themselves doing none of these things, and conclude that there must be something wrong with them, that they are not sociable. While it is true that at that particular point in time and place they might not be actively sociable, it is a far stretch from there to conclude that they are not capable of a positive social interaction, which is essentially what they’re telling themselves.
Funnily enough, when one internalises the belief, or more accurately, the knowledge that they are capable of having a good time with other people at social gatherings, then that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do we go about getting these beliefs, then? Affirmations seem to hold some weight in the pop psychology field, but I'm not a big fan of them, at least not in isolation. First of all, they rarely work for any prolonged period of time, and secondly, when they do work, they work by the person denying what their true problem is. "I am interesting. The more someone gets to know me, the more they will come to like me." Great in theory, but all that has to happen is for the person to think back to last Saturday night when they were in total observer mode at a nightclub, and the affirmation fails. Personal experience holds the strongest weight in forming one's opinion on anything, and so it should.
This is the so-called vicious cycle that is present in so many areas of life: one needs confidence to have successful social experiences, but in order to gain that confidence they need successful experiences. There is no one way to get around this dilemma, rather a handful of methods which all work to varying degrees.
Firstly, though, I want to create a working definition of “confidence”. I will define confidence as the belief that your actions will bring about the desired results. Some might say that you don’t need confidence to have a successful social interaction. What if you’re feeling like absolute shit, so you call your friend up to unload some emotional baggage? Surely that doesn’t require confidence? After all, you’re already on good terms with your friend, so there’s no risk involved. What’s present here, though, is a strong confidence in that person, which is closely tied to trust. If there weren’t a confidence or trust in that friend, then it would be difficult to call them about your problems. Any positive interaction requires mutual confidence and trust. One can be negative about anything, except that which allows them the opportunity to express their negativity. I would go as far to say that any action, possibly even any thought, requires some sort of confidence or trust in order to exist. *
Secondly, we need a working definition for “successful social experience”. A social experience is any experience involving interactions with other people where there is no particular reason, business or similar, for the interaction. The success of the experience is measured in degrees, so it’s not a black and white concept. It will be partly subjective. Basically, we all have social goals, whether we know it or not, when involved in an interaction. Success is in either meeting or exceeding these goals. But what if you’re happy with an interaction you’ve had, and the other person walks off thinking you’re a weirdo? My answer would be that if your goal was simply to walk away from the interaction happy, then that’s a pretty crummy goal. A more prudent goal would involve the other party, for example, to have the other person walk away feeling happy, and with a good impression of me. This will require a certain intuition, which is a very vital cog in the socialising machine. I used to know this guy with serious psychological problems, and he had this trait: he would engage with people, thinking that the other person was really charmed by him, when in reality, they thought he was a nutball. In saying that, there is a fine line, between self-confidence and self-delusion. In fact, I’ve noticed that sometimes they even overlap. I’ll say more about this in a later blog.
The first piece of advice I would give in gaining social confidence is this: for the vast majority of people, we do have successful experiences that we can draw upon for confidence. Simply just recalling these experiences in one’s mind will often be enough to gain some sort of confidence. It’s almost as if through recalling this experience, we re-experience it, which gives us a certain amount of confidence. You can see that it’s not really about breaking the vicious cycle in this case, rather just about finding a loophole to enter it. This will be a common theme.
The second is to understand that nobody is “up” all the time. Personality is a malleable thing, and will change somewhat according to its environment, eg, the surrounding places, people, amount of sleep one’s had, what drugs they’ve had, etc. Creating circumstances and environments where you know you will excel in is another recurring theme in success, in any field. Again, more will be said about this at a later time.
That’s all for now, stay tuned for part 3 of “if you’re bored then you’re boring”.
* = I've put in bold font phrases which I believe to be fairly quotable.
The fear of being boring is very closely related to the fear of rejection or disapproval. We’ve experienced the awkwardness that comes about when you’re in an interaction and you’re not connecting with the other people or person. We know that this generally leads to an abrupt end of the said interaction. Being boring, or awkward, does have some very real and undesirable consequences; not caring what other people think can be quite an unpleasant path to take.
It's easy for people on the social outer to go to a club, see a whole bunch of people in groups laughing and dancing about, observe themselves doing none of these things, and conclude that there must be something wrong with them, that they are not sociable. While it is true that at that particular point in time and place they might not be actively sociable, it is a far stretch from there to conclude that they are not capable of a positive social interaction, which is essentially what they’re telling themselves.
Funnily enough, when one internalises the belief, or more accurately, the knowledge that they are capable of having a good time with other people at social gatherings, then that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do we go about getting these beliefs, then? Affirmations seem to hold some weight in the pop psychology field, but I'm not a big fan of them, at least not in isolation. First of all, they rarely work for any prolonged period of time, and secondly, when they do work, they work by the person denying what their true problem is. "I am interesting. The more someone gets to know me, the more they will come to like me." Great in theory, but all that has to happen is for the person to think back to last Saturday night when they were in total observer mode at a nightclub, and the affirmation fails. Personal experience holds the strongest weight in forming one's opinion on anything, and so it should.
This is the so-called vicious cycle that is present in so many areas of life: one needs confidence to have successful social experiences, but in order to gain that confidence they need successful experiences. There is no one way to get around this dilemma, rather a handful of methods which all work to varying degrees.
Firstly, though, I want to create a working definition of “confidence”. I will define confidence as the belief that your actions will bring about the desired results. Some might say that you don’t need confidence to have a successful social interaction. What if you’re feeling like absolute shit, so you call your friend up to unload some emotional baggage? Surely that doesn’t require confidence? After all, you’re already on good terms with your friend, so there’s no risk involved. What’s present here, though, is a strong confidence in that person, which is closely tied to trust. If there weren’t a confidence or trust in that friend, then it would be difficult to call them about your problems. Any positive interaction requires mutual confidence and trust. One can be negative about anything, except that which allows them the opportunity to express their negativity. I would go as far to say that any action, possibly even any thought, requires some sort of confidence or trust in order to exist. *
Secondly, we need a working definition for “successful social experience”. A social experience is any experience involving interactions with other people where there is no particular reason, business or similar, for the interaction. The success of the experience is measured in degrees, so it’s not a black and white concept. It will be partly subjective. Basically, we all have social goals, whether we know it or not, when involved in an interaction. Success is in either meeting or exceeding these goals. But what if you’re happy with an interaction you’ve had, and the other person walks off thinking you’re a weirdo? My answer would be that if your goal was simply to walk away from the interaction happy, then that’s a pretty crummy goal. A more prudent goal would involve the other party, for example, to have the other person walk away feeling happy, and with a good impression of me. This will require a certain intuition, which is a very vital cog in the socialising machine. I used to know this guy with serious psychological problems, and he had this trait: he would engage with people, thinking that the other person was really charmed by him, when in reality, they thought he was a nutball. In saying that, there is a fine line, between self-confidence and self-delusion. In fact, I’ve noticed that sometimes they even overlap. I’ll say more about this in a later blog.
The first piece of advice I would give in gaining social confidence is this: for the vast majority of people, we do have successful experiences that we can draw upon for confidence. Simply just recalling these experiences in one’s mind will often be enough to gain some sort of confidence. It’s almost as if through recalling this experience, we re-experience it, which gives us a certain amount of confidence. You can see that it’s not really about breaking the vicious cycle in this case, rather just about finding a loophole to enter it. This will be a common theme.
The second is to understand that nobody is “up” all the time. Personality is a malleable thing, and will change somewhat according to its environment, eg, the surrounding places, people, amount of sleep one’s had, what drugs they’ve had, etc. Creating circumstances and environments where you know you will excel in is another recurring theme in success, in any field. Again, more will be said about this at a later time.
That’s all for now, stay tuned for part 3 of “if you’re bored then you’re boring”.
* = I've put in bold font phrases which I believe to be fairly quotable.
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