A friend of mine video taped his conversations with people. (By which I mean, there was a video recording of some event, and he left it on following, to capture his social interactions.) In this way, he was able to see not just things he said, but also gauge people’s reactions to his body language. He said it was difficult to watch at first, but had a huge benefit to his social skills.
Video taping may not be the preferred way to go about it, but there is something to be said for reflection. While you are unlikely to get better without practice, merely sinking time into conversation won’t necessarily help, and may harm you. Without analyzing your attempts, even if it’s only a brief list of what went well and what didn’t, you may be practicing and learning bad habits. 100 ungraded math problems doesn’t make you better at math, and 100 uncoached squats may injure you.
Take a few moments after conversations to assess at least what went well and what didn’t. If you have access to an honest friend, you can do even better. Converse with a third party (your friend can participate or merely be near enough to observe) and run a sort of post-conversation analysis later. Treat it like any other skill you’re serious about learning. I’ve seen this help more than one struggling introvert.
That is good advice.
A friend of mine video taped his conversations with people. (By which I mean, there was a video recording of some event, and he left it on following, to capture his social interactions.) In this way, he was able to see not just things he said, but also gauge people’s reactions to his body language. He said it was difficult to watch at first, but had a huge benefit to his social skills.
Video taping may not be the preferred way to go about it, but there is something to be said for reflection. While you are unlikely to get better without practice, merely sinking time into conversation won’t necessarily help, and may harm you. Without analyzing your attempts, even if it’s only a brief list of what went well and what didn’t, you may be practicing and learning bad habits. 100 ungraded math problems doesn’t make you better at math, and 100 uncoached squats may injure you.
Take a few moments after conversations to assess at least what went well and what didn’t. If you have access to an honest friend, you can do even better. Converse with a third party (your friend can participate or merely be near enough to observe) and run a sort of post-conversation analysis later. Treat it like any other skill you’re serious about learning. I’ve seen this help more than one struggling introvert.