Social Challenge #1

Great, you've gotten into this post. Chances are you'd like to become better at talking to strangers, or just better at socializing in general.
Since social skills is something which is learned by training, here is the first challenge:

1. Start a conversation with someone you've never met before.


You do not necessarily have to approach someone, do what you feel is challenging but you can yet handle. In order to become better at something you need to push yourself, yet not further than you can handle. You don't get stronger by attempting to lift a car, you get stronger by lifting weights near your limit, but not more. You can just start a small conversation with the guy/girl behind the counter in a store, or someone you're sitting with in the bus, or someone in the same queue as you in a shop. Anything works, as long as you push yourself. Talk about the weather, the long wait in the queue, the pricing of bananas, or whatever interests you. :)

If you feel like starting a conversation is to much to handle for now, start with what you feel you can manage. People start with anything ranging from making eye contact, to smiling, to saying hi to random people in the street.

Good luck.

I'm not that great at this myself, which is why I'm blogging about it as I read about self-development concepts. I'll also be doing these challenges, and perhaps modify them if my experiences show me better ways of going about this. I'm going to try this challenge today, and I'll share my experiences later on.

Live Life

You are the only one in charge of your life. Make sure to live it to the fullest.

How to stop procrastinating, soon.

Since you've somehow bewildered yourselves into this post I asume you at some point or another have procrastinated a little. Procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, and thus effectively putting off important tasks to a later time. While this is all fun and games until you've effectively screwed yourself over. Lets consider this delightful analogy;
Procrastination is like masturbating. It feels good for a while, but then you realize you've just fucked yourself.
In these days where the computer seems to be taking a up a lot of our time, it's especially important that you make sure not to spend the time you were supposed to use on work, jogging, reading, homework, work-outs, times with your friends and family etc. on other things. It's way to easy to hold off doing something to the very last second.
One of the main reasons why we procrastinate, is because the thing we are procrastinating is something we feel obliged to do. If working out is for you just something you do because you feel like you have to, you're going to want to procrastinate it as long as possible. On the other hand, if you love exercising you're gladly going to jump into your jump-suit and get to it.
If you don't love what you do, you're going to want to procrastinate. The only solution to this is to do what you love. Although sometimes while doing the things you love there will be things you'd like to put off, but knowing that you're working against what you love, is going to help you do it. There are certain things in life you just have to do tho, such as go to school, and during those years where you do not have a choice in what to study, the only thing that will save you is self-discipline.
However, if you hare past this time of your life, and gone into work or college. Lets consider what you are studying and/or working with. Think about it for a while, if you rate what you are working with or studying on a scale from 1 to 10, what would you rate it? Chances are, if you are a procrastinator, you're going to rate it below 9 and 10. And if you rate it below 9 and 10, you should really consider whether this is the right path for you? Do you really want to work with something you don't completely enjoy for the rest of your life? Chances are the answer is no.

The answer to procrastination is motivation. With the proper motivation you'll get to it at once. If you're not doing what makes you feel motivated and what you love, you should consider working towards what you love. If you procrastinate things like working out, perhaps you need to find the proper motivation for it.
Work towards your perfect life, little by little. Don't do what you don't love just because you feel obligated to society. Whatever you have been socially conditioned to believe, disregard it. If you want to shoot for the stars, then do it. Don't settle for a mediocre life.

Social Anxiety

You've probably experienced social anxiety at one time or another. Even though deep inside you know that the outcome of approaching a stranger is not going to matter 10 minutes later, you are still afraid of facing rejection.
Why?
Most scientific studies in this field leads us to believe that this is just a basic biological response. Evolution hasn't kept up with the development of the society we live in today. If you are a man; while thousands of years ago it might have been dangerous to approach the most beautiful female, due to the fact that the strongest man might come and just beat you up, that is not the fact today.

When you were a kid you'd probably just go up to other kids and almost instantly start playing as if you had been friends for a long time. Why is it no longer so? As our brains evolve we start letting what other people think influence us more because we don't want people to think less of us, laugh at us, or th
ink we're weird. We want to appear perfect and nice, and live in our own safe bubble within a confined social circle. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to approach someone new when you're at a familiar place surrounded by familiar people? That's because you feel safe.
Society today values other factors than just being able to provide food and protection by being stronger, even though if you looking to find your soulmate to marry it's a clear advantage if you provide a stable
living condition, but if you are just looking for new friends or anything less than marriage and long-term commitment these factors are not going to matter.
If you approach someone you'd like to talk to for whatever reason, and they are just completely uninterested in what you have to say, so what? I certainly don't think they are going to beat you half to death for trying to talk to them. What people think about you doesn't matter at all, the only thing that
matters is how much you care about it. If someone laughs at you for doing something, why should you care if that action is what's right for you? Their opinion doesn't matter more than you let it.
Most people even appreciate people taking initiative to talk to them these days, and social interaction and building a network of acquaintances and friends are incredibly valuable however y
ou look at it. Perhaps talking to that guy sitting next to you on the bus is going to land you a job some time in the future? Go for it!