The only thing I knew about him was that he works in construction, because his work shirt said as much haha. I had no idea how to relate to the guy. Or even start a conversation.
Man do I say? I haven’t watched sports in forever and that normally always works. I wonder if he has kids. I can jokingly talk shit about my kids all day, but if I start with that he’ll think I’m fucking crazy!
Is he not drinking bud light because of politics or because the yeungling was at the top of the ice chest? He looks like he works out- should I ask him about it? Fuck, I don’t know shit about gyms. How do I follow that up?
Damnit I hate parties. Is he thinking the exact same thing as me? All my partner’s friend’s partners are country boys and this always happens. Why is this so hard? A third of my friends are country as fuck
“So, you listen to music?”
Fuck I’m an idiot
15 minutes of the awkward silence that comes from a dash of regular anxiety and a heap of how-masculine-do-I-need-to-be-right-now-to-relate-to-a-new-human-male.
Sorry if this isn’t appropriate for this sub but I like the concept and want to see more engagement and also this just happened.
It’s really not for a lot of people. Unless you somehow believe they’re all struggling with something that’s actually easy for them.
It is easy. People just doubt themselves and fear social rejection so much that they make it hard.
Don’t get me wrong, I had to climb out of that place to get to the point where I could discover how easy it is. But it really is easy to do once you know that it’s all about being willing to listen instead of dreading having to speak. You just ride the flow once you push off.
Just to kind of push back on this, you’re probably taking in and processing a bunch of information about your interactions subconsciously. Not all of us are able to do that effectively despite our best efforts.
It may be simple, but it really isn’t easy for everyone.
Yeah, I can see that the easy part isn’t a term that everyone is going to accept. Simple might be better, or perhaps just achievable. And neuro-atypicality is a barrier to things.
I will maintain that the process of learning to do it isn’t hard in and of itself. It’s largely a matter of unlearning things that hold us back.
And, I think that once the initial decision to shift the mind is made, the rest is easy enough, though the timeline may make it seem otherwise. It’s no harder than a skill like flint knapping. Once you decide to develop a skill, you have a learning curve, and then you just get better over time by practice. You still run into individual abilities determining how fast that happens, and how skilled you become, but it’s that initial hump that’s the barrier to entry.