How to Get Started When You’re Socially Hopeless

When I decided to start gunning hard for significantly improved social skills in 2004, that was when I had to come to grips with how hopelessly miserable my current social skills were, and how hopelessly far behind I was socially compared to everybody else.

Some part of me enjoyed being the total outsider, because I enjoyed the independence of the man apart, the one cut off from society. I figured this would make my eventual triumph all the more poetic. It was only when I set about trying to bring that triumph about that I came to realize it would be even tougher than I’d estimated.

What I quickly discovered was that even some of the most basic social rules were alien to me. What do people talk about? How do they join conversations and move between groups? How do they not trip over their own feet socially and look dumb and find themselves excluded?

I’d already developed a good wit and the ability to tell an entertaining story by that point, so I wasn’t flying completely blind. But general conversation – interacting with other human beings in a setting in which I was not the guy on stage, cracking jokes or spinning stories or showing off my musical talents, was unknown to me. And was most human interaction... I couldn’t lean on jokes or tales or busting out freestyles to help there.

So, this one goes out to the social newbs, starting off hopelessly behind everybody else, realizing the rest of mankind has a 10+ year head start on them in learning how to socialize.

Let me tell you what I did, and give you some suggestions about what you can do.

I didn’t worry too much about outcomes when I started. I knew I was far off from a place where I could expect these just yet.

Instead, I focused on learning: learning basic social rules.

I think it’s vitally important, when you’re a complete social neophyte, to recognize you don’t know anything. You don’t know:

• What people talk about
• How they transition topics
• How they decide who gets to speak and when
• How they know it’s time to exit a conversation
• How they do so gracefully
• How they invite other people to join things
• How to get themselves invited
  

... and tons and tons more.

You don’t even know what you don’t know. Lots of stuff socially is just flying over your head.

Other people know these things, but they don’t know them consciously, so you can’t ask them. But you can watch them. So this is what you do.

You should spend as much time watching as you should doing. Doing is when you practice. Watching is when you learn what to practice.

I can’t teach you basic social rules in a web article. I don’t know if anyone can. Maybe someone can, but I can’t. I don’t know most of these rules consciously myself. The only way you can learn them is to go out, watch people, and absorb. If you don’t have much intuition – if you’re a purely mechanical learner – then you’ll have to jot down notes on what people do, when, and why they seem to do it, and you’ll have to do your best to mimic this behavior and observe how people react when you do it. Does it seem to be working, or might you have missed something in your attempt?

Even if you’re an intuitive learner, you’ll still have to do this to some extent if you’ve been socially isolated for a while, because this will all be so new and strange to you. You’re dealing with something alien – actual human social interaction – and to learn that, you’re going to have to spend time watching the aliens. And copying them, to the best of your ability. Learning what it’s like to act like an alien.

Different Types of Social Interactions

I’m a big fan of synergistic learning – studying related but different fields, which enables you to apply lessons gleaned from one field to another.

For instance, in sales, you learn how crucial it is to Always Be Closing. When you apply this mentality to seduction, your results go up. Likewise, in seduction, you learn lots of little nonverbal indicators a woman is ready for the next step, or that she’s likely to balk if you try to move things forward right now and you’d better warm her up a bit more first. If you apply this to sales, you start to read your customers better, and do a better job knowing whom to close and whom to warm up a bit more first.

When learning social skills, I strongly advise you seek out as many and varied outlets for socializing as possible. Some suggestions include:

• Go to bars and nightclubs. Talk to everyone. Be social
• Go to any parties you get invitations to, even if they sound lame
• Go to young professionals events, Chamber of Commerce meetings, etc.
• Chat with clerks, wait staff, and other hired guns you encounter
• Make conversation with folks in line, waiting for buses/planes/trains, etc.
• Go on Meetup.com and attend anything that looks remotely interesting
• Find any and every chance you can to socialize
  

Don’t worry about being that socially awkward guy making awkward conversation. You will be. Everyone will think you are weird, because at this point in your life you “should get it” already. No worries. It’s like being the fat guy at the gym or the hiking trail – maybe they’re right. The only reason you’re the fat guy in the first place is because you neglected your health earlier on in life. Well, too bad – now it’s time to pay your dues. You’ll spend a little while doing so, toughing it out being the fat guy in the gym or on the trail, or the awkward guy talking to people who wish he wasn’t talking to them. Tough. That’s what it takes to get better.

It’ll hurt. You’ll go through moments of self-doubt. Those times when you wonder if a fat guy really belongs on the trail, or if an awkward guy like you ought to even bother chatting up all those cool people in bars.

This will pass. Do it long enough, and the fat begins to melt away, or the awkwardness does. You start to fit in more. You begin to be accepted.

After a while, you start to recognize other guys who are newer than you, fatter than you, more awkward than you. And you realize you’re not the worst anymore. You’re improving.

“Despite of my efforts, I wasn’t near where I want to be (quickly form connection, grab contact, and become good friends after a lunch or coffee as you shared in your “Time efficiency article”).
But it didn’t hit me hard until I saw how my only social circle (friends who grew up together with me) hangout this week (holiday week!), how one of my friends there kept getting texts from others, and invites to their parties. They would share how many parties and how they were invited to sleepovers. I took a moment, stared at my phone, nothing...not a text to party, or sleepover, or happy new year text (friends would reply back if I sent them one of these though).”

That’s from Lawliet in a comment on my 2015 year in review piece. I can relate.

In my year off after high school, in 2001 to 2002, I decided to get myself a cell phone, still a fairly recent piece of technology then. I decided, since I was trying to improve socially, I’d need this for the people I’d be meeting and the girls I’d be talking to.

A few years later, I remember staring at that phone and wondering if I ought to cancel the plan and chuck it away. There was no point paying $40 a month or however much I paid for it then. It just sat around and collected dust. Sometimes my parents called me. That was it.

I felt like, here are all these people out here, partying it up, living the life, having other people blow up their phones... I want this. But nobody wants me in their life. No girl wants to come see me. No guy wants me at his parties. I’m just this piece of social driftwood. People might have some passing curiosity when they chat with me, maybe I crack a funny joke or tell a cool story, but nobody likes me enough to ever offer to hang out, and I’m too damned scared to ask myself (mostly because I know they’d probably just say “no”, and I’d be crushed).

So I wondered if I should just ditch the phone. But I knew if I did that, it’d be surrender, and this was social skills; I was going to have to figure them out sooner or later. Surrender wasn’t really an option.

Improving Socially

My freshman year in university I’d managed to sufficiently impress the coolest guys on my dorm floor that when they got an apartment off-campus the next year, they’d often invite me to their parties, which they held once a month or so.

I wouldn’t always be invited; and I’d feel hurt when I’d be at one of their parties and they’d start talking about one and someone would say, “Yeah, Chase, were you at the last one?” and I’d say, “Nah, didn’t make it.” The part I left out was always, “Because no one thought to invite me.” Every time I got the phone call saying hey, we’re throwing a party this Friday, you should come, I was overjoyed. And I always tried to be a good guest and bring liquor. But I mostly stood around, got drunk, and watched everyone else socialize.

When I started to chip away at my social skills more actively in my third year of university, I began to get phone numbers from girls. And I’d text them, and sometimes they’d reply. And sometimes I’d set up dates. I’d always mess up somewhere and get too emotional at the wrong thing and chew some girl out who it turned out was actually into me but I thought she was brushing me off. That was back in my overly-sensitive, too-belligerent rap-artist days. Everything seemed like a slight or an insult.

I was cold approaching women, and then I discovered this thing called the pickup community, and immediately signed up for a boot camp with the company that was the best mix of affordability, sterling reviews, and close geographical location. I went mainly for a push; I wanted to see these guys in action, so I could believe, and so I could see where this journey I’d set myself on a while back eventually led, and I wanted to get kicked into gear so I could come back and approach more frequently and more aggressively than I’d heretofore been.

And it worked! My mind was blown (I chose my instructors well; the now-defunct theApproach, which I later wrote the newsletters for and assistant-taught boot camps at), and I came back and immediately set to work, going out more often, pushing myself to socialize more.

Some nights I’d go out and talk to everyone in the venue. Other nights I’d go out and stare at my drink in a corner somewhere, feeling like the biggest loser in the world.

I still went to my friends’ parties. And now I was doing a better job ‘following the rules’ of socialization: I’d started merging with groups the way I’d seen other guys do it, mixing and mingling, talking about the things I noticed people liked talking about. People thought I was cool now. Girls I’d seen for years and never spoken to at those parties started to hesitantly engage me in conversation or openly flirt with me, and I’d start talking to them as if we were old friends, instead of strangers who’d crossed paths many times yet never said a word. Guys I met for the first time would think I was cool and invite me to other parties they were going to other days.

I was still having tremendous ups and downs, and felt like I was socially retarded more often than I felt like the king of the world. Yet, I was having more and more moments where, once the moment was over, I would look back and say, “It’s working. I’m figuring it out!”

I still battled with depression and over-sensitivity a little while longer, and passed up too many easy lays and wide-open escalation windows from girls (mostly ones I met in nightclubs) because I was too afraid of rejection. I hadn’t reached ‘that point’ yet – that point where I’d be asking girls home. So when they suddenly started feeling my chest up or dropping big hints we ought to get out of there, all I could do was stammer something silly out and ruin the moment.

Across the Mountain

After graduation, I became a pickup machine for a few years, to the point where I was a little too obsessed. I’d ditch friends, sometimes in a not-cool way (I was annoyed they were ‘wasting my time’) because we were spending a perfectly good night holed up in some crummy venue with no girls, and instead I’d go solo to a place with women I could approach.

Early on in both Washington, D.C. and San Diego, I had wingmen – both really cool guys who were better with girls than I was when we met – but largely abandoned hanging out with both after a little while because I needed to improve and they were more interested in hanging out than picking up (I reconnected with one recently after I don’t know how many years – was really good catching up with him. He’s still a cool guy). I didn’t spend time with the guys from the pickup lairs either, because when I met those guys most of them were lacking in the social skills department, and I either needed to be around people who were better than me in that area, or I needed to go out solo and have the trials of success and failure shape those skills for me.

By the time I hit California, I’d been actively working on improving socially for 2.5 years, but I still had lots of awkwardness in various situations and still was ‘out of place’ more often then I knew how to fit in. My friend and wingman there even commented on it to me at one point – his pals that we often went out with wanted to know why I couldn’t just be chill and hang out like a regular person. Truth was, I still didn’t know how... I wanted to be able to fit in and adapt to that group of people, but I just had nothing I could connect with them about. They were California party people, girls with fake boobs, guys who’d go out and manhandle women, and I was an East Coast smooth talker and storyteller. Not smooth enough to mesh with them though.

So, I broadened my quest, and I started casting about for even more ways to meet people. I tried to throw my own parties, but that didn’t go so well; no one showed up but some guys a girl I’d been trying to get over told to come over in her place. I started making friends with folks I met in bars; I started going to groups off of Meetup.com; I’d explore various venues and silver-tongue my way into after parties (where I’d sometimes hook up with girls). It was really beginning to work.

At some indeterminate point, I looked at my phone and realized I had too many guys inviting me to things and too many girls trying to see me to schedule them all for one weekend.

And it clicked: I’d done it.

I was now that guy whose phone was so full with awesome things to do (and girls to meet) that he couldn’t even fit it all in.

He had to pick and choose.

My suspicion is that most of the guys from the pickup lairs I avoided aren’t doing tremendously better socially than they were back then, but not because they lacked the ability to improve.

What I noticed was that most guys are mainly searching for a tribe they can belong to; once they find their tribe, they shift out of ‘explore & upgrade’ mode into ‘enjoy & maintain’ mode. What I saw was a bunch of guys who mostly only felt comfortable talking to girls when they had buddies along with them, and who would improve socially slowly, if at all, because most of the men around them had similar social skills and it was easy for them to return to that security blanket if/when things didn’t go well elsewhere.

I’ll share with you my prescription for going from Social Skills Zero to... something sufficiently better than that.

How to Not be Socially Hopeless (with Enough Work)

Here’s my prescription:

At the Beginning / When People Are “Meh” About You

• You need to be going out to watch people and study how they socialize. This is priority #1. You’re doing something wrong... probably a lot of things wrong. Or you’re not doing something (or a lot of things) that are crucial to do. You can try and guess your way there, or read books about social skills, but nobody writes about really basic social skills because most people learn these at an age they’re unconscious of the learning, and there are simply too many to note. You must go out and watch, make mental notes, then repeat. Pretend you’re a baby learning this, or exploring a new and unusual culture.

• Focus on integrating. Your goal should be to become accepted as ‘one of them.’ Doesn’t matter if you’re contrarian and non-conformist; social skills are, first and foremost, about conforming to the local rules and conventions. Once you know them front and back, you can figure out when and how to break rules, but for now you’ve got to know what those rules are. Seek to conform; then go beyond convention later. Quit trying to be (or stay) different.

• Get a diversity of social outlets. That means you talk to different kinds of people, from different walks of life. Different races, nationalities, ages, sexes. People who are into rock, people who are into rap, people who are into classical music. People you think are nerds and losers, and people you think are jocks and too cool for you. Chat with them all. Acceptance or rejection doesn’t matter, except as a social experiment; you’re going for reference points. The more of these collect, the stronger your social game gets.

• Say “yes” to everything within reason. Obviously, unpleasant sexual propositions or requests to commit violent or illegal activities are exceptions. But otherwise, if people invite you to things, say “yes”. Doesn’t matter what it is. Doesn’t matter if it sounds lame. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to go. Say “yes”, then go. It’s extremely important for your growth that you do. Some of these things will suck, but most of them won’t, and you’ll find you’re surprised at how often things you thought would be a waste of time end up being productive. This is part of your education.
  

• The goal: collect experiences. Right now it’s about exposing yourself to socializing, trying things out, copying people, trying to conform. You’ll suck at it and stick out like a sore thumb, but that doesn’t matter. You’re the fat guy at the gym right now. You’ve got to get past caring about the fact that girls don’t want to go home with you or all think you’re creepy, or guys don’t invite you to parties. Just observe and implement, observe and implement. Gradually work to reduce your ‘outsiderness’ and seek to be more ‘one of them.’ This is how you learn ‘the rules’ of socializing.

You should expect to spend about three years here if you’re starting out pretty hopeless, yet you are pretty serious about improving. You’ll get better throughout those three years, but it’s still going to be a slog. Remember, you’re playing catch-up here; everyone else has a decade or more of experience over you. You’re not going to reach parity in a month. It takes work.

If you’re not that serious about putting the work in and only do this stuff sometimes, you’ll probably never catch up with those folks who go to parties a lot and have full dance cards, because while you’re dabbling occasionally, they’re still going out all the time and getting better and better socially. That may be okay for you if being a social ace isn’t your goal, but if you’re really hard-set on catching and surpassing these folks, you need to put the work in.

Once You are Getting Somewhere...

That means, once you’re getting laid, at least occasionally, by women you consider attractive, and you have guys you think are pretty cool who actually want to be your friend. Until you reach this point, you should still be following the prescription above.

• Start inviting people more. Now that you have some value socially, it’s time to get used to taking initiative instead of merely watching, mimicking, and being passive waiting for opportunities from other people. You’ve experienced enough things being a ‘yes man’, so now you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s cool to do and what people like which things. It’s time to start inviting the people you meet and would like to get to know better to do them. You’ll soon discover that most people are only too happy to say yes, because – surprise! – they wanted to do things with you but were too nervous to ask you themselves. This is the point where you begin to realize you’re able to do more socially than most ‘regular’ folks, who used to be light years ahead of you. You’ve caught up with them, erased their head start, and are beginning to pass them.

• Start being more selective. You’re getting busier, and can’t do everything and say “yes” to everything anymore. But you also have a much better idea about what’s cool to do, from a couple of years of doing anything and everything you could think of or stumble across that might possibly offer the hope of socializing with someone... anyone. You need to begin leveraging your time for things that are going to provide result-benefits (like picking up girls in places you know are good for this) and learning-benefits (like socializing with that group of trust fund babies you’ve recently linked up with, who invariably make you feel like a poverty-stricken, insignificant urchin of the lower class, but you’re going to hang out with them anyway because you need to learn how to roll with this class).

• Start differentiating yourself again. You’ve probably spent a few years being ‘formless’: you integrated with so many different groups of people you couldn’t really have opinions of your own, or that much of a distinct identity. Your life revolved around socializing 24/7, and your priority was learning how to conform. Now that you’ve gotten pretty good at conforming and you’ve figured out the basic rules, it’s time to start learning where you can break social convention and be different again, because the highest value people are all different, but not different in the way the socially hopeless are different. They’re different in cool ways, that communicate they get the rules of socializing through and through, yet they simply choose to ignore some of them.
  

You’ll spend a few more years here, but these should be pretty fun years. Sometimes you’re going to feel like the king of the world, because you walk into a place and you’re the most socially savvy guy there. Other times, you’ll be socializing with one of those newer groups you’re focused on who are yet more socially savvy than you, and you’ll feel like you’re that social retard all over again. Just keep in mind that most ‘regular’ folks would feel that way socializing with such people, and eventually if you keep hanging out with them and learning their ways, you’ll become one of them too. And perhaps surpass them.

Eventually I reached a place where I was sometimes putting on parties for lots of really cool, successful guys, and lots of really beautiful, high status girls, and since I was the host I was necessarily the biggest shot there.

Other times I’d be an ‘honored guest’ at this or that party, or, if I hung out with people who knew me from Girls Chase, I’d be meeting a bunch of their friends who all knew who I was and treated me like a celebrity of some kind (which is always weird), and we’d go out and girls would see it and they’d think I was a celebrity too (this I don’t mind), and that has its perks.

And I reached a point where I was kind of over it. I’d climbed the mountain, been the guy with a full dance card and lots of people blowing up his phone, and there wasn’t really anything more for me to learn there or much value for me to take away from it.

So, these days, my cell phone is often off, unless I turn it on to check my messages or fire one off to someone. It drives girls nuts, because they don’t know if I’m ignoring them or what, but of course it only makes them more attracted. Sometimes I get to a country and just don’t bother to get a SIM card. If I need to schedule things with someone, we’ll agree on something in person and we’ll just both have to get there on time, or we’ll need to trade emails (if you do this, here’s a lesson: have girls meet you somewhere you’re already familiar with. Otherwise, expect pissed off dates when you’re a no-show because you walked halfway around the city and simply couldn’t find the place you were supposed to meet her at).

Friends eventually quit calling or texting me all that often because it takes me so long to respond, and because I’m usually not available to do anything. At the same time, when I do want to do something, almost everyone will make time for me, which probably has something to do with how unavailable I am most of the time. I do try to make time for friends when they’re visiting a town I’m in or if we haven’t talked in a while and they want to Skype (but sometimes it can take me weeks to schedule a Skype call; and everyone who says “Just find me on Skype!” without setting a time with me, well, I’m never ‘just on Skype’ so it never ends up happening).

When I travel, I’ll often have some stretches where I do a bunch of cities in quick succession and meet friends and associates in each of the cities I travel through, often staying at their places. Saves on costs, saves on time going back and forth meeting someone, affords me a lot more time to spend with my friend, and gives me easy access to a guy who can give me lots of great recommendations.

And then I’ll get somewhere I know no one, and no one can reach me, and maybe I’ll meet a few cute new girls there, and perhaps I’ll make friends with a few local or expat guys, and none of these people know who I am nor anything about me, but they can tell I’m a cool enough guy that they’d like to spend time with me. Social skills at its purest. No reputation to lean on, no friends to recommend you, no common contacts. Just you, cold approach, socializing, and raw social ability.

I guess my life is kind of an unusual one, but the point is that just because you want that phone full of people wanting to do things with you now doesn’t mean that’s your ultimate destination, whether you know it or not.

So, don’t worry too much about not having it yet. Worry about getting those social skills down, and eventually that phone will be full.

And then maybe eventually you won’t want it to be so full. Maybe you’ll just want to leave it shut off most of the time so it doesn’t interrupt you.

Either way, social skills are the most important thing you will learn. Life is interacting with other people, and the better at this you get, the more of what you want you will get. There are other skills to learn, of course, but all of them touch something social at some point – social skills are the gateway to success of all types.

Learn them. It won’t be easy, if you’re starting out socially hopeless, and you may spend some time slogging through dank swamps of social isolation and musty dungeons of temporary despair, but if you’re going out, pushing yourself into social situations, watching what others do, copying them, tweaking, adjusting, and learning, you will improve.

And you can get so good that the folks who seem to have such cooler lives than yours, well, someday, their lives will seem fairly ordinary and run-of-the-mill. If you want that.

Get the skills, and it’s up to you how you use them after that.

Chase