The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Yes, this is what I am worried about: even if I manage to gain social skills, socializing might still be unpleasant. So my question is not only whether it's possible to gain social skills, but also whether it's possible to change one's personality to enjoy casual social connection.
Career, dating, friends, having a "tribe" (not in the political way). Also: developing my skills in things I'm passionate about (e.g., math, software, music). For a long time I thought my technical interests were chiefly solo activities until I met people smarter than me and observed how they bounced ideas off of each other and how fruitful social interaction can be. But being able to establish rapport with people seems necessary for this to work.
Please don’t listen to @Eetan. I faced a similar decision when younger and decided to become more charismatic and personable (talking about becoming a “normie” is dismissive and foolish language). That was the best decision I’ve made in my life.
I now have an incredible partner, a solid group of friends, and literally more activities and social events in my life than I can keep up with. I’m not trying to brag - I was suicidally depressed 12 years ago because of my lack of social success. It is absolutely possible, although difficult, to change your stars, but you’ll never stop wanting it.
As someone else mentioned, either work on it now or drop everything and work on it later at 35. Your choice.
I think much of the callousness toward "normie" behavior stems from a healthy desire to avoid some of the and common vices people indulge. But beyond that, what's more "normie" than exclaiming how un-normal you are? How many movies have you seen where the lesson is that conformity isn't suspect at best?Contrarianism is the fashion. Everybody's special.
I think, along a similar vein to your post, that maturing means moving past the silly idea that what's common is bad and that diversity in itself is some positive good. If anything, the opposite is probably true.
But I can see why a lot of people, especially those to whom social interaction is difficult, want to throw their hands up and declare the effort sour grapes. I think deep down there's a thrill in being an outcast, even if your exile is self-imposed. It's easier than cultivating relationships which lead to in-groups. Us introverts and socially awkward people have special incentive to take that path.
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