be awkward by being quiet be awkward by talking okay I'm gonna teach y'all how to not be awkward when your attention is in your own head you will be awkward and when your attention is not in your own head you will be relaxed there's a very simple experiment you can run think about walking while you walk now I'm gonna put my right foot forward now I'm going to lift my knee now I'm going to do this now I'm going to relax my I'm going to put the plantar surface of my foot down now the heel
is going to touch think about all of the steps as you walk and you will become the most awkward Walker in existence so this is the tricky thing is that when you try not to be awkward where's your attention it is in your mind you are trying not to be awkward you're not doing the thing now I'm I'm thinking about how to do things so I'm awkward over here now I'm thinking about this so I'm even more awkward so this is why getting awkward is such a trap because the less awkward you try I to
be the more you step into your mind and the more Awkward you become it's like oh my God there's a fire here quick someone grabs some gasoline and pour the gasoline on top let's put out the fire because liquid puts out fire right you do the very thing that makes you awkward and that's how you end up with this lose-lose situation you think that okay if I'm quiet I will not be awkward or if I talk I will not be awkward no the awkwardness is within you so no matter what you do you will be
awkward but this is the really cool thing if it's within you you can actually change it it's not about the behavior it's not about okay what do I say or what do I not say how do I be quiet should I speak now should I not speak now and that's what makes you awkward because now you're in your own head and you're not paying attention to the conversation so if you want to stop being awkward absorb your mind in whatever is around you instead of thinking about what you should say or whether you should say
something pay attention to what the other person is saying listen to the other other person listen to your surroundings externalize your awareness and then you will not be awkward and if we sort of think about it we can see that we can prove it the other way too when am I the least awkward when I'm absorbed in something like if I get into bed at night and I grab a nice cool pillow and I lay down and I'm like man this feels amazing I'm not thinking about okay how can I feel more comfortable is this
comfortable enough is this not comfortable enough if my attention is on the pillow and on the bed I will feel relaxed and it'll feel good and this is why people stay so awkward is because everyone's like what do I do it is not about doing it is about where your attention is and so people go looking for Solutions but any solution you try your mind is still thinking about okay I should do this I should do this I should do this I should do this your mind is pointing in the wrong way so you end
up being awkward and then what happens we end up feeling hopeless because I tried this and I tried this and I tried this and I watched this video and I paid for this course and this pickup artist told me to do this but the whole time all that crap doesn't work because your mind is still focused here and even for the stuff that does work what do they successfully help you do externalize your mind Focus externally that's all it takes still got no social skills even when I don't think about myself I mean I'm sure
that's true to a certain extent I mean I think you've got some social skills y'all are doing great over here and then if you guys want more practical advice so if you're paying attention to a conversation you're trying to figure out how do I jump in body language is really good so I'll show you all this feels [ __ ] awkward until you practice it but you can just go like this yo you can hold up a hand it works really well the other thing you can is hey can I jump in for a second
this reminds me of dot dot dot so you just signal to them hey I'm jumping in use body language right and then they'll stop it's really bizarre it's like there's some [ __ ] Jedi mind trick at play you can even interrupt someone but if you when you interrupt someone if you're afraid of interrupting because here's what happens right so there's like some awkward there's like they say a sentence and there's a pause but the pause isn't long enough for you to jump in so they don't wait for you to speak so you're not sure
if you're supposed to speak and then you start speaking and they start speaking at the same time and then you're like well [ __ ] like what do I say so here's the thing you want to ride over them but you want to ride over them with a acknowledgment so if you and someone else are speaking at the same time what you should say is hey I I'd love to share something with you and if you start saying that and they start speaking you just plow through because then you're kind of signaling them hey like
I'm speaking here and it sort of makes it okay to like get them like if they stop talking right because cause you don't want to ride over someone with your story you just want to acknowledge it does that kind of make sense like you kind of want to plow through right but but since you're plowing through and you're acknowledging that you're plowing through it makes it okay and and that's also where like you can say like oh wow like that reminds me of a story and then if someone else starts speaking you can say like
you can either gesture to them right like do you want to go first and then like they'll gesture to you it's like use gestures like hand signals this is like the mark the martial arts of the HG way is like the interruption this is the block and and this is the the giving the block and the giving and then and then you can also go like this if you're like really upset with them go ahead please the other problem with people who are super socially anxious is they're like oh my God I don't know what
to say I don't know what to say I don't know what to say this person when should I start start talking this person is talking so much socially anxious people struggle with socially oblivious people this is what creates your anxiety the more like a socially anxious person is hyper aware and the socially oblivious person is hypo aware and these two things fit really together because if someone is socially aware they're going to acknowledge they're going to recognize that hey I should stop talking at some point so that this other person can jump in the problem
is that socially anxious people think that they're screwing up but that's because they're socially oblivious person you're talking to who doesn't like think about when you should speak and that a conversation is between two people so stop beating yourselves up if someone else doesn't know how to talk and it's not something that we don't acknowledge right so like right now when we think about social anxiety we're like oh my God it's a problem in me fix me fix me fix me but any social interaction involves two people and oftentimes socially anxious people grew up with
oblivious communicators you know so if you want to really reduce your social anxiety find other people who are like attuned to you and that's what's really difficult is sometimes if you get too socially anxious people people people are so hyper attuned to each other that like that doesn't work out well right because they're like okay no no like you talk no you talk you talk you talk you talk and then two socially anxious people are like they're playing tennis with like here I'm gonna hit the ball across the court no you no you no you
no you so the cool thing about social anxiety is if you're like no Ewing at some point someone is like okay I will speak and then you get to speak and the other person is like oh thank God this person spoke because now that this person has spoke I can speak and I really want him to speak but I couldn't speak first y'all get me it's okay foreign
