Life Advice (Part 1)

**I read this article on the internet that I really love so I just wanna keep it here so I can revisit this every now and then. The article is actually quite long, I'll post them in two parts.


Every single day, get better at meeting people and developing relationships

These days I often describe myself as a “recovering introvert.” Comfort was the north on my personal compass, and talking to people I didn’t know was due south.

I was very much dependent on my existing friends to fulfill my social needs. I rarely took the initiative and made the plans. That I left to everyone else — because it entailed zero risk on my part.

Sticking to behavior with zero risk is a real tragedy, because it means there is no discomfort, and no discomfort means new ground is seldom broken. With that habit, social skills develop extremely slowly, because there is no need to learn anything you don’t already know how to do.

Please don’t only do what’s comfortable! That’s a perfect recipe for mediocrity. The older you get, the greater will be the gulf between what you could be and what you are, and the more sorry you’ll be.

When it comes to meeting people, it’s easy to avoid it because they’re only strangers then. You can always write off a stranger as irrelevant to your life, as you know it right now. But you don’t realize that that stranger could have been your best friend, your mentor, your key to a fantastic opportunity, or even your wife. Everyone you know now was a stranger once.

A new person in your life can open a new chapter. They can lead to new lines of work, new passions, new insight about the world and a broader, more colorful identity for you.

Most of my life, I resented people with connections. I hated that I had to resort to cold calling to find a job lead, while other people could just drop a friend an email. Of course, I didn’t see that this doesn’t happen by accident.

I always waited for others to take the lead in social situations. I would always defer to somebody with more skills or more guts, and soon I began to identify myself as a second, a subordinate, a beta personality. Clawing your way back from a subordinate social role is a hell of a battle, and the later you start the tougher the climb. Don’t let yourself slip that far.

Be a figure in a lot of other people’s lives, and keep bringing new people into your life. Meet people every day. Initiate conversations. Don’t shrink away.

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Article from: http://www.raptitude.com/2010/02/3-pieces-of-advice-id-give-my-18-year-old-self-if-i-could/