Ask HN: Have any of you successfully tried the whole social skydiving thing ?

If you have trouble having conversations, there's a real easy fix: ask questions about things that other people are interested in.

Let's say you and I are talking:

* Me: I'm a lawyer [not true, just an example]

* You: Oh yeah? What kind of lawyer are you?

* Me: I practice international law.

* You: Wow, that sounds really interesting. How'd you get into that?

If you sincerely express interest in what I'm interested in, I will enjoy talking to you. Actually, even if you don't really care about a topic, if somebody else is passionate about it, the topic will be interesting. I learned about this from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is a great book you should read. I read this book in 7th grade and it changed my life.

If I were you, I would focus first on mastering social conversations with guys, before focusing on girls. I would also steer away from the PickUp Artist (PUA) community until comfortable talking to guys. At that point, you may want to check out The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss.

Also, it sounds like you have mild social phobias. I would solve this with exposure therapy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy). In other words, if you go to some events and mingle, your stem-brain will get over its mild social phobia. A great place to start is meetings at your local Toastmasters.

In summary, rather than look for a quick hack, I would focus on achieving small victories, like attending Toastmasters meeting regularly, and getting better at conversation.

Good luck man!

+++ for the Toastmasters suggestion. It's not so much the public speaking practice, but also the mingling pre and post meeting that would help.

Steve Pavlina has a couple of interesting blog posts about this kind of thing, possibly worth a read if you haven't seen them already:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/09/how-to-go-from-intr...

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/09/a-question-for-intr...

[EDIT] The second link is more something for you to think about than useful information

Go to a meet-up on meetup.com or something. Pick something you are interested in and fits your profile (not the lesbian biker meet-ups). Get there early and be a "greeter" of sorts so you introduce yourself to everyone. Act like a newbie and ask questions, people are more than happy to show off their knowledge if you let them.

Go from there.

thanks for the greeter idea. i guess in the past i arrive just on time and get lost/left-out in the conversations. will surely give it a shot.

Exercise made more difference to me than anything else. Not to "bulk up" or show off -- I cycled. But in addition to good health, it left me feeling quietly more confident and happy with myself. Which made interacting with others easier.

As they say, "Your Mileage May Vary". But for what it's worth.

exercise is in fact one of the only things keeping me sane. i bike a lot, and run sometimes.

Have you tried joining a biking or running club?

Any kind of club or casual sport would do. Bowling is my thing. Besides the fact that I love it and would do it all day long if I could, I have/get to talk to a lot of people there. I belong to two leagues and travel to tournaments once or twice a month.

I'm pretty sure if I didn't have bowling I wouldn't talk to anybody at all. There would be pressure to.

Imagine you hadn't run since you were a little kid. Then one day you realize this isn't healthy and you decide to start jogging. And you then find out you can even jog for 20 minutes at a time! Is something wrong with you? No, you just need A LOT of practice and go slow.

This is exactly the same thing. To repeat an often repeated phrase: Social skills are called skills because they require practice!

Same with learning how to play the guitar.

So just keep doing it, when ever you find yourself with any other humans, open your mouth and say ANYTHING.

Keep doing that, it will get better.

Funny, as someone who took up guitar and pick-up skills, I would have to respectfully disagree.

You can be the best guitar player with the fastest fingers or with the huskiest male-acoustic singer-songwriter-voice, and still can't laid or get signed to a contract. For evidence, just go to your local city's public square or subway station and see all of the talents out there, strumming their hearts out, alone.

Social skills is a misnomer; it is not a skill but rather a shell/skinning/GUI to present the contents underneath. Having lots of friends or gfs would not validate your causes (I'm talking about intrinsic causes) and vice versa too for lackthereof a social life. Social skills are just a set of fancy ways to announce to the world, that "I'm single, and I'm ready to mingle."

Sorry about being blunt, but it's just I feel like a lot of people confuse these two area's in their lives (not saying that one's social life isn't as important; one can't fight against one's biology) and take one for the other; and try to use social superficiality to resolve their intrinsic goals and come off vapid; or try to work on their personal projects in hopes to bolster their social lives and come off frustrated and lonely.

Social skydiving, or rather to put it bluntly, picking up chicks is a lot like debugging a program or riding a roller-coaster.

The first time you do it, there are so much anxiety, what if the person I'm talking to just snub me out, walk away, or starts to point at me and laugh out loud at me while other people are standing around me?

But that is not the point. The point is feeling that high that comes from overriding your sense of inhibition, so in that sense, it doesn't matter what the other person say, but that you are getting away from saying outrageous/assertive/shocking/amusing things to people and you absolutely don't give a fuck about what they think about you but that it feels right that you yourself are saying it.

Good luck but you don't need my blessing/permission to say whatever you want to whoever you want,

Also, for Rome, go where the romans go. go to reddit's subreddit seduction or StyleLife forum for proper advice.

The theory is simple: just talk to people.

The practice is a bit harder, but you have to do it. Smile at the cashier at the grocery and say something simple e.g., ask how the day is going.

You will sound dumb, stupid, and inane to yourself for a long time (but probably not to other people). Until one day you won't. The most important bit of advice on overcoming my introversion that I ever heard was that being introverted is really a form of self-absorption: once you start thinking about how others are feeling, you focus on yourself a lot less and interacting with them becomes simpler.

But like everything else, it takes practice. Chat, say "hi," smile at everyone you can.

I'm assuming that Social Skydiving is basically making a concentrated effort on talking to strangers frequently?

How many times did you try it? If you tried it for three days, and failed miserably, don't give up. Any skill takes time to build.

It's taken me a long time, but I have successfully gone from being extremely shy and introverted to a state where I'm fairly outgoing and can converse /mingle with strangers with relative ease. I'm still not the best when it comes to dealing with girls, but I think that's as much because I'm simply a quirky, geeky guy at heart, as any residual shyness. I do approach attractive women in bars and clubs, or bookstores, or cafes, or at the grocery store, and talk to them, and sometimes get their phonenumbers and later go out with them. So yeah, it can be done, if that's what you're wondering.

Don't expect miracles overnight though. Just keep working at it, and take any "small victories" you can get. Something that is somewhat effective is to go to a mall and walk into all sorts of retail stores and talk to the sales people... they're basically paid to be nice to you, so unless you're so socially awkward that you say something totally inappropriate, or unless you smell funny, or something, you should be able to chit-chat for at least a few minutes. Just keep doing that and over time you'll find it easier and easier.

Talking to guys is important too. The stuff on fastseduction.com is good, but don't forget that you'll want to be able to be sociable with everybody, guys and girls. That has all sorts of applications... the more comfortable you are making small-talk and shooting the breeze with other guys, the easier it will be to meet girls. Sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me, it's true.

If you really want to experiment a bit, you can try something that Ross Jeffries suggests. The idea is to try to start a conversation in a way that should get you rejected and totally blown off... it's conditioning to get used to the idea that talking to people is just a game and really no big deal. It goes something like this... go to the mall, walk around, and approach somebody and go "Excuse me, my name is Manny the Martian... what's your favorite flavor of bowling ball?"

There are also a lot of good books on how to make small-talk and how to deal with people. You'll usually find them in the "self-help" section at a bookstore. Something like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" would probably be useful to you.

But yeah, unless you have some serious deep-rooted psychological mumbo-jumbo going on, simply going out and putting some effort into talking to people should help, eventually.

Oh, one last thing... make it a point to keep up with what's going on in the world, so you'll have stuff to talk about and so you'll understand comments other people make. As stupid as it sounds, a quick brush through and issue of Star or People every now and then isn't a bad idea, just to know a little "celebrity gossip." I don't mean get addicted to following that crap, but at least have a vague notion of what people mean if they say "So, what about that thing with Brad and Jen?" or whatever. Maybe check the headlines on Google News or a local newspaper before going out as well. If you carry a smartphone with 'net access, just check the news while you're out and if there's an interesting headline, there's your conversation opener. "Hey, did you guys see this... BP's CEO was found hung in his home last night!!" or whatever.