I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends.
Just to be clear, both of those things are choices one makes, not excuses to be made.
I still disagree with the assertion that "how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you". It may be true in some extremely narrow sense, but if it came down to it how many people would give up the spouse they love because they were the problem, or their children because they were, or drop everything and move to where people were more similar to themselves?
Right, because someone with no friends probably have never thought or believed that it is their own fault for being shy/uninteresting/boring (and that they're shy/uninteresting/boring in part because ... they have no friends). It has probably never crossed their mind at all.
> I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends.
In order to be social, you need to try to be social. Right.
So he's not saying that you 'have to try and be social', he's saying 'work at it'. That means doing things that you may not want to do right now, to pay-off later.
Who believes that there are any alternatives? Shy people and people with social anxiety (etc.) don't have a reputation for spontaneously becoming outgoing and so on.