A frame change I wanted to share that has helped me socially:

I used to interpret people being closed off to me as them not liking me. This could take the form of not looking at me, giving short answers, not saying hello to me, and physically avoiding me. Even if I liked them and wanted to talk to them, hoping they would say hello as they walked by, they wouldn’t.

Now I work a sales job where I have 50-100 outcome-independent interactions a day (I HIGHLY recommend this btw for my young brothers.) The first thing my manger told me when they hired me was to say hello to everyone. And I recently understood why.

I work in a huge store, where it is impossible to find anything first try. So everyone has a question to ask. Some people are warm and friendly, and will approach me. Others will yell to me from disrespectfully long ranges. These tend to be the masculine men and the elderly, who don’t really give a fuck. But most customers won’t talk to me unless I talk to them first, and then they have 20,000 questions, indicating that they wanted to talk the whole time.

Some will avoid eye contact. Others will mumble quiet niceties and hope I move on. Once I noticed these behaviors, I started to see them outside of work as well. Scared body language from people on the street. People incapable of looking me in the eye. Even people who freeze when I address them looking them dead in the eyes.

Confident people don’t do any of that. Even if they don’t like the way you look, or smell, or whatever, they’ll acknowledge you give you a bit of conversation. As you get your shit together and get your game tightened up, you’ll have to change the way you interact with people. People will approach you less. They’ll be less receptive to your attempts to break the ice. They’ll feel disconnected from you even if you feel connected to them. It’ll be your job to be open, warm and friendly if you want to make friends with the masses. You have to LEAD now. You are intimidating.

I think being intimidating is a good thing, to be clear. I’m 19 yrs old, black, 6’2, and muscular, with good posture and all that shit. I find that other top dogs respect me and the submissive personalities expect my leadership. Lemme not get off topic tho