The terrible truth that no one wants to admit is that we have far less control in this than we'd like to think.

The idea that we can charm everyone in the room, or make someone who is uninterested fall in love with us by saying and doing the right things is a wonderful marketing campaign that some people have spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on (myself included).

Sure, if you walk around making obvious social blunders, and you fix those up, you will see a decent increase in how people perceive you.

But if you already are at a decent level with your people skills, you probably won't ever ascend to silver tongued devil status. That is just an idea that people want to sell you.

Whats the alternative?

Stop trying to kick down locked doors, and start walking through the ones that are opened for you.

There are people out there who like you for you. Even if you are a nerd, or get nervous, or are too loud sometimes. And they will make it easy for you to spend time around them. In that same vein, people will not like you, and not want to spend time around you for those reasons. And the performance anxiety you get trying to meet their expectations will make you unnatural, and not appealing to them in the long term anyway.

Am I saying give up your journey for self improvement? No. You should always be working on yourself for your own sake. But get rid of the idea that I had that someday, I will be enough. You are enough today to the right people today. And over time and with enough improvement, you will be enough for a slightly larger pool of people.

Start casting as wide a net as possible, and just find the people who make it easy for you to be around. I almost guarantee you'll find way more satisfaction with that, than attempting to control every facial muscle and executing every alpha-neg, deciphering every minuscule body movement with all the body language videos you watch, deciphering "shit tests" that don't even exist, or just playing mind games with yourself.

Just let go of the idea of being the suave, perfect man.

Let go of trying to control other's opinions of you.

Let go of your opinion of yourself based upon others or how many people have slept with you.

Let go of the interests or friends that don't hit you back up, and embrace the ones that do.

Let go of everything you can't control, no matter how hard it is.

edit;

Tim Ferris has a book called the 4 hour work week. In it, he talks about he had a few clients who made up 80% of his business, and a shit load who made up the last 20%. He spent almost twice as much time on the 20%. He then realized all the bullshit he was doing to entertain that 20%, and just let them go. He then focused all the free time he had into expanding his business with the few that made up his 80%. This is the strategy I want to go with, and will probably help most people.