On being socially awkward

When you’re a socially awkward person. You’re naturally inclined to be more detached, isolated and in your own world – unbeknown to others and possibly even yourself, that’s really YOUR only way of preserving the part keeps you…you – who you really are!

The worst thing that a socially awkward person can ever try to do is to dismantle the sum of all the parts that is ‘himself’ and retooling himself into everyone else.

Once you set about cannibalizing who you are to fashion yourself into someone who you were obviously never meant to be….instead of coming to terms with who you really are and seeing yourself as a unique and valuable person who has something very interesting to share with the whole world – all you would have managed to accomplish is to destroy that aspect of who you are and what distinguishes you from all other men.

You will just end up like everyone else.

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‘One reason why I much prefer to spend time all alone much more perhaps than the average person is firstly….I can afford to. I am not boasting. But it’s just a fact of life that dawned on me quite early on in my life. Since I noticed, I was so very different from all other men. I needed to first work really hard to enable me to fashion my own world within the world like maybe the same way Howard Hughes.

Don’t take it personally! Don’t. I’ve no axe to grind with the world. I am cool. I love people and planet. But I need to first be alone to enable me to keep my motivation and interest burning as fiercely as possible…otherwise it’s no good.

Things wouldn’t come around.

I am not going to lie to you! Being socially awkward or the odd one out certainly has it’s disadvantages – maintaining relationships is always a strain, it never comes naturally even when I try very hard to put others at ease – it can never come naturally to me. To exacerbate matters socially awkward people can very easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood by others.

So to my understanding at least – it’s best not to cause friction by immersing oneself all the time in that other world that keeps trying to change who you are….it’s never a matter of conflict for me. Much more a case of managing oneself and others effective like how a fish can only be a fish when it’s swimming in water and not flipping helplessly on land. Like I said earlier – it’s never personal with me.

My point is if the elemental nature of your character is different. Then learn to live with it by first coming to terms with your strengths and weaknesses. In other words summon the maturity to accept who you are first! Don’t fight it by denying it tooth and nail. Never see your ‘difference’ as something dirty and shameful!

Just accept it like one of those it is what it is sort of things.

If for instance your strength is not people skills and that’s really your kryptonite – then sure work at it. But even should you try darn hard. You have to accept at some point – that skill will NEVER ever come naturally to you like some people. It will always demand so much of you that it may be better to just make the necessary adjustments in your life to take stock of that weaknesses.

The solution – could be starting your own enterprise so that YOU and not others have much more control over how you want things done. Or maybe trying to slide yourself into a niche in an organization where you are allowed to do your own thing – that I imagine will never be easy.

As the world can be terribly difficult and impossibly demanding at times to people who are socially awkward – but despite one’s awkwardness – it’s vitally importantly for one to come to terms with one reality – to be able to see one’s social awkwardness as an advantage rather than a weakness that necessarily requires changing….as it just means you are slightly different from all other men.

That ‘slight difference’ in how you see yourself and the greater world may not count for crud, when you’re wondering why you keep making people feel uncomfortable or seem to bring out the worse in them all the time…but trust me, it’s a long term advantage that took me a while to figure out.

I’ve been very lucky. As I seem to not only attract loners…people who are all socially awkward. But you could even say I am a sort of leader in this tribe of strange men who all seem to suffer from an incurable way of seeing the world differently from all others. They may still be doctors, engineers, lawyers or whatever that is mainstream. But my point is they never want to be just doctors, engineers, lawyers or whatever that is mainstream….so these socially awkward souls have no choice but to do they own thing. Either that or the system just spits them out time and again till they finally realize they’re getting absolutely no where trying to force a square peg into a round hole….and when a man does his own thing, it’s a wonderful thing. As it just means, he has begun his epic life journey to discover his own mythical line that will eventually lead him to self discovery.

So if you are different….breathe….relax….it’s perfectly OK.’