Stay Weird

Here’s a question I recently received from a reader: Once I’m with someone (even my friends) I always gets thoughts of “should we be talking more” and “am I talking enough” or “this is getting awkward”. How can I stop these thoughts from occurring? This is a great question. One of the biggest frustrations I used to have a couple years ago was being called quiet by people. It annoyed me so much whenever someone would say “Why are you so quiet?” But the truth is, back then, I definitely didn’t talk enough. I was too scared to speak up around people I didn’t know well … and often I just didn’t know what to say. My mind seemed to go blank. So there’s really 2 different answers to your question: You can stop viewing silences as being awkward, OR You can learn to talk more if you TRULY are too quiet. I’ll start with the first one… First, Is The Silence Really Awkward Or Is It In Your Head? Whether a silence is awkward or not often depends on WHO it happens with. S...

Do you ever feel you are unable to be social or funny after doing a very logical activity? It could be a tough homework assignment. Or it could be some project at work that involves you thinking on it deeply for hours at a time. Maybe you find that after a couple hours of deep thinking, you just aren’t able to be funny or social. It’s like all the fun energy has been sucked out of you. In this article I’m going to explain why this happens and what to do about it. Your Brain Works Like A Muscle Here’s the first thing you need to know:  Many shy and introverted people are very logical thinkers. A lot of them are used to thinking logically most of the time. They may be an engineer, computer programmer, or something similar. This means they are coming up with logic all day. Why does this matter? The brain is a funny thing in that  the more you do something, the better you get at it.  This is called neuroplasticity. If you spend ten hours ...

Maybe right now you’re thinking of speaking to someone you’re attracted to. Maybe you even have a date planned. But you just want to  make sure you don’t run out of good things to talk about. That would be embarrassingly awkward, wouldn’t it? Imagine both of you sitting near each other. There is a sudden pause in the conversation, and  you know that you should say something  now, but your brain seems to have stopped working. All you can think of is some boring question or stupid comment, but nothing interesting or good enough to actually say out loud. You feel an  awkward silenc e slowly descending like a dark cloud, and you start to panic inside. You feel like you’ve become a total idiot because your mind has become totally blank. It’s like you’ve lost your whole personality. You can barely even remember your own name at this point, let alone an appropriate thing to talk about. You’re not alone if you’ve been in this situation befo...