I stumbled upon this post by a blogger who writes about the best ways to make money. He’s got a set of rules that an introvert should remember to follow when trying to make new friends, or ‘network’ as he says (after all he’s a businessman). But yeah, I found them to be fairly decent on paper, and a lot of them might well work in practice as well.
I found this one in particular to be quite interesting:
Stop the Mental Role-Playing
Part of the definition of being an introvert is having a “rich internal world.” You’ve got a lot of stuff going on inside your head, and one of your favorite things to do is role-play. You imagine what’s going to happen, what you’re going to do, and how it’s going to pan out. With complicated tasks, it actually helps you do things better because you’ve already done them so many times in your head.
It’s invaluable skill, but don’t delude yourself into thinking it helps with everything.
When you’re imagining meeting someone and you’re terrified of it, then every time you imagine it, you just get more terrified. It’s a never-ending pattern of imagining, getting scared, imagining more, and getting more scared. You need to break the pattern and think about something else.
Have a nosey.
