What genuine advice is completely useless?

I was like this for a very long time. Then I got one of those jobs where you hang out in front of stores asking people to donate to the wildlife fund or whatever. You want to talk about rejection, I have some stories. Once I realized that was it, the only thing they can do is reject you, it actually built my self confidence. I found my dignity not in getting people to donate, but in other facets of my life.

You can’t sit in front of a store and watch hundreds of people walking in and out trying to find the perfect donor and asking them to donate. They’ll say no and it will ruin your day if not week or month.

You don’t need to build up the nerve to talk to people and idealize a conversation. That will sap your dignity and confidence, because it’s going to come out forced and awkward and they’ll lose interest when they ask what you do for a living and you say it was sunny today so you walked your dog, shit! Idiot! It’s more successful to take the shotgun approach: if this conversation sucks, go to the bathroom and leave for the next one. There’s not a ‘look’ that says I’m fun, you can find a good conversation literally anywhere. Just ask if you can sit down, even if it’s a table full of dudes. Met some cool guys that way, then onto the next one when we parted ways. If you’re looking to have fun, people like it. If you’re looking to fuck because fucking’s fun, you better be rich or good looking.

It takes practice. Nobody is a born conversationalist. It just takes time and energy to figure out what you, and other people, like to talk about, and how to read social cues. If you quit trying to walk the first time you fell down, you’d be in a much different spot right now.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent