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Comment by TekMol | Hacker News Reader

Man, where do I even start?

Friendship, love, business and having an overall better time, day in, day out.

Improving my understanding of the social interaction between people and how to become a more enjoyable person is the most important thing I accomplished in my life.

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> Improving my understanding of the social interaction between people and how to become a more enjoyable person is the most important thing I accomplished in my life.

Do you have some tips on this journey? Is there some specific approach you followed, a book, or something else?

I can identify a lot of my problems and see how much impact they have, but struggle with actually making improvements.

I would say the most fundamental quality when it comes to social skills is to shift your awareness from what you want, what you get, what you experience, what you do, who you are and how you feel to what the people around you want, what they get, what they experience, what they do, who they are and what they feel.

A good start is to cultivate the ability to stop talking, relax and listen.

This is such good advice. You can’t learn empathy from a place of self-centeredness[1]; it has to be genuine.

I don’t ask the doctor’s administrative assistant about their day in order to get preferential treatment, that’s just a perk that sometimes comes with it. I try to come from a place of genuine interest in others, even though that can be hard to do.

[1] I don’t mean this as a dig or even a negative, I’m just referring to where your focus is in a given situation. Are you focused on yourself, or others?

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