

Social Skydiving Days 18-20: Winners are Made of Fail - darkxanthos
http://socialskydivingwithjustin.posterous.com/social-skydiving-days-18-20-winners-are-made

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darkxanthos
Glad to see this is getting a good response. This is a rough draft of a
personal experience essay I wrote for my English class. It's got plenty of
flaws and was scary to publish in such an imperfect form but in my mind it's
the most important post I've written.

Thanks again for reading guys.

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cema
Thanks. And no excuses! :-)

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darkxanthos
Haha touché!

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nudded
I love the "Winners are made of fail, losers of excuses" point. It really is
true that if you don't fail and always come up with excuses, you'll never win.

Really great to see you honestly blogging about your life.

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tel
I've never been too socially anxious, so I wouldn't have felt this article —
while inspiring — was very pertinent to me. It has a more general message
though: if you feel anxious, the only route to recovery is by passing through
it.

I'm currently living in a foreign country making due with limited language
skills and my experiences learning to use the language in a real situation
mirror this Social Skydiving experiment. You have to find the fun in failure.

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cema
"You have to find the fun in failure." -- Yes, that helps! And, on the
contrary, it is too easy to enjoy excuses and pet grudges. Let's grow good
habits and grow out of bad ones.

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carterschonwald
This is a very nice story around on very important point: being nice and
friendly creates tremendous positive externalities, and if people don't react
well, that's their own problem, not yours

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jacquesm
Hey there Justin,

That's some of the best personal history stuff I've ever read on the internet.

You should seriously consider a writing career, you've got talent to spare.
Thank you for all the insights in your life. My gf who has serious anxieties
about meeting strangers is eating up your writings as soon as a new episode is
posted, and thank you again on her behalf.

j

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darkxanthos
Wow! So even a woman enjoys reading this stuff? I'm glad to hear that. I was
afraid my male orientation would make that harder.

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jacquesm
No, she now alerts me to the new episodes :)

Seriously, you have no idea how much effect your writing has had.

The simple fact that you've been so open about this makes it discussable for
other people, and that in turn can help them to help themselves.

The funny thing is that the day before I found your 10th day installment I
actually had a little 'assignment' worked out where I wanted her to go out and
have a conversation with some random stranger. Then the next day - the day it
was supposed to happen - I found your writings and instead of asking her to go
out and connect with someone I let her read your writing.

I'm quite sure that that was much more effective than one more of my
'harebrained' plans :)

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rickdangerous
This reminds me of the book "The Game" By Strauss. Setting aside the obvious
objectionable intentions (getting laid) of the pick up artists in that book,
alot of what those guys do is about turning social stituations into hacking
projects. That may sound creepy, but for a lot of people, learning how to
socialise successfully is an important thing. Check it out.

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psyklic
"She mentioned that she still wanted to go over and watch the band but she
stayed put. I took a stab at failure and left her alone with the other guy at
the bar"

The author did a good job and it worked out well! But in this scenario (where
it is likely she's interested), be confident, stand up from your barstool, nod
your head toward the band, and ask her to join you with a smile!

Otherwise you run the risk of letting her think that you aren't interested.
And, confidence is kinda sexy ;-)

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calvin
Without failure, there is no success.

Thanks for the insightful story and sharing your experiences. I'm hoping it
provides me the fuel to take a few more risks in social settings than I
typically do.

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abstractbill
This was a really good read. I had (thankfully!) almost forgotten how
crippling social anxiety can be.

