Your Opinions and You

I suppose it's gotten time for me to hop into the confessional. About ten years ago as of writing this, I was a wreck socially speaking. Only a couple of friends and about as much social grace as a particularly misanthropic snake. I had a really hard time communicating because I couldn't relate to a lot of people I met and I have a fairly obsessive mind so that once I got started on something that interested me I wouldn't shut up. After a point though, I started to have the importance of networking pounded into me and became cognizant of just how bad I was at social skills.

For a while, it was hard to do anything about this because back then I still believed as many people still do that things like charisma, charm and wit are indefinable its, traits you are born with and that cannot be learned. There was no real dramatic turning point for me. Over time that belief just sort of fell by the wayside. College was when most of the progress was made. I experimented a lot in high school, of course, but like everyone else at that age it was all trial and error. I had no real identity and was struggling to find a group I could relate to. The less I say about that period of my life, the better.

Sometime in my freshman year of college, I decided to finally start dealing with the problem by deconstructing it. I came to realize that since becoming self-conscious of my habit of talking too much, I tended to shut up when people got really into a subject and let them dominate the conversation. In certain situations it wasn't appropriate for me to talk about things like my personal politics. And when I didn't and just let people talk, they eventually walked away assuming I was on their side.

After that little revelation, other patterns began emerging. I approached my improvement like a scientist, testing hypotheses and trying to repeat results. I listened to new ideas I wouldn't have considered before and tested those too. It paid off. Now people who meet me have no clue how much of a social pariah I used to be. They assume I was always like this.

The point I'm getting at here is that there is really only one effective way to solve a problem: to deconstruct it. It behooves us to step back every now and again and consider why we believe the things we do. Do you recall I mentioned earlier how I used to believe that social skills were something you either get or don't, that they can't be contextualized and taught? Well, why do we believe that? If one cannot learn social skills, then why aren't we still communicating like we did at 3 years of age? We have scientists studying psychology, sociology and anthropology, but why is putting our social nature in paper and ink taboo or even impossible?

Here's the problem: when you've been one way your entire life, you don't think about it. You take it for granted. And with nothing to compare it to, it's much more difficult for you to describe to others. I've argued with many people who think I'm lying through my teeth about all this. Nearly all of them turned out to be at best mediocre with social situations and had been for as long as they could remember, or had otherwise been part of some social station their whole life and never experienced anything outside of it. Those who weren't were either still just plain attached to their opinions or were ignoramuses determined to avoid admitting they were wrong, no matter how badly they had to mangle logic and reason to do it.

The first step in the learning process is always to look at the world beyond yourself. Your experiences are not universal. Your ideas are not always right. Very often, we come by our opinions via other people. We don't actually give them any conscious thought and simply defer to "conventional wisdom." However, if you look at the successful people in this world, many of them did counterintuitive things to get where they are. Don't make excuses for that, simply ask yourself why the counterintuitive thing worked.

What is an opinion you currently hold about magic or people or art or business? Why do you hold it? When did you form this opinion? What are the dissenting opinions? What logic would you use to justify them if you held them? It's a difficult process to undergo, but necessary. Do that over the next week. If you have an "A-ha!" moment or a personal "Eureka!" leave a comment about it, because it's important that we show anyone reading this that opinions are not infallible. And saying, "That's just your/my opinion," is not a defense. It's a way to escape having to think.