In most cases, this pandemic has spelled bad news for most of the world. It has forced many of us to stay far apart from large parts of our support systems and has sent finances and future plans for a toss. However, it has not all been bad. The pandemic in my opinion has given the world a few opportunities that would not have been created otherwise. It has allowed people to slow down a little through their work/school at home and introspect on how things are going for them. Additionally, for those of us who suffer from any form of social anxiety, it has made things slightly easier.
Through this time there have been fewer people I have been obligated to meet and the required communication has been all online. Even in smaller situations, I am forced away from interactions that I was usually forced into such as small talk with cashiers and bumping into neighbors, and I am grateful. Therefore, work has been somewhat easier for me to do. I no longer have to walk into a room and introduce myself to new people and burden myself with what they think of me because I am only required to talk business on my time-bound daily meetings.
However, it is also wrong to assume this situation as permanent and take the shift to only digital communication as a clutch in my own anxiety struggle. While through my life, I have been able to (mildly successfully) navigate social situations in the past, they have never been even close to easy. I have never been the kind of person who walks into a room and immediately becomes friends with everyone around me unlike many of my friends and colleagues. I, like thousands and thousands of others, have always been mildly afraid of public speaking and I also always have to brace myself for large social gatherings such as parties. I am not sure why these situations make so many people so prone to being so uncomfortable overall, but I have been blessed to have learned to navigate most of them with not too much resistance. However, one thing I have always believed I needed to learn was speaking up in business settings. From meetings in school to in workplaces, I have always held back, meaning I let people talk and never tried hard enough to get my points across all due to a fear of not being good enough or not being accepted in that space.
Over time I have understood that no saying better encompasses life than, "the early bird gets the worm" and that "only people who speak up are heard". To my dismay over this same period of time I have also learned that it is not enough to just put across good work. The ability to sell it is equally as important. So over these four months, I have been coming up with a theory that seemed to apply well to this situation that so many of us see to find ourselves in and it’s called ‘assuming acceptance’. I drew this idea from a podcast I was listening to and slowly realized how easily it could work to help improve situations of social anxiety.
Assuming acceptance is the processing of you telling yourself that everyone in a room accepts your ideas and thoughts unless stated otherwise. This goes against the basic idea that fuels a lot of social anxiety that everyone is going to hate you unless you convince them otherwise. Assuming acceptance takes away that initial fear of being disliked or looked down upon and gives the situation an opportunity to really play out without that weight. Just this small action removes the fear that one slip up may have disastrous consequences and instead gives more hope towards things working out for the better.
The internet has always had a lot to weigh in on how to deal with social situations that seem to scare us, such as positive body language or taking the leap or socializing more. All these while they may be effective seem extreme and are not easy to force yourself to do. However, it is easier to take the situations you are already in and try to bathe them in a light that changes them for you. So whether it is meeting one friend for coffee or speaking to a board room full of people try and just assume they accept your ideas while not having to defeat their point of view and where they may have come from.
Let us know what you think of adopting this small theory into your day-to-day and how it could potentially change how you walk into your next meeting room.