One Of The Greatest Ways To Improve Socially

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Here is one of the best peices of social advice I was ever given, and I will share it with you.

Emulate the socially successful.

By that I do not mean "be someone you are not" or "be someone other than yourself". Be yourself, but a better you. I am not saying emulate them in every sense. Adopt certain qualities of a person who is socially successful that you personally need to work on.

It is important to pick the right person to emulate. Someone who is in a similar status of life. Maybe emulating JFK or a movie star is not a good idea, though they may have a quality or two you should adopt. But someone who lives in similar circumstances but is far more socially successful, is your idea. Spend some time with the person and analyze their behavior to find out exactly why they are socially successful.

When you are about to speak, a good thought filter would be: Would _______ say _______ in that situation? Is it like them to say/do that? No? Why wouldn't he/she? Well, in that case, I won't say it or, Well, this is an extenuating circumstance; they may not say it but I need to.

For example, I chose a person who I went to high school with who is always optimistic, makes friends easily, and no one speaks badly about him. Now, there are times that I feel I should not emulate him; lets say I don't want to play it safe and I feel it is necessary to tell someone else how I feel even if its a little controversial. But most of the time, it allows me think before I act. And this has saved me at least 1000 times from making mistakes.

It's not a perfect brain filter, and many times I forget to use my own advice, but when I do it, it works. If you are looking for a good brain filter to prevent yourself from making social mistakes, then this is worth a try.

It's a good piece of advice, thanks for sharing.

In my case I have always preferred to emulate the people I like and admire, and often they weren't very socially successful people, more intellectual type crazy people, lol. When I was younger (early 20s) I'd try to emulate not their behaviour, but their thinking, and one girl in particular I admired and took as a role model was (and still is) a dedicated anarchist, and some of those values are still ingrained in me (I'm 32), I think it meshed well with my aspie aversion to authority figures, lol.

I emulate socially successful people when I have to, e.g. at work. I find most socially successful people boring and tedious. But yes, being able to emulate them convincingly is a valuable pragmatic skill to have (when unemployment is not an option.)

Get an unsual pet and take it in places pets don't normaly go. My parents swear doing that with my bearded dragon, Pippin has helped me develop better social skills. People are naturaly going to ask questions about a lizard in the grocery store. I get more trouble about taking her to the libaray than I do the grocery store or restraunts but the head libraian is b***h.

Hihi, I would like to thank you for sharing such good advice. I'm sure that many people will benefit from emulating the socially successful. In fact, NTs do so all the time.

However, as an Aspie, I have difficulties imagining how others will react in various situations. No wonder some NTs complain that I lack empathy.

Yeah I think thats a good piece of advice. I did try that once, tho I was emulating the wrong person, it got me some success. I needed to choose someone who was more similar to me. I had a couple good friends who really helped me in framing ways in how to think which helped a lot.

I think you're right. This is something that I should definitely work on the next time I go out with people. I'm not gonna booze and smoke like everyone else is, but just to learn about the characteristics people have that make them socially successful.

I do this all the time. I've picked up so many social habits from my friends, it's like I'm an amalgamation of all of them put together. My best friend especially...but then again we have similar personalities to begin with, so we can't help emulating each other!

A modification of this is:

For a given situation that offers choices (and ideally time to think for a second), stop and ask yourself: "is this the best *me* I would be?" or "for the best version of me i can think of, is this choice the one that me would take?"

Took a while for me to figure this out when I was younger. Took a while longer to realize that being able to ask myself this question meant I could choose, and just how powerful that really is.

I love the story about the dragon! When we used to have a dog, I'd get lots of compliments when taking her for a walk. I liked that.

i try to emulate what i would like others to be to me.

This is so recognisable, I have gotten so much better in my social interactions since I was diagnosed by watching and observing people. I've got one hell of a database regarding social interactions and it keeps expanding every day. I've never could have imagined I was going to reach this kind of Level.