I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Over the past couple of years I've tried the usual things: reading books about communication, watching talks, pushing myself into more social situations, etc. Some of it helped, but it also left me with a weird realization.
Most skills we learn have some kind of practice environment. Like athletes exercices.
But social skills are strange — you mostly practice them in real conversations where the stakes are real and the feedback is messy. If a conversation goes poorly, you can reflect on it later, but you don't really get to rewind and try again.
Because of that, I've been experimenting with ways to simulate conversations and get more "reps" in outside of real life. It's actually been more helpful than I expected, which made me wonder if this is something other people struggle with too.
Curious about a few things:
• Do you feel like the main barrier to improving socially is knowing what to do, or getting enough practice doing it?
• Is there a specific type of interaction that still trips you up even after working on it?