I decided to start talking to strangers for one reason.
I knew unless I wanted to marry someone in my family, my future wife was currently a stranger. And unfortunately I wasn't raised in Alabama meaning that if I wanted to get married, talking to strangers was NOT optional, it was required.
The thought of having to talk to strangers made me want to shit my pants so my next question became, "how can I get the balls to do this?"
My solution?
Exposure therapy.
When I got started instead of trying to talk to strangers from the get go I slowly started easing myself into having interacting with strangers more and more.
For the first two weeks or so of my plan, I'd simply go outside for 5-10 minutes and practice holding eye contact with strangers as I passed by.
Once I got used to eye contact I advanced to eye contact AND giving strangers a genuine smile until that felt comfortable for about another 10-20 days.
After that felt like second nature I started waving and saying Hello.
Then finally I ended by asking people questions whenever they’d pop into mind and since then socializing has felt easy.
So again it goes eye contact > smiles > wave & hello > short conversations.