Learning how to relax in social settings can be difficult depending on your personality, your shyness, your comfort with the people or situations you’re put in, and your social battery. However, you can learn to find your own footing despite the circumstances, and it starts by learning to love and embrace yourself first.

Practice Self Acceptance

First, practice self acceptance! If you want to relax in social settings, you need to be able to accept yourself in that space. Social anxiety creeps in when we doubt ourselves. So, try to accept yourself on a daily basis (your looks, personality, ideas, likes/dislikes, etc.). The more you do this, the more you are going to find that you can naturally just be yourself in any situation.

Keep The Body & Mind Calm

Anything you can do to calm down the mind and body will be so helpful because sometimes when you’re anxious, especially in social settings, it’s because you’re overthinking or there is something happening in either your mind or body that is making it hard to relax. So, anything you can do to slow your mind or physical body will help! There are so many ways to calm your nerves, and you’ll want to find the one that works for you, but just try to make mindfulness a daily habit.

Focus On The Other People (Rather Than You)

If you often find yourself feeling worried and anxious about how you appear in social settings, then you might find it useful to simply to focus on the other people in the room a little more. When you’re not hyper-fixated on what you’re doing, you’re able to lessen that stress and just be present. You’re also focusing on other people (giving eye contact, really listening, etc.) and that will make you a more pleasant person to be around!

Spend More Time With Others

Finally, if you want to be more relaxed in social settings, all you really need to do is practice! So, in other words, get out there and be social. If you can spend more time with other people (especially people outside of your circle), then you will slowly get more comfortable and confident. Before long, you should have developed a pretty strong ability to be yourself quite naturally and enjoyably in any social space.

 

Featured Image Credit: Brooke Cagle