since you asked, I have a published book I need to promote. but since this isn't the place and it's a little tacky, I wasn't sure about telling you all. As for related topics to this forum, I'm isolated and almost morbidly depressed half of the time. lonely to the point of being physically sick. All that I can think of to make that go away would be to make people more accepting and actually see me the way I see myself. But, c'est la vie. As far as I'm concerned the world in general is just insane and treats people who don't play stupid games like garbage.

Sam Rau <sam.rau@...> wrote:

Since we've been talking of awareness lately, I'd like to pose an exercize for everyone here.  I think that once we become aware of what's stopping us from our success, in whatever area that may be, we can most often cause this thing which we imagine to be a problem to dissapear from our lives; perhaps you might even realize that your problem really isn't something which needs fixing anyway.  I often gain greater incites into my own situation by talking it over--or in this case writing--with others, both because this helps me to get clear about what's going on from my standpoint and because it helps (sometimes quite a bit) to hear it from others.  I assume that most people are signed up with this group because they want to work on their social life, or lack thereof (just kidding of course).  Tthe premmice here is that there is a problem, and that perhaps this group will help in solving it once and for all; never mind that this is all conceptual (your concept of what's "real") and your conception of having a problem is causing you to have it...  But for the sake of argument, let's play the game.

 

If you could generalize your problem with social situations to just one thing, the thing which if eliminated from your life would cause this whole thing to go away and stop bothering you, what would it be?  This can be something that other people do, like their too hard to talk to or something, or it could even be something you do, like getting tense and faultering around authority figures for example.  It could possibly be something you have, such as a genetic disposition towards being awkward, but I don't think so.  If we can observe what we're doing inside, and how we're doing it, we no longer produce outcomes which we don't want.  However as long as we're unaware of how we create these experiences, we will continue to do all of the disfunctional things which result in our current situation...  I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, as usual...  But anyway, enough of that.  The main goal here is to see what the main problem seems to be here, and perhaps gain a greater understanding of what's really going on here.  If everything's going great for you and you're creating all results you want, then feel free not to respond; I would wonder why such people are part of a group which aims at increasing your social skills...  I think that most of us will be surprised to find out just how much we have in common--within the group as well as without.

 

Well, I've gotten the ball roling, so now all I can do is just sit back and watch what happens.  Don't dissapoint me. :-)