relatable

How to Connect with Anyone, Anywhere (Even If It Scares You)

Rachel DeAlto

• Publisher: S&S/Simon Element
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982171094
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Communication & Public Speaking

From media personality and communication expert Rachel DeAlto, learn how to connect with anyone, anywhere with this helpful guide for improving your social skills in every setting, including networking events, interviews, dates, and more. We all have the desire to belong, to connect. And in the age of social media, making personal connections has been more challenging than ever.Millennials and Zoomers tend to have high anxiety at the thought of meeting new people and often fumble during in-person relationships. They struggle to connect, don't know how to make friends, and subsequently flounder in workplace relationships. Sound familiar? But relationship expert and media personality Rachel DeAlto knows that it doesn't have to be that way. Everyone can be likable. Everyone can be confident. And anyone can achieve this authentically.With a fresh, fun, and humorous tone, relat able provides a step-by-step guide that will take you from socially awkward to awesome. You will finally feel more comfortable in social and professional settings so you can let your true character shine as you form lasting, authentic, and meaningful connections with everyone in the room.

PART ONE The Why: Why relatable, Why Now?

Chapter One FAR FROM ALONE

VAUGHN

Vaughn walked into the cocktail party in a mood somewhere between completely content and excited. His boss had loved his ideas for the launch, it was payday, and he even made it to the gym twice that week. He knew this party was a necessary evil and that showing his face and appearing supportive to the client were essential, but he hadn’t spent time overthinking it. Vaughn also knew that his boss would be in attendance and gregarious as always, so he wasn’t overly concerned walking in. That is, until his phone buzzed in the pocket of his sport coat.

“Tied up at office. You’re on. Don’t disappoint me,” wrote his boss. His first real boss. At his first real job. At his first cocktail party. For his first client.

Vaughn felt his heart starting to beat as if he had pressed the wrong button on the StairMaster, and like that dreadful machine, he knew this party was going to end up being much harder than it looked. Vaughn spotted the client, a tall, former pro football player known for a no-nonsense approach to everything and a bullshit sensor that worked from a mile away. Vaughn adjusted his tie, tried to muster up every ounce of courage he had, and began to walk in the client’s direction through a sea of people who clearly had it together—at least far more than he did.

With each step, new beads of perspiration arose on Vaughn’s forehead despite the subzero temperatures outside. His heart was now beating at a decibel that drowned out both the music and conversation surrounding him. As he landed in an appropriate radius to the client, Vaughn reached out his hand to introduce himself. Instead of responding in kind, the client bellowed an excited, “I’m so glad you could make it!”… to a man at the left of Vaughn’s shoulder and began an engaging conversation.

Red-faced, shut out, and already quite sweaty, Vaughn retreated to the bar and to his iPhone. I can’t do this, he thought as he sat alone. So, he didn’t. After a while, Vaughn snuck out of the event without meeting the client, much to the disappointment of his boss—and himself.

Vaughn hadn’t always been this anxious in social settings, and in his estimation, it was getting worse. In fact, among members of his generation—Millennials, commonly defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996—general anxiety was collectively going from bad to worse.

Humans (yes, including Millennials) are wired for connection. We’re wired to be social. As humans, we have ginormous brains—the largest in the animal kingdom proportionate to our size. Anthropologists tell us these giant noggins are built for socialization. Yet, in the last fifty years, we’ve become increasingly individualistic and less social despite the prevalence of the four billion people connected through social media.¹

We’ve become the most disconnected society in recorded history at a time when we’re the most connected by technology.

Technology is amazing, isn’t it? We can stay connected to the world without leaving the comfort of the couch. We can order a three-course meal, watch seven seasons of a show (which should have been canceled after two), and search for our Prince(ss) Charming with a swipe of a thumb, all on our phones.

We don’t even use doorbells anymore—unless it’s to record video of every person who comes within fifty feet of our property. No one just “stops by” anymore; now we text “wya?”

A number of these changes are amazing improvements. Boundaries are awesome. Privacy is a phenomenal gift. If you show up on my doorstep on a Saturday morning at nine, I’m not answering. That’s not all I won’t answer. I believe there are two types of people in this world: those who answer incoming calls and those who stare at the screen, incredulous that someone had the audacity to hit send on anything other than a text message. One day, useless meetings will die too. #canthisbeanemail?

But what about our relationships? Are they surviving in a climate where we encourage everything to be conducted at arm’s length and in acronyms?

It turns out they aren’t.

People are socially anxious:

• 70 percent of people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine experience social anxiety, more than any other age group.²
• 65 percent of Millennials avoid face-to-face conversations because they aren’t confident in their abilities to interact.³
• 30 percent of Millennials won’t even attend events because they’re afraid it’s going to be socially uncomfortable.⁴

As if all of this anxiety weren’t enough, we’re really freaking lonely, too, and the two are quite intertwined. In fact, we’ve never been lonelier.

A 2019 Cigna study that used the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a frequently cited and statistically proven assessment for loneliness levels, found that 45 percent of Millennials and 48 percent of Gen Zers were lonely.⁵ Twenty-two percent of Millennials have no friends.⁶ Not a single peer with whom to share the highs and lows of being human.

We can’t survive on one meaningful interaction per week. Loneliness is dangerous. An often-cited 2015 Brigham Young study found that those without strong relationships had a risk of death equal to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and double the risk of obesity.⁷ Another study in the United Kingdom of almost 500,000 people over seven years found that “social isolation, similarly to other risk factors such as depression, can be regarded as a risk factor for poor prognosis of individuals with cardiovascular disease.”⁸ Heartache from loneliness is real. Your ticker may be fine at the moment, but it’s extremely concerning if this trend continues.

Why, though? Why is this all happening now?

FOMO AND THE COMPARISON TRAP

Social media is an easy and typical scapegoat, though the data doesn’t support blaming everything on social media. Even if social media use is not the cause of our loneliness, the comparison trap is real. In addition to our penchant for socialization, we are also natural comparers. In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger first proposed social comparison theory, long before the internet was even a dream. Festinger hypothesized that we compare ourselves to and judge others as a way of self-evaluation, and that the impulse dates back to our innate need to protect ourselves—so basically forever.

The thing is, our cave people ancestors didn’t have Instagram.

It’s a different world from when I was in my twenties. I didn’t have to walk five miles uphill in the snow to go to school, but I also didn’t have to stare at pictures of my friends being offered amazing jobs while I struggled to make ends meet. I didn’t have to see visual proof of my exes moving on with someone hotter than me, even when I unfriended every connection to them. I never had to see a video that showed me when I was left out of an event or party. We didn’t know what we weren’t invited to unless someone told us, and we never knew how fake-fabulous everyone’s lives were.

Unless you live in a bubble, you can’t help but compare yourself to the people that you see around you—it’s science! Some comparisons can be healthy, inspirational even. If you see someone working out and looking fit, you may be inspired to work out yourself. If you see a friend traveling to Greece and posting amazing pictures, you may think, Wow, I should travel more and stop working 100 percent of the time.

On the flip side, it can also make us feel inadequate, especially if your self-esteem bucket is already less than full. Many compare from a negative viewpoint and feel surrounded by reminders that they’re not doing enough, don’t have enough, and aren’t good enough.

This spiraling depletion of self-worth leads to isolation, fear, and anxiety. It’s understandable that someone would want to avoid networking when everyone is seemingly more successful. It’s understandable that someone would want to avoid conversations when everyone seemingly has it all together. But then, it’s understandable that someone has trouble dating because they’ve seen every aspect of their competition’s seemingly fabulous life.

It’s understandable that we’ve become so anxious.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Just text me!

I’ll email you!

DM me!

If we think that our online conversations can replace face-to-face connections, we’re going to become a very lonely society. Uh, wait a second… (scratches head).

It’s pretty cool that we can do so much with just our thumbs, but while we may believe that our online interactions are just as good as connecting face-to-face, our brain does not agree. Research shows that people are happier after a face-to-face conversation versus an online interaction, and in-person time with family and friends can improve your quality of life versus virtual interactions.⁹ It also changes how we connect, as another study found that when you compare in-person to virtual conversations among strangers, those who met face-to-face formed more positive impressions.¹⁰ Perhaps the internet trolls need to meet the people they harass.

I know I feel it! I love the convenience of staying in touch with my friends and family on social. I know who got married, who had a baby, who got a dog. I see friends after years of not talking and feel like we’re all caught up! Yet, I know the feeling I have when I spend real time with the humans I care about, and it’s a hell of a lot different than when I commented on their picture. It’s deeper, fuller, and much more heartwarming.

We’re still connecting and staying in touch by messagi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part One: The Why: Why relatable, Why Now?
• Part Two: The How: Relate to Anyone, Anywhere
• Part Three: The Who: How to Solve the Most Common People Problems
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Copyright