[Archipelagia]

> I'd like to feel more at ease with myself, feel more comfortable contributing in an authentic, confident, light-hearted way. But instead I'm often in my head over-analyzing instead of being present.

Two very important pieces of advice:

1. Feelings follow action. It's extremely difficult to "think yourself" into confidence, but if you act confident (even pretend to) you'll soon start feeling so.

2. Feeling comfortable is a result of competence. If you know you are going to do great, you will feel comfortable. So to feel at-ease, focus on building social skills.

When I was younger I realized I had mediocre social skills (I was outgoing, but also pretty awkward. One of the perks of spending too much time around computers growing up, I guess.). For a few years I prioritized fixing it, basically trying to get as much exposure to different social situations as I could (e.g. traveling internationally by myself, trying sales jobs, etc.) and got to a point where I'm usually the most social person in any group.

(Feels kinda weird writing that about myself, but we're on an anonymous forum, huh.)

I think doing something similar could help you a lot. Obviously depends a lot on where you are and what you want, but in general I think getting more experience & build competence in social skills would give you highest ROI on your time.

Happy to talk more if it's useful.

[slenocchio]

Really appreciate your response Archipelagia. I'm in the process of trying to be more social in my day to day, however I work a remote tech job which limits my social interaction for a large part of the day. I've thought about trying a sales job as you suggested...any advice on switching into this field? I have ~6 years experience as a developer/manager, making that sort of career shift would be pretty drastic but I'm open to it.

[Archipelagia]

Hm, first, why exactly would you like to make this shift? Purely to train social skills?

If so, I'd recommend finding some small sales side-gig over the weekends instead of doing a full career change. Sales can very rewarding (both in terms of money and satisfaction), but 1. you need to be pretty good to make decent money and 2. if it doesn't suit you, it can be extremely stressful.

On the other hand doing some smaller sales on the side could be a nice way to test the waters. And if you decide to make a full switch later, having some prior experience will look nicely.

For the side gig, I'd probably look into direct sales vs phone or online. It's more stressful and the experience doesn't directly translate into doing B2B later (I'm assuming you'll want to move into tech sales down the line), but it's very much a crash course in building self confidence.

[more_corn]

You could soft shift into more social things in your personal life. Attend meetups Join an exercise group (there’s a running group near me) There’s even a casual conversation group in San Francisco (although this is good practice it’s not something I find fulfilling)