It’s very important to know how to open up to people if you want to improve your social life. After all, it’s very difficult for people to get to know you if you don’t open up to them. You being transparent to them is key to building friendships. If you somehow find it difficult to open up, now is the time to mitigate that.
If the aforementioned fact is indeed true for you, then you know that opening up to others is easier said than done. With the 16 ways listed below, this can be made easier. Afterwards, you’ll also get to properly know why it’s very crucial that you need to open up to people.
How To Open Up To People
Make sure to take note of all 16 ways that are listed below. You may not be able to open up to people immediately, but the process will definitely be easier from now on.
Determine the root of the problem
First things first, if you want to know how to open up to people, you’ll need to determine why you find it hard to do so. Finding the root of the problem is the best first step you’ll need to take so that everything you do moving forward is in response to that root.
For example, if the reason why you don’t want to open up to people is that someone has broken your trust in the past, you can start to work your way up from there. Know that not everyone is that untrustworthy. Convince yourself that the world isn’t filled with people who will break your trust as that person did.
Whatever the root of the problem is, refer to the ways listed below to counteract that root.
Start with people you know
One way that will make it easier for you to open up to people is to start with the people you know. Start with people you already trust and people you know trust you. This refers to your friends, family, partner, and whoever else you consider close to you.
Start opening up to them. Tell them things you previously would never have told anyone. You’ll be amazed at how light you’ll feel after that, as if a heavy burden has been lifted off you.
Doing this will help you get used to the idea of opening up to people. It will be more difficult to do so with people you don’t really know that much yet, but as long as you get the ball rolling, you won’t find it so difficult then.
Practice talking about yourself
One of the reasons why you find it so hard to open up to people is because you hate the idea of talking about yourself. If this is indeed the case, work on this issue first.
Practice talking about yourself more and more. Stop believing that other people aren’t that interested in learning more about you. Other people are interested in learning more about you, as long as you talk about yourself properly.
That said, practice talking about yourself. Practice in front of a mirror, or practice by talking to your friends. Get to know yourself enough that you can comfortably and coherently talk about yourself to other people.
A good way to achieve this is to list things about yourself. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Are there certain moments in your past that shaped who you are today? Then, list the moments you can figure out you’re comfortable talking about to other people.
Understand the meaning of “opening up”
Knowing the full meaning of “opening up” in context to your social life and mental health to make the practice easier for yourself.
When talking about opening up to other people, a few people believe this means that you should be vulnerable or predictable. This shouldn’t be the case. To open up to people, you’ll need to be trusting, confident, and honest. These are the three traits that are most important if your goal is to open up to others.
You won’t be talking about yourself to be vulnerable, you’re simply allowing others to peer into your life. This is what friends do. If you want to befriend others, this is something you need to be willing to do.
You also need to be trusting and confident to open up. You’ll need to trust that others won’t use the things you share with them against you and you need to be confident enough to open up.
Finally, you need to be honest about the things you open up. You shouldn’t make things up simply to have the image of someone who’s capable of opening up. Be truthful. Whatever it is you tell others, or show to other people, make sure those things are as truthful as possible.
Ask others about their lives
From now on, start asking others about their lives. Make conversation and ask questions about someone else’s past. A lot of people are very comfortable opening up as long as you approach them properly.
You can do this and it will provide you with two things. One, you’re allowing the possibility of a friendship to blossom. Second, you’re seeing how other people open up to others. You can observe and see they approach this so you can learn and apply it to yourself.
As a bonus, doing this will also help convince you that it’s not too bad to open up to people. If others can do it easily, so can you.
Only open up when asked or when it’s relevant
Another thing you can always keep in mind so that opening up becomes easier for you from now on is to only open up when you’re asked or when it’s relevant. Always remember that you don’t always need to open up when interacting with someone. A lot of conversations can simply be light-hearted, at least, in the beginning.
Never open up revealing and personal things when it is unwarranted. You don’t need to bring those things up if you’re not asked or if that’s not the topic of conversation. However, you will need to be ready whenever you do get asked or when it’s relevant to the topic at hand.
An example of the second opportunity is when you’re trying to be empathetic with someone. If someone is going through a tough time and you know exactly what they’re going through, you’ll need to open up to let them know you can relate to them. You’re revealing things about yourself to them so you can help them. You’re opening up because it’s relevant to the situation at hand.
Don’t share things that are too revealing and personal right away
When opening up to others, you don’t need to share things that are too personal immediately. You must simply allow yourself to open up enough that others can truly see you.
You don’t have to talk about the most personal things from your past. You don’t need to talk about some of the most traumatic moments in your life. When you’re just meeting someone, you can simply talk about casual, yet somewhat personal things. This includes but isn’t limited to your dreams, goals, what made you want to be the person you are now, etc.
Only start to share the most personal things when you really get comfortable with someone. This is for when you start to get really close with someone. However, if you’re just getting to know somebody, you have to see this as a boundary.
Embrace yourself
You won’t be able to properly open up if you don’t fully embrace who you are. Stop being ashamed of who you are. More importantly, if it applies to you, stop hating yourself for whatever reason.
See your strengths and weaknesses, acknowledge them, and know what you can do about them. For your strengths, know how you can use them to your advantage. Know how you can use those things to build relationships with others. For your weaknesses, don’t see them as things you can use to hate yourself. Instead, see them as things you can work on to become better as a person.
Once you start embracing yourself, you’ll start to find it easier to open up to people.
Take your time to get comfortable with it
As mentioned earlier, this process will not happen immediately. You won’t start getting comfortable with opening up overnight. This process can take a while. It can take weeks, it may even take months. That said, take your time. There’s no need to rush this process.
If you’re not comfortable with opening up to strangers just yet, don’t force yourself. You might just end up fumbling or saying the wrong things. It’s way better for you if you only do this once you’re already comfortable with the process.
Patience is another factor that needs to come into play here. Don’t get frustrated if progress doesn’t happen right away. Remain patient and keep being persistent.
See a professional
If you believe that your situation is more serious than this, see a professional instead. That’s the best course of action for you. Your problems and issues may stem from something deeper than just simple social problems. If this is the case for you, an article or two will, unfortunately, not be able to fix things for you.
Seek professional help as soon as possible. A professional psychiatrist and psychologist will be able to curate the proper things tailored exactly to what you need. Once you finally have everything you need from them, you can return to this article so that you can incorporate it into the things you need to do.
Improve your conversational skills
Your conversation skills are one of the major social skills you need to consider if you want to learn how to open up to people. You need to know how to properly voice out your thoughts. You need to be understandable and coherent. These are just two of the many traits you need to adapt if you want to improve your conversational skills.
The topic around the art of conversation is massive and there are a lot of things you need to study for this. Considering this, this article won’t be able to teach you everything you need to know about conversation skills. Be sure to refer to our site as we have an entire category that’s revolved around this social skill alone.
Force yourself to believe that others care about your stories
Another thing that can hinder you from opening up to others is you may believe that they don’t care about your stories. A lot of people definitely care about your stories. From now on, you need to stop thinking otherwise. This thought will toxify your mind and will lead you to have worse social anxieties in the future.
Force yourself to believe that others care about your stories. A lot of people, especially those who are socially adept and interested in expanding their social lives, are more than willing to get to know other people. In return, be sure that you’re able to tell stories properly, which brings me to my next point…
Be better at telling stories
Practice how to tell your stories more properly and other people will listen to you more intently. In a lot of cases, people show disinterest not because they simply don’t care about what you’re saying, but because the way you tell your stories just doesn’t capture their attention.
The best way to be better at telling stories is to practice them. Know exactly where your stories are leading towards and construct your words in such a way that they lead up to that. Tell stories to yourself, in front of a mirror if you need to.
You can also watch stand-up comedians, motivational speakers, and talk show hosts to gather inspiration. These people are phenomenal storytellers. They’re able to construct their stories in such a way that it grabs your attention from the very beginning. If you can emulate how they tell their stories, you can grab anyone’s attention with yours.
Find like-minded people
You can also start surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals so that you’ll be able to open up to people much more easily. When this is the situation you can make happen for yourself, at least the people you’ll be opening up to are those who can relate to you much more easily.
On top of that, it will also make you feel more comfortable. If you know the person you’re talking to shares your beliefs, opinions, and interests, among many others, you’ll feel more at ease talking to them.
You can find like-minded people by joining clubs and groups centered around an interest of yours. A lot of your co-workers may also be very similar to you. Be sure to take advantage of this.
Why It’s Good To Open Up To People
Now that you know how to make it easier for you to open up to people, knowing why it’s good to do this will motivate you even more. At this point, you must already know exactly why it’s good for you to open up to people, but the following will cement that idea into your mind.
It makes you more relatable
Others will never be able to determine whether or not they can relate to you if you don’t open up to them. That being said, open up and you’ll give others the opportunity to relate to you.
This is especially true if you talk about the problems that you have. Chances are, a lot of people will be able to relate to those problems. They’ll know exactly what you’re going through and how you’re feeling. They might even give you some advice or two on how to deal with those problems.
It allows others to get to know you better
On top of helping you become more relatable, opening up to people will also help others get to know you better. This helps them decide whether or not they want to be your friend. A lot of people don’t care about second-guessing, they want to see things for themselves. Why have them make assumptions about who you are when you can show them outright?
It helps boost your confidence
Opening up to people will also do you great favors in regards to your confidence. If you can talk about who you are, both the positives and the negatives, you can connect with others and you’re unburdening yourself of the things you used to bottle up inside. You’ll feel significantly better and you’ll make more connections.
All of this will ultimately lead you to become more confident. The more people you’ll meet, the more comfortable you’ll be with the notion of socializing. The more things you share, the more you’ll feel better about yourself.
It encourages them to open up to you
People will feel highly obligated to open up to you after you open up to them. They’ll feel very comfortable, and even compelled to return the favor by sharing things about themselves as well.
Once you have this interaction with somebody, you’ll have officially created the possibility of a friendship. That’s how powerful it is to simply open up to people. The level of intimacy and personality it can bring to interactions is something you shouldn’t ignore anymore.
It does wonders for your mental health
Opening up to other people will also make your mental health get better. Instead of keeping everything inside, making them fester and boil up, you’re releasing them out there. You’re also inadvertently making your listeners your support system. The people you’ll be opening up to will be more than willing to give you advice.
It’s very difficult and painful to keep a problem inside. To have that just sit in your head, telling no one else, and getting no support from other people. It’s a terrible thing. It will also damage your mental health the longer you keep it bottled up inside.
It greatly improves your social life
Combine everything listed above and you arrive at the ultimate reason why you should open up to people from now on. Opening up to others will greatly improve your social life. It boosts your confidence, it allows you to connect with others better, and it improves your mental health. Because of all of these benefits, you’ll also be able to approach other individuals in a more positive manner.
This is why it is very important that you start fixing this problem right now. The longer you put it off, the longer you’re allowing yourself to be isolated and detached from others. You won’t be able to make new friends or even keep the ones you already have.
Opening up to others is a very major aspect of socializing, as you can now surmise. Be sure to remember this. This is what should motivate you to be better at this, and remain patient throughout this whole process.
Be More Socially Adept To Open Up To People
Help yourself become more comfortable with this process much faster by being more socially adept. Learn more social skills and speak with more people. The more social skills you acquire, the more comfortable you’ll be in any social setting. Then, you’ll find it easier to open up to others.
Once you’re done internalizing this article, be sure to also check out the other articles we have on the site. There is a lot of material here you can use to improve your social skills. Check back time and time again as we also add more articles whenever we can.
Make this a habit from now on. Study up and gradually improve your social skills. Read my book. In time, everything you’ll have learned will build up inside you. You’ll then realize that you’re way more socially skilled than you once were. Once that happens, you’ll also realize that it’s way easier to open up to people. That day will come. All you need to do is to put up the work necessary to get there.