Taking the First Step

As I've mentioned many times before, I pride myself on being the type of person that "put's myself out there," and likes to instigate positive interactions. I'm all about being social and I think too many people miss out on great opportunities to meet wonderful people by being too scared to break the ice.

I'm usually a pretty good ice breaker (although sometimes I forgo the ice-pick and skip straight to the jackhammer).

In the same sense, a lot of people lose touch with good friends when one of them moves away. In general, I'm pretty good about keeping in touch with my friends. I'm usually not shy about calling to chat and catch up after a long silence.

A lot of people get hurt when someone doesn't call for awhile. Then, they get this attitude of "why should I be the one who calls?!?" When an old friend doesn't call me for a long time, I generally not offended because I know that most people have this inherent reluctance to be the one to step up, put themselves out there and make the call (either that, or I'm just not getting the hint that they don't want to talk to me :)

In fact, yesterday was a reminder to myself that even I have this reluctance sometimes. TWO friends called me, each of whom I hadn't spoken with in about a year, yesterday and it was awesome catching up!

I had been in contact with both via email, but phone conversations are so much more personal and intimate. I thought about these phone calls and realized that I probably would not have made either call had Kelly and Nikki not stepped up and called me.

Here's how I envisioned the conversation would've started had I made the call:

Kelly/Nikki: Hello?
Me: Hey Kelly! It's Arun!
Kelly/Nikki: Arun?....Oh.....(akward silence)...hi...uh..what's up?

Not exactly the smoothest interaction. Me being one who likes to demonstrate high levels of smoothness chickened out on calling each of them for the risk of an akward conversation.

Lesson learned...I need to put myself out there and take the first step EVEN MORE! For every ten great conversations that could ensue by taking the first step, I risk having MAYBE one akward one? Well worth the risk.

Moral of the day: Don't be a chicken. Take the first step at doing anything with a decent probability of a positive outcome even if it means putting yourself out there. If you're worried about the possibility of not coming off too smooth, just remember....chickens are not very smooth :)