Being able to just simply move on from something as easily.
I wish it didn’t take me so long to understand things that other people seem to get easily.
I wish I could just live in the present without having to completely fake a personality to hide the fact I don’t have one.
I wish I could have a baseline functional understanding of human interaction & relationships.
As someone who transitioned from a deeply introverted anxious young adult with a persistent stammer, to a relatively outgoing person who is capable of clear communication, the secret is caring less and forgetting that you exist.
There are steps though to get there:
- Look at a person. De-age them back to when they were a shy or excited or inquisite toddler. That’s their base model. Anything built on that is just extra wisdom or fluff or bluster.
- Talk to people like you would an innocent child, just use more grownup words.
- Cheat questions:
- “How was your day today” “what did you get up to” “hows your upcoming week looking”
- Cheat responses:
- “nice!” “well done!” “oh damn”
- Cheat moves:
- Eye contact. Look at people in the eye, then look away when describing something, then look them in the eye again.
- Nodding: Make nodding gestures as they respond to you
- Hands: Gesture with your hands when you describe something.
- Smile: You don’t need to smile, but it helps. You can look away when you do it.
- Listening helps but is top-tier and isn’t a requirement
- Learn to build connections through topics though. If they’re talking about cats, remember your dog.
- Signal it’s your turn: I suck at this and wait for gaps, which usually means I forget what I wanted to say, but you can signal in other ways
- Yes: Finger gun and a nod whilst inhaling
- No: Polite laugh and a head shake whilst exhaling
- Random: if someone won’t stop, they need to be stopped. Just jump in with your crab story, who cares.
This should hopefully get you along the way to forgetting that you exist in a conversation, and it should become second nature after a while.
People who are very good at instruments. I wish I just knew guitar to be able to shred on demand, but I just could not put in the time and effort to get there myself.
Not being anxious about almost everything.
Sleep instantly and without interruption
What up insomnia gang? Coming to you love from the bed at 6 AM. Too late to fall back asleep, too early to get up.
i want to be able to make easy fun conversation
Don’t compare your blooper reel with other people’s highlights.
Also, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie split up about twenty years ago and that relationship is still creating drama
Do you mean Pitt and Jennifer Aniston? The Brangelina split was in 2019.
My favorite Jolie story.
Lauren Ridloff is deaf. She was having problems with her cues in ‘The Eternals.’ Jolie told the director to use a laser pointer and then clean it up in post-production.
Also, they had to use her own kid in Maleficent because she was scaring all the other children.
The ability to utilize my passion and drive to do things.
Just absorbing knowledge is starting to be a drag.
Pretending to give a shit when I don’t
It’s literally how I make all my money.
Teach me your secrets!
Which half are you having trouble with? The apathy, or the pretense?
The pretense. I do not have a good poker face.
You don’t want a poker face! You want to be very expressive. But voice is even more important. Pitch voice soft and a little low, and always decreasing at the end of a sentence, the opposite of asking a question. Like a kind parent talking to a tired toddler or particularly stupid dog.
You’re trying to slip information into the person at a subconscious level, and the information you want to slip in is that you, the speaker, are trustworthy and will take care of them. It’s much easier to do this than to actually figure out and fix whatever bullshit problem they’ve created for themselves.
Note that this is not effective on people you see everyday, as they will eventually realize you didn’t do anything to actually help them. But for one-offs, work associates-of-associates, clients you’re not the sole contact for, and the more distant sort of relative, it works pretty well.
That’s pretty hilarious and I don’t doubt it’s efficacy!
I’ll admit my trouble with these situations is I can’t help but care about people or fixing things, often to save them from themselves as if they’re, like you said, toddlers.
I start to resent being taken advantage of though. It’s tough. :(
So you’re also struggling with the apathy part, huh? For me, waiting tables, I just don’t think of the guests as fully human. They come in hungry and I make sure they leave happy. Giving them a sense of assurance is a part of that, but as soon as they’re out the door they cease to exist.
As to resentment, you shouldn’t be resentful of something you choose to do, or to put it another way, you shouldn’t choose things to do that harm your own well-being.
It takes too much energy to have a good poker face, I’d rather just stay grumpy.
Not a common ability but some people have photographic memory.
I can’t remember shit. Photographic memory would be life changing.
Your wish has been granted! You will now keenly remember old photographs 👍
🙃
As someone with ADHD. My brain remembering things would be a game changer.
I wish I could form intimate relationships.
Ability to feel slightly deeper while watching emotional films
To get what I want by just being cute. Like little kids or cute girls. Or to be automatically excluded from manual labor/heavy lifting for the same reason.
If you’re a healthy boy, the moment you become a teenager is the moment you’re just expected to be performing manual labor or other hot, sweaty activities. At least in the US 🤷
Have you considered trying to dress cute or paint your nails?
It’d be ineffective and in fact, decrease the likelihood of obtaining that default assumption of innocence that cuteness provides. It’d be like tying a pink ribbon to the tail of a tiger. The ribbon itself would be cute but the tiger would still be viewed as a dangerous predator.
Might help with getting out of manual labor though 🤔 🤣
Having the ability to see images in my mind. Sounds like a cool ability, not sure if it would be a curse though.
Sounds like you have aphantasia. Wish more research was done on it, I only learned about it when I was randomly talking with my friends and one of them said they couldn’t imagine an image.
I’m stuck with the ability to imagine complete scenes but not be able to draw what I imagine haha
One time I did mushrooms and thought about an apple and I kinda saw it and was amazed. I’ve never been able to do it again though
I was in hospital earlier in the year for surgery, they gave me ketamine afterwards…started seeing shit.
It was weird.
Hated it for the dissociative effect; but the seeing shit for a few hours after was strange, but ok.
