Working on your people skills will make your life better if you're currently weak in that area, but it does only go so far:
You may never becoming a super outgoing, confident, social butterfly
Why? Because you may just not be that motivated. You could be the kind of person that's perfectly happy with two very close friends, a healthy romantic relationship, some more interesting plans on the weekends, and relief from the unhappiness and low self-esteem your so-so interpersonal skills previously caused. Being the fun, charismatic guy with 50 friends may not do it for you.
I believe if you work at it, you probably could become super outgoing and confident, but I think everyone's first priority should be getting good enough to get by; to be happy with yourself and your life and eliminate your most painful problem areas.
Then, if you want, you can try to go to that next level. There are undeniably benefits to it. But you may never want to get there. Maybe it'll forever remain as a 'should', something that would logically be nice to have, but that your innate character isn't all that interested in attaining.
You'll never become socially flawless or impervious to harm
When you improve your people skills, the social world will be easier to navigate, but you'll never become totally immune to its difficulties:
- You'll never totally avoid rejection, or not care about it.
- You'll never hit it off with everyone you meet, or get everyone to like you.
- You'll never totally avoid bouts of poor self-confidence or negative thinking.
- Not every conversation will go perfectly.
- You'll never totally eliminate your nerves in certain situations.
- You'll still make mistakes and say stupid things.
- You'll still be shy or inhibited sometimes.
Also, sometimes you'll know you should do x,y,z to act more socially adept, but you won't feel like it. This comes down to being human. No one is going to follow the advice they've read all the time. You may go to a party one day and just decide to be less social, and that you can live with the consequences. Or you'll be in a bad mood and not do what you logically know is ideal. Everyone has days like this, socially or in regards to other things.
No matter how much you improve you'll still occasionally backslide into your old ways
Even if you get to a point where you can handle most social situations without a problem, you'll still occasionally do things like meet a new group of people and come off as awkward and withdrawn. Your thinking may digress into its old negative, unproductive ways. You may temporarily forget how to have a proper conversation. Your nerves may inhibit you from doing something you're usually comfortable with. It's not great when this happens, but everyone has their off days. The good news is that you generally recover from these hiccups pretty quickly.
Improving your people skills won't make your life perfect
Say someone reads this site and makes more friends and gets better at chatting to people at parties. That's not magically going to prevent them from having problems with, say, their career going off track, or their car breaking down, or a relative getting sick, or their not knowing what they want to do with their lives. Social skills are important and reach into many areas of your life, but there are other factors in play too.
And if you think about it for half a second, you'll easily come up with a few people who have great social skills, but who still have issues in their lives. A way with people doesn't guarantee you'll act in a psychologically optimal manner in other personal areas either. You could be charismatic and self-assured but still be self-destructive, flighty, unmotivated, prone to certain mental illnesses or addictions, jealous, lazy, unhappy, or directionless.
The odd person may also unconsciously assume that if they get their social skills sorted out, they'll somehow become this calm, centered self-help master overall. But things like impulse control, self-discipline, conscientiousness, and being organized are in their own category of personal effectiveness.
The causes of your social difficulties could be seen as a life-long manageable issue
Some of us just have natural tendency to be a bit inhibited and anxious. Our personalities might veer towards being a bit too uptight. I think these things will always be with us to some extent. It's kind of annoying, but everyone has some tasks that will always be a little harder for them. For some of us, those difficulties are going to be in the social realm. Our shyness or awkwardness is occasionally going to well up and sabotage us, or make us struggle harder to keep things on an even keel. Maybe on the outside we'll be indistinguishable from anyone else, but internally we'll be working a little bit more, or seemingly simple behaviors will always feel somewhat unnatural to us. We may never experience socializing in the same way as someone who's been comfortable with it since they were five, but we'll get by well enough.
I think of it as just being born unlucky in that department. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe someone else is predisposed to being socially astute and confident, but they have a bad memory, anger problems, dyslexia, alcoholism, ADHD, or something else that makes certain parts of their life challenging.
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