Does Meditation Make You More Social?

The motivations people have for starting meditations differ, and while it’s good to have a goal with the meditation, it should never be something you depend on to meditate, since true meditation helps you let go of expectations. 

When it comes to being social, some may wonder if meditation will help their social life, especially those who tend to be nervous around other people. It’s quite common, because the idea of stepping out of the comfort zone doesn’t sound appealing. 

Meditation can help you become more social, if you want it to. If you are an introvert who prefers to stay by yourself, meditation can help you there as well by making you enjoy your own company more. 

Your treatment of others will often mirror the treatment you give yourself, so if you understand yourself well based on what you’ve gotten to know through meditation or any other means that let you connect with yourself, forming connections with others becomes easier. 

It creates a domino effect so socializing goes from being this foreign thing to you to something you do daily without giving it any second thought. 

Some of the most successful people, at least in the workplace, are often highly emotionally intelligent, which helps them build relationships. For instance, in a corporate environment, it’s common to see someone in a high place on the hierarchy because of their social skills. 

Enjoying Your Own Company

Do you enjoy being around yourself or spending time by yourself? A lot of introverts do, but this can be a major benefit when it comes to your social life. While you may enjoy interaction with others, you feel equally as good being by yourself. 

At this point, you’ve reached a balance, a sweet spot where no matter where you’re put, you’re in a good position because you’ve learned to conquer the peace inside you. To see positive changes around you, it all starts with inner work. 

Meditation helps you listen to your own thoughts without judgment, and apply this to your relationships. 

The more accepting you are of others, the more accepting they’re likely to be with you, and if they’re not, then they weren’t relationships that were worth building in the first place. 

There’s a difference between being social because of enjoyment and being social because you don’t want to end up alone. 

But I firmly believe that the more you are able to enjoy your own company, something you can learn by meditating as you’re in silence with yourself and your thoughts, the more you’re able to appreciate social events with others. 

Now, while meditation can make you more social, it doesn’t have to. You can perfectly enjoy your own company without ever feeling the need that you’re missing out because you don’t happen to enjoy social interactions. 

A lot of individuals prefer to be by themselves and meditation can magnify that enjoyment. 

However, it’s common for meditators to have a thinking in the lines of “If I’m okay with myself, I want to spread my happiness to others, since that gives me joy” as in that being the next step after you do the inner works.

Becoming a Better Listener

By the very nature of meditation, you become a listener and you allow thoughts to flow. This may be something new to you, but someone that’s characterized for being able to build several high-quality relationships, and being someone people enjoy spending time with, you often see someone that’s a good listener. 

Meditation teaches you that life is a journey where you can learn more than you thought possible by just learning to listen. You’ve listened to yourself up until this point and learned to accept yourself for who you are, only to then change the things you’re unhappy about. 

People appreciate being listened to, for some, it feels therapeutic as people sometimes let off things that don’t keep them at ease since it’s shredding weight off their shoulders, much like the act of meditation is the act of shredding off stress and anxiety. 

But because you’ve learned to conquer these parts about yourself, should you want to help others, it becomes easier. 

With meditation, you become more empathic. But that’s not to say that you should become this person that carries others’ emotional baggage at your own expense, you’re simply able to understand people better, which in turn forms a deeper emotional bond with them, assuming they’re the right people and they’re not in it to exploit you. 

Even if you become less controlled by emotions through meditation, you’re better able to handle them and pick up on when someone is using you as an emotional punching bag or if they genuinely want to create a connection with you after you show them you’re a good listener. 

Many times, it doesn’t take much to become a good listener, simply hearing out their problems and showing interest in what they have to say is enough to form strong emotional bonds. 

You often don’t even need to say much for the other person to appreciate your company. Just being there, just like you’re also “being there” while meditating. 

Forming The Right Connections

Earlier I talked about the motivations for being social. If you’re being social for the sake of not being alone, you’re giving yourself a harder time to form genuine connections. The more okay you are with being alone and enjoying it, the less attached you become to others. 

Without connecting with yourself at first, you could be attached to the wrong type of people because you haven’t learned to be comfortable with yourself and make a distinction between high-quality friendships and low-quality friendships. 

After practicing meditation for a while, you’re better able to connect with people and understand them. But that implies filtering who’s right and who’s wrong for your life. 

Not everyone has good intentions and there are “energy suckers” that suppose emotional baggage to your life, take advantage of your ability to listen to them but won’t ever reciprocate. 

Now, while your relationship with others shouldn’t be transactional, it helps to surround yourself with like-minded people. 

You tend to pick up on the energy of your group. It’s better to form a social circle that’s small but of good quality than a big social circle where those you seemingly formed a bond with can’t even remember your name. 

Being Present and Being Social

The more present you are, the easier it is to be social. 

If you’re constantly bothered by what’s gonna happen and negatively anticipate things or are too attached to the past, you can be as social as you want but you may not enjoy the interaction as much as you would if you were to be present. 

Others can pick up on your energy, thereby, it’s common to categorize someone as giving good or bad vibes. When you’re present, stress and social anxiety are absent. 

It’s like tackling a problem that was there through its root cause. It’s like removing a burden that was keeping you from socializing in the first place. 

Now, everyone goes through stuff and in no way am I suggesting that we should embrace toxic positivity and pretend to be happy if we’re not, honesty comes first when building connections and being social, but being less troubled by social anxiety makes the process a whole lot easier.