I was only awkward and shy around the people I wanted to be confident around, such as women that were more beautiful than other women, and had high and predictable consensus around that coveted level of attractiveness (as opposed to something more subjective).
What helped me was realizing that everyone is going through something similar in new situations.
The attractive person has the same anxieties as the unattractive person. The same random allocation of life issues, bad experiences, good experiences.
This is somewhat tangential, but helped me: its also a reinforcing reason to prioritize using energy on primarily the most visually and sexually attractive people - which was where the awkwardness could materialize - because people that only can rely on convincing you they have "a nice personality" or "attractive on the inside" are eclipsed or totally obscured by people that are also attractive on the outside because hot people can also be hot on the inside.
Basically, the internal and mental stuff is the same, so after realizing that, its easier to not be led astray if you are interested in something more coveted by more people.
As some others wrote, improving yourself helps a lot, posture, hygiene, living arrangement (better part of town, new town). How that factors into my note, yeah you still have to attract the other people and a lot of that involves gender neutral tweaks. If you live in a coveted and also convenient part of town, it conveys enough and you have more opportunities to attract people to things because of how towns are organized.
What helped me was realizing that everyone is going through something similar in new situations.
The attractive person has the same anxieties as the unattractive person. The same random allocation of life issues, bad experiences, good experiences.
This is somewhat tangential, but helped me: its also a reinforcing reason to prioritize using energy on primarily the most visually and sexually attractive people - which was where the awkwardness could materialize - because people that only can rely on convincing you they have "a nice personality" or "attractive on the inside" are eclipsed or totally obscured by people that are also attractive on the outside because hot people can also be hot on the inside.
Basically, the internal and mental stuff is the same, so after realizing that, its easier to not be led astray if you are interested in something more coveted by more people.
As some others wrote, improving yourself helps a lot, posture, hygiene, living arrangement (better part of town, new town). How that factors into my note, yeah you still have to attract the other people and a lot of that involves gender neutral tweaks. If you live in a coveted and also convenient part of town, it conveys enough and you have more opportunities to attract people to things because of how towns are organized.