Thank you Will.
There are a lot of useful information in your post.
It sounds like you are not fully relaxed or present when you are talking to people. Perhaps you are feeling reactive to them or to some outcome, and it makes you feel overwhelmed trying to do lots of things at once.
It's also very easy when you're sharing eye contact with someone, especially when you are not present and self-aware, to suddenly feel disturbed inside yourself for no clear reason, and to feel like the other person can 'see' this negative emotion. And it creates a negative feedback loop that produces a sense of needing to exert strong self-control to the point where it's hard to concentrate on the conversation.
And another thing with eye contact is that, especially if you have any anxiety, and again when you are not present and self-aware, it can induce a hypnotic state of hyperalertness that makes you very reactive to them (and, because they sense this, it makes them less reactive and attentive to what you express, and feeling very authoritative).
I agree. Thursday I ate at a restaurant with an oldish friend and I was very relax and present, just enjoying the moment, the discussion and the food. And my eyes contact was quite good I think.
Yesterday afternoon I hang out with a guy that could turn out to be a developping friendship, and he was better at game than me and a kind of Youtube celebrity. So I attached more outcome to this interaction than to the one with my older friend at the restaurant. I still think the whole interaction with this potential new friend was quite good and enjoyable for both of us. I just noticed that my eyes contact was not as good as I was hoping for, and that I struggled with the stuff I described in my OP.
So I can see how a lack of presence and relaxation have an impact on eyes contact. But at the same time, this seems difficult to be always present and relaxed.
For example, to make things schematic in order to emphasis the point I am trying to make, if Elon Musk call you "Hey dude, do you wanna hang out this afternoon?", I assume this is going to be difficult to not think before and during the interaction "omg I hope he'll like me!".
Are you able to be fully present and relax regardless of the objective outcome of a social interaction? Because some (many?) social interactions really do have outcomes attached to them.
The foundation of all of these things is effectively lack of state control, which requires being self-aware and not reacting to things (essentially what meditation is for).
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When you are not self-aware, when you are not aware of what is going on inside your body, what anchors your emotions and attention? Nothing. Your perception of reality can be easily commandeered by emotions produced by things going on around you, and trying to maintain focus makes you feel taxed and lacking in energy because you are always wrestling with the invasion of external influence.
This is why you lose focus when you hold eye contact, because you feel like you need to be 'ready' for something coming in, rather than what is going out.
This is why it's essential for a man to have command of both the analytical and the sensual (that is, the body and the emotions, especially in terms of their physical effects) to be really effective with people. The foundation of being in command of the sensual is awareness of the body, which I think is best practiced with meditation.
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So in short, manage your body and you will manage your mind.
I am doing TRE since the month of September and I see a lot of progress with the tremoring unlocking progressively in different part of my body. Recently I have had the tremoring starts in my head and face.
I have also recnently start lessons of Alexander technique, which is something really outstanding to improve posture and movements, and progressively make disappear tension patterns in the body (I only did two lessons as of today, but I can already see the benefits).
Both the TRE and Alexander technique instructors told me that I have a lot of tensions in my shoulders and my face. My dentist also told me that my teeth were wearing out due to too much tension in my jaws.
So I have definetly too much tension on my body, but I am working on it, and things got a lot better. I will pass on meditation for now, because I don't want to implement too much things at the same time (I am also doing voice work). I will think about meditation once I have reaped all the benefits of TRE and Alexander technique.
One interesting thing about being very relaxed and 'in your body', something I've experienced numerous times in daygame, is that I can completely focus on body language and enjoying her physicality while she is talking, and then when it's time to respond, I can 'play back' what she said - as if my mind had been recording it. This does not happen if I am anxious - my short term memory becomes chaotic and I need to focus on listening to be able to respond well.
And because I am relaxed, I don't need to 'do something' while I am formulating a response except standing there completely relaxed looking into her eyes. Sometimes even when I have a response I keep the pause going until her body starts reacting to the tension, and then I bring her back gently into the conversation.
Yeah I notice that I have a very superficial awareness of the body language of girls during daygame interactions. I just notice whether she has open body language or not, and whether this means that she wants to continue the interaction or not.
I know a guy who has an outstanding level of sensual awareness, that, when looking at my interactions, was able to describe to me the personnality of the girls based of their body language when they were talking to me. I am nowhere near that level of awareness and sensibility, because I am too much focused on the actual content of the conversation.
