The social skills were key. Without them I wouldn't have recognized the negativity of my old friends or the positivity of my new friends. Before that I couldn't

The social skills were key. Without them I wouldn't have recognized the negativity of my old friends or the positivity of my new friends. Before that I couldn't even recognize the bad state my friends were putting me in. Also, they enabled me to conciously make a good impression on my new friends. I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, I read Introvert Advantage, both of which were informative. But mostly I watched a lot of videos by Lance Mason. He has a background as an engineer, so he was able to express social concepts in a way that made a lot of sense to me.