My dad owned an auto dealership through my youth. He always had a least one "natural" salesman, who could just sell, but couldn't tell you how he did it. My dad

My dad owned an auto dealership through my youth. He always had a least one "natural" salesman, who could just sell, but couldn't tell you how he did it. My dad was not a natural, and made up for this by consciously & relentlessly practicing the behaviours and actions: active listening, root cause analysis, identify the decision maker, respecting time & financial factors, attentive customer service, building connection & relationships. He became very good, but in a completely different way. Where his star salesman sold easily my dad had to work harder, but he then sold to the same person every few years, sometimes decades, and did better on the trade-ins than the new sales. Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations. Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.