For someone who struggles with shyness or social anxieties, or just wishes to get better at meeting and connecting with people, the power of good eye contact can not be underestimated.
Good eye contact is an important factor in peoples first impression of you. It can make you come across as likeable, positive, strong, confident, or shifty, creepy, insecure. Just pay attention to how you react to peoples (lack of) eye contact the next time you 're out and meet people.
The purpose of this article is to outline a few exercises that will particularly help you if you have problems establishing or holding eye contact, or just feel you want to learn to appear more confident and approachable.
Improving eye contact is best done through "gradual exposure",
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Allow yourself to look away as soon as you feel uncomfortable.
Make a note of how many you manage to meet the eyes of, and more importantly: what you feel. Pay special attention to how strong your resistance is to keeping eye contact longer, and roughly how long you manage to keep it. Don 't force it.
Determine a minimum number of people you might be able to get eye contact with in the time allotted, and how long you expect to be able to keep eye contact consistently (don 't exaggerate).
Second and subsequent times, go out and get eye contact with roughly the number of people in question for the amount of time you have decided you can handle each.
Of course there will be variations - the weather might be worse and there might be fewer people around etc. But do your best not to make excuses.
Keep notes as before, and try to exceed the amount of time you keep eye contact with at least one second per person (of course assuming they don 't break eye contact first).
A common objection to this is "but if I keep eye contact for X seconds" it will seem creepy. This is an excuse created by your fears. Remember that if you keep eye contact for whatever amount of time, they are keeping eye contact for the same amount of