This article featured in the Daily Telegraph and is republished with permission.
Nick Bendel used to suffer such crippling social anxiety he didn’t like to leave the house. And if he had to go to an event where he didn’t know anyone, he would feel physically sick, and spend a lot of time in the bathroom just to have some space. Until he made a decision that changed everything.
The shy, self-confessed introvert challenged himself to have lunch with 500 strangers. And he did. One by one, he opened himself up to new people, new experiences, new opportunities. Every conversation helped, and today he is a different person. “It definitely changed me,” the Cammeray 47-year-old tells Sydney Weekend. “It’s kind of like filling a bathtub one drop at a time – you don’t notice the water level rising until it’s risen a significant amount, and then you look at it and you’re like, ‘oh, wow, there’s a big change’ – and the same thing happened with me. It wasn’t until I’d had a few hundred lunches that I was really able to notice myself changing. “Some of the changes were obvious, like I really improved my social skills, but some of them were less obvious. “I became a lot more emotionally open, and also a lot more open-minded and a lot more self-aware. “It took me a few years before I really registered those changes in myself. “But when you learn about other people, you learn about yourself, so by the end of it, I had a much better understanding of people and human behaviour, and along the way, I think that just couldn’t help but make me more self-aware.”
Bendel was always naturally on the quiet side, even growing up. He preferred to listen rather than talk, and admits that for much of his life he was emotionally closed. “But without realising that I was closed,” he explains. “And so many of the people I would have lunch with would really open up to me and share incredibly personal things, and then I’d get home, and think, first, thank you to that person for sharing, but then also, I would feel almost guilty because I hadn’t really given them anything in return, and, bit by bit, I began to realise I am emotionally closed and I need to be more open.
“But it’s hard to be more open than you feel comfortable being because it involves some vulnerability. “So it was a really gradual process where I had to often force myself to become more open and it happened like a millimetre at a time. “But I did notice that by the end, I was significantly more emotionally open and willing to discuss my emotions and talk about my insecurities than I had been at the start and that was a really helpful self-development process. “So many of us are scared to be honest and real and it can be hard.” Despite being an introvert in his younger years, Bendel says the pressure of high school and university parties made him increasingly anti-social.
“I always got on well with people so I had a lot of friends – I wasn’t sitting in the corner on my own, but I did notice that I felt I could feel uncomfortable around groups of people, and especially if there were people I didn’t know,” he admits. “And this really became noticeable in uni where I started getting invited to parties and trying to fit in and make friends, and I noticed that I would feel really uncomfortable if I would go to a party and I didn’t know anyone. “And I would feel a lot of pressure if I was talking to someone new that I had to come up with something clever or funny or interesting to say, and if I didn’t, then the interaction wasn’t going to work, so it felt like there was a lot of pressure on me in those situations.
“I was on the quiet and shy side when I was a child and a teenager and then a young adult and suddenly – up until I started having these lunches, I much preferred to be on my own and to stay at home with a cup of tea and a good book than to go out and mix with others.” Bendel isn’t alone.
According to Beyond Blue, around 11 per cent of Australians experience social anxiety during their lifetime and seven per cent experience social anxiety in any 12-month period. The Australian Psychological Society says people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) struggle with social situations including meeting new people, public speaking or even eating or drinking in public. Underlying this anxiety is a fear of negative judgment and rejection by others. Coupled with that, an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Report states that in 2024, an estimated 15 per cent of Australians were experiencing loneliness, with rates spiking due to the pandemic.
The most pronounced increase in the rate of loneliness was seen for young people aged 15-24, increasing from 13 per cent in 2019 to 18 per cent in 2020 and 2021. It’s the younger generation we have to worry about, warns Bendel. “I’m 47 and I don’t have kids, but I really do feel sorry – or maybe concern – for people at school today, because I think it’s going to be harder for them than it is for us, because they’ve grown up as digital natives,” he says.
“They’re so connected to technology and the way you communicate with people is you send an online message or an email or a text, and they haven’t practised human interaction in the way we had to when we were children. “So with AI, having knowledge isn’t going to be the advantage that it was in the past, and social skills are going to be a key differentiator, and I just could not agree more. “I think knowledge and technical knowledge will still be important, but we can now ask AI to give us all this knowledge and so I think the key point of difference is going to be who you know and your ability to build relationships and maintain relationships and show empathy and understand people and learn from them.
“Every generation has its struggles to deal with and I feel children today, one of the struggles they’re going to deal with is having to learn these social skills – maybe the hard way. “We had to learn them – we didn’t have the technology they did, and some of them won’t be willing to learn those social skills because it will feel daunting, and I think they’re going to struggle in the workplace and maybe in professional life as well. “It is sad,” he says of the addictive pull to technology for younger generations. “For kids to have an advantage in the future, they need to get better at having these conversations and practising social skills, and we adults need to model that behaviour better.”
When he first started approaching strangers to have lunch with him – mostly on LinkedIn – some 90 per cent of potential friends didn’t respond. But their reluctance didn’t deter him – if anything, he understood it. “I never had any critical views of people who didn’t reply because if someone had contacted me in my previous life to invite me to lunch, I would have said, ‘Of course I’m not going to meet you for lunch.’ “Like why would I meet a stranger for lunch? “That would be torture. “And plus, you never know, maybe the person was interested but they were busy or they thought I was going to scam them or try to sell them something. “But if people who are, say, 40 plus who grew up in a different environment … if we have the social skills but we’re not willing to use them, what sort of example are we setting for the younger generation?”
But people came, and lunch they did. And things started to finally make sense. “So I can remember one really early lunch – this was one of my first 10 lunches, where the person was very smart,” Bendel explains. “He had quite a bit of success in his career and I felt flattered and surprised that he wanted to meet me, and he was speaking in a very complimentary way about what I was doing and my leadership skills in organising this.
“And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, you’re just flattering me, you surely can’t mean any of this.’ But then I started meeting other people from different walks of life who started saying similar things and eventually after I heard it enough times, I thought, ‘Oh well I guess it must be true then.’ “And that led me to reflect back on some of those earlier lunches where I’d received those compliments that I had been unwilling to accept because it went against the image I had of myself, so that was a bit of a turning point – realising that I’d taken a step beyond my old identity, and without even realising it, stepped up in a way that I didn’t even realise. “Once you realise that people are looking at you differently, it changes the way you think about yourself.”
Despite gaining confidence and self-esteem, some things haven’t changed though. “I still really like to be at home with a cup of tea and a good book, that still makes me happy, but now I don’t feel scared going to a party or a work event or a networking event where I don’t know anyone, and I actually now feel comfortable walking up to complete strangers and talking,” he continues. “And part of the reason is, I know that I actually don’t have to say anything clever or witty or smart – it’s enough just to walk up to someone and say, ‘Hey, do you mind if I join you’ or ‘My name’s Nick, what’s your name?’
“Another realisation that’s helped is, I used to think that if I was in that room and I was having these nerves and insecurities, that it was just me – I’d look at everyone else and everyone else would look so composed and confident. “But what I now realise is a lot of people in that room, probably a majority of them, are feeling nervous and anxious as well, and they’re probably looking at me thinking, ‘Look at that guy, he looks so confident, I wish I could be like him.’ And once you realise that, it does make it a lot easier just to walk up to someone and say hello. I definitely know it’s daunting to have insecurities and to maybe question your social skills and your ability to interact around people and I can definitely relate to that – it’s a lot more common than a lot of people realise once you start putting yourself out there and getting uncomfortable. “I think people will be surprised by how quickly they develop and also how positively other people respond.”
Bendel says his 500 lunches were the best – and most transformative – thing he’s ever done in his life. So – why would he stop? “There was part of me that felt really happy that I’d achieved this goal and made it to the end, it had taken six years and consumed a lot of my life,” he says. “But this feeling of sadness passed over me. “It felt like this incredible life changing adventure that had given me so much pleasure and had changed my life and I would never have this again.
“It was a bittersweet feeling. But at the same time I’m continuing to have lunches with strangers because it’s the best thing I’ve ever done – and if it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, why would I stop?”
For fellow introverts on a personal development journey, he has some tips. “One of the things that holds us back is we all have insecurities, and our insecurities are so salient for us because we think about them constantly and, as a result, we assume that everyone else must be hyper aware of our insecurities,” he says. “But because we’ve all had so much practise at concealing our insecurities, most people actually don’t know that we have these insecurities and also because everyone else is focused on their own insecurities, they’re paying much less attention to us than we believe.
“And probably the final thing I’d say is, I think often in life, we tell ourselves there’s a thing I want to do, and I will do it, but first I’m going to wait until I get the confidence to do it. “But if we wait until we get the confidence, we’re going to be waiting forever because confidence comes from doing scary things – you don’t magically get confident beforehand. “It’s a bit like saying, ‘I know I’m really overweight and unfit, and I will definitely start exercising once I get fit."
Before his lunch challenge, going out with strangers was crippling. “Anxiety is the right word, and I would not want to be there at all,” he says. “And I would be thinking, ‘Okay, the time is 7pm – what’s the earliest I could leave without it looking bad, I suppose I’d probably have to wait until at least 8.30pm.’ “Then I try to find ways to reduce my social anxiety, and that might be if I spot someone familiar, I’m just going to kind of go up to them and stick to them like glue because that’s a form of safety. Or – and this is going to sound a bit embarrassing – but often at these events, I’d spend a lot of time in the bathroom, because that was a way to be by yourself.
“I used to do that a lot because that meant that I was safe and I didn’t have to worry about trying to perform. In fact, now that I think about it, I saw these events as a performance that I had to do, that I’m feeling anxious and I need to make sure people don’t think that I’m an idiot or a loser, so I need to perform, and I need to come up with clever things to say, or witty things, or interesting things, so that people will think, ‘He’s an interesting person’ – and that just only further compounded the anxiety.” But today – well today is a different story. “Now I feel completely different because I don’t feel any anxiety because I don’t feel as though … I don’t feel any need to perform because I don’t feel as though anyone is going to judge me and the reason I don’t feel as though anyone’s going to judge me is no one cares about me – they’re all just wrapped up in their own lives,” he says. “So I don’t feel any need to impress people. “Not because I’m so impressive, but just because I realise that no one cares about me. On a related note, I’ve also realised, ironically, that one of the best ways to impress people is if you walk up to someone and you say hello, they actually find that very impressive because a lot of people are scared to do that. And then if you just ask some questions about them and you give them an opportunity to talk about themselves, they’re going to feel like you’re a great conversationalist, even though, ironically, they’re doing all the talking.”
His new found confidence brought with it the courage to start his own business, involving speaking at conferences, corporate training sessions and private coaching on the subject of social courage. “I mean, doing that itself requires social courage. Anytime we start something new, and I wouldn’t have had the mindset to do any of this without the lunches,” he says.
“Now I don’t need to look on Seek for job opportunities, I can just cold call people. In the past, I would have been terrified to do that. I feel as though the reason I felt comfortable doing any of those options, including starting a new business is I had a very different mindset by the end of the lunches. I felt a lot more in control of my life than I did before and I felt a lot more proactive. I was very passive before the lunches. “I would wait for things to happen to me. But through meeting so many amazing people and so many different types of people and getting a much better understanding of myself and other people, I just became a lot more proactive and if I want something to happen, I know that I can go out there and make it happen. “So that’s the next chapter of my life.”