Acually that is what I'm doing right now. I don't know how you are convincing yourself to become more social but I'm doing it in my imagination. I usually lie down somewhere for 30 min and make a movie of myself being who I want to be. The trick is to make it as real as possible. I've been only doing it a week and well I'm being more social. Give it a try
1you have to be able to believe you can are more socially active because
the opposite would be that you dont believe you can/are socially active
and that belief would keep you in your cage.
2 exposing yourself to desentisize is working formula we all know of and need to do more. Its also good just in the fact that anyone should always
seek to go a bit beyond their comfort zone.
3 imagining yourself vividly in your mind in social situations and youre socializing youre at ease and having fun is a powerful method often
teached in nlp.
A new idea
What about taking the bad movies of supposed horrible situations
that occured to us and when replaying the movie in your mind, make the people talk and move on fast forward and sometimes backward with funny high pitched voices(like carttons maybe).
Repeat the scene in your mind coninu playing with it and this time make it black and white and very small and move it further away in the distance.
Look at this small black and white movie with funny voices in your mind
and see how different you now feel about that experience you had.