On the theme of making friends and talking to strangers, the skill you're actually developing is learning to overcome the fear of rejection.
Because it doesn't matter that you get rejected.
It matters that you took a step.
You took a bold move to act, to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.
And the more you do it, the more confident you get, the more divorced you are from the outcome of being rejected.
Of course, nobody likes to be rejected, but when you know that if somebody rejects you, the opportunity to connect with another person is just one more conversation away, just one interaction away. It actually doesn't matter that you were rejected the first time around.