How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)
bakadesuyo.com
bakadesuyo.com
If you try, you will fail and feel bad, worse than if you never tried, but if you stick with it, you can overcome the failures. You'll never lose access to the skills you now have it you don't want to feel or act social, but you can when you want.
The reward for overcoming those failures, in my experience at least, is so much greater than the struggle to reach that reward, that I only wish I had started learning social and emotional skills earlier.
With perseverance, one can establish tolerance to such pain, and eventually develop the skills that help avoid it altogether.
This is probably good advice for a lot of people but it can also make things worse. I have made several attempts to "go out there and learn" and the result was always that I didn't improve but instead got more insecure. I think there needs too be some underlying strategy and not just banging your head into the same wall. A lot of people understand social skills intuitively but some don't.
I remember years ago reading a comment about someone who was terrified of failure, until they learnt to skateboard - and realised that aside from the occasionally pulled off success, everyone was failing all the time, and that they reveled in the trying.
Skateboarding is much easier. The skateboard will be there tomorrow and you can try again. With people it's different. After a few awkward encounters they don't want to deal with you anymore.
This is a terrible thing to say and admit and I half expect to be downvoted for it, but here goes anyways: I feel like a lot of people who I talk to aren't. I'm fully willing to admit this is some fault of my own, but how exactly can I reconfigure myself to be more interested in people?
Accept that everyone you will ever meet has learned or experienced something you have not learned or experienced, and you can, therefore, learn something from them. Try to draw it out of them. Over time you'll probably start becoming genuinely interested in people who don't currently fascinate you.
Also, dont get too far with just listening. People who dont reciprocate are difficult to talk to after you already said everything possible, it is nice when the other person joins the discussion.
Any reasonably average human being should have these skills as an adult. If they don't it's because something went wrong at some point, or they are on the spectrum or something like that.
1. Something catastrophic happened to me as a child that prevented the normal development of this skill. 2. As an adult, I fixed the problem by paying attention and learning through concentrated effort.
My personality, at best, seems like a consequence of these events and decisions, not a cause.
Asking questions or making remarks about easy, common and light subjects will make you start a conversation without going too deep too fast. That's why people talk about the weather, the transit, etc. It also helps if you observe the person a bit and ask about something that they clearly appreciate.
"I listen to podcasts on the way to work." "Me too! What kind of podcasts do you listen to?"
isn't about their appearance
- Your new hairstyle is amazing, who's your hairdresser, I need to go there.
- Wow, looks like you've been working out hard recently, great definition on your upper arms, can you recommend some good workouts?
- That top you are wearing, where did you get it? It's amazing, reminds me of Christian Dior's 1978 collection, you are the most stylish person in the room. Where, Harajuku, Tokyo? You went to Tokyo? Wow, when? I love Tokio, you need to tell me everything about your trip!
- That tan line ... looks like somebody was on holidays recently ... Where, Greece? That's so cool, I'm so jealous, tell me ...
It is also worthwhile reflecting on how the recipient will process a compliment: the recipient will compare your compliment with the previous compliments received. Let's illustrate this point with some social cliches:
- 17 year old conventionally beautiful girl: will typically get large amounts of compliments every day. She will have heard it all before, and have a lot of experience with gracefully handling compliments.
- 17 year old convention computer gamer boy: will typically never have been complimented on anything at all. Will have no canned graceful reply for his first compliment.
Summary: Adjust your compliments to audience expectation.
something that might make them
uncomfortable.
Flattery is like paying with counterfeit money: easy to do and effective ... as long as you don't get caught. Meaning: when Alter realises Ego is using flattery, Alter feels manipulated.
Finally, there are different cultures of complimenting. For example, in the US compliments are given freely, often and expected. In Easter Europe, in contrast, compliments tend to be given more rarely, and not usually expected. Unless you are socially savvy or a social risk taker, I recommend to adhere to the ambient conventions about how often compliments should be made.
Next time I'm teaching compilers, I'll illustrate the difference between context-free and context-sensitive language with reference to Glasgow pubs.
The author must not be from where I am (the midwest). Weather is actually interesting there, and important to most people. I remember spending hours talking about the weather, even with strangers, who became friends; it's one reason why I kept going back to the same family restaurant 30 minutes away, or why we stayed with our ferrier and feed provider.
Now that I live in the American west, weather is much less interesting, and people judge it to be small talk. It's too bad, but I guess I'll just talk to people about travel now.
Is it always about having some agenda? If so, then conversation is simply selfish nonsense, isn't it? Instead, try to be selfless, and don't give in to venal banter.