Conversation Openers

What do you say when you meet someone you want to talk to? In this article, we present the following openers. – Your Real Ed.

Pointers:

• In business networking, do not hog the speaker. Just spend a few mins to make a lasting impression.
• Hold your ground when you meet someone famous.
• Always remember the person’s name!
• Be interested in the person.

Opening Lines You Can Use:
• I have never seen a dress like this before. Where do you get it from?
• I am not good at opening lines
• I see that you are a Mac user
• How do you manage to find your way here?
• Where’s the toilet?
• Can I get you drink?
• You look good in pink
• How do you like so-and-so’s speech?
• Have you tried this? It’s really nice to eat. Let me get you some.
• You have a very nice tan. Do you play sports?
• You look bored. I am bored too. Lets talk.
• How’s your day so far?
• Are you supporting anyone today?
• What do you think of the latest F1 race that night?
• Have you tried the bak kut teh downstairs?
• How do you keep yourself so slim? (don’t use on girls)
• Did you get caught in the massive jam out there?
• Hey guess what, as I was walking here. There’s this shop that looks burnt.
Seems like there’s a fire this morning.
• I thought of a really clever pick up line when I saw you but right now, I just
want to say hi.
• Your watch is interesting. Is it from Swatch?
• I don’t quite agree with everything the person just said.
• What’s your bucket list?
• Did you hear about so and so?
• What’s happening?
• Can I get you a drink?
• Hey looks like the party is over here.
• Looks you are a fan of iphone
• So how did you like so and so’s speech
• How did you find last night F1’s race?
• Did you try …… from……?
• I just got asked a question… Some girl asked me about a “bucket list” Do you
know what is a bucket list?
• What do you like to do normally/ on the weekend? (Opinion question)
• I like that dress, where did you get it?
• I think the…. Makes you look very outstanding
• What kind of music do you listen to?
• Have you seen…… lately?
• Did you see the fight outside?
• Did you see the dress the girl was wearing?
• What do you think of guys who carry tissue in their pocket?
• I heard you did a trip. How was it? (research first)

How To Become An Effective Conversationalist

By Michael Lee

A person may be very knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects and updated with the latest happenings here and around the world, and yet not be very good at holding his or her end of the conversation. He or she may have a host of good tales to tell and yet provoke grunts of boredom and annoyance, instead of encouraging laughter.

What makes a good conversation? A conversation involves more than one person and demands the recognition and acceptance of the other people in the group. To be a good conversationalist, you must discuss topics that are of interest to the group, and not just to yourself. The topics you bring up should also be slanted toward your target audience. They should not be one-sided. Avoid the conversation blunders.

If you are the primary speaker, the opinions and suggestions of the other people in the group should be recognized and listened to. Just because you have the floor doesn’t mean you own it 100%. Conversation requires participation and interaction.

Below are five tips on how you can be a good conversationalist.

1. Be nice. Don’t engage in useless banter. The quality of the conversation is reduced if you start criticizing the people around you or do not welcome their input. Neither should you show the other persons that you think badly of them. Maintain a professional and congenial attitude.

2. Be tactful. Think before you speak. We often hurt other people’s feelings by not being sensitive to their circumstances. This is plain thoughtlessness.

3. Keep a positive attitude. Show the group that you are enjoying the company. Smile. Let people gather around because you have something substantial and entertaining to say, not because they are curious about what you are complaining about with your life.

4. Be open to topic changes. People have different interests and are exposed to various stimuli. Acknowledge this fact by allowing others to shift the conversation to another subject. A good conversationalist is one that knows how to adjust nicely to these changes.

5. Show interest in what is being discussed. Do not show impatience if somebody else is in charge of the discussion. Being a good conversationalist does not mean you should dominate every discussion that you enter. It means knowing what to say, how to say it, and when. Put your ego aside and enjoy the exchange of words and information. You can learn a lot from people, as much as you believe they can learn from you.

Effective conversation follows the realization and acknowledgement that humans are social beings. Thus, we must always be open to others’ ideas and be patient enough to wait for our turn to impart knowledge to others. You never know what wisdom you will be able to obtain by learning to listen. Do not pick arguments with others. Instead, compromise. You are not the only person in the world. Make room.

About the Author:
Michael Lee is the author of How to be a Red Hot Persuasion Wizard… in 20 days or less, an ebook that reveals mind-altering persuasion techniques on how to tremendously enhance your relationships, create unlimited wealth, and get anything you want…just like magic. Get a sample chapter and highly-stimulating “Get What You Want” advice at: http://www.20daypersuasion.com. He is the Co-Founder of http://www.self-improvement-millionaires.com and is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant.

*** Please feel free to publish this article, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated – send to mike@20daypersuasion.com

Ten Steps to Becoming a Better Conversationalist

Patricia Fry

Toastmasters club meetings provide many opportunities for improving public speaking skills and learning leadership techniques. But what about the most common aspect of human communication – the conversation? Are you also practicing better conversational skills?

Dr. Bruce Gladstone of Gladstone Counseling Services in Ojai, CA, in a recent article for the Ojai Valley News said, “Conversation is an essential element in virtually every relationship we have. To a great extent, the quality of our relationships depends on our ability to converse verbally.”

It’s true. How can there be deep caring where there is no meaningful communication? How is understanding established where people can’t talk to one another? How are information and instructions passed along when folks don’t know how to converse effectively?

It’s ironic that we receive so little training to help us hone conversational skills when we rely on this ability everyday of our lives. You probably remember your parents and grade school teachers saying, “Don’t interrupt while I’m talking.” And, “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.” This is still good advice. For the most part, however, our conversational style and habits weren’t taught, but they developed over years of modeling others and receiving peer feedback.

The man who can’t finish a sentence without joking, probably enjoyed getting laughs as a youngster. He may have felt self-conscious about speaking to others, found that laughter eased the discomfort and created the joking habit in his everyday conversation. He found a way to compensate for his inadequacies and now he’s hard pressed to speak to anyone with a straight face and a straight line.

There’s a master plumber in my town who’s a pretty good listener, but his conversational style amounts strictly to grunts, guffaws and short predictable phrases. Maybe his parents did all of the talking for him when he was small. Perhaps the adults in his childhood didn’t listen to him. Whatever the reasons for his limited use of the language, remarkably, after 61 years, he still hasn’t found a reason to develop better conversational skills.

Feedback is a powerful tool in helping someone change their poor conversational habits and this is evidenced through the success of the Toastmasters program. A person has to first acknowledge that there is a problem, however, and they have to want to improve.

Most people hesitate criticizing the communication habits of others. How do you say to a coworker, “You talk like you have a mouth full of mush – can’t you enunciate more clearly?” Or to a friend, “I hate talking to you because you never respond to what I say. You go off telling your own story all the time without ever acknowledging mine.”

What if you were to say to the coworker, “I love the way you present your thoughts, Margaret. It’s difficult for some of us to understand you, though, when you swallow your words. It would be to your professional benefit if you would practice speaking more clearly. I’d be happy to help.”

To the friend, one might stop him in midstream whenever he commits his faux pas and say, “Wait! We’re talking about me right now. I’m interested in your story, but first, I’d like to finish mine and then I want to hear your comments about what I’ve told you.”

I know a woman who often talks over you. I called her on this once. I said, “That’s the third time today that you’ve asked me something and then started talking over me when I responded.” She was obviously shocked for a moment and then she said that she appreciated my pointing that out to her. She said that was a family trait. “Everyone in my family talks at once. It’s a bad habit that I’m trying to break.”

What are your habitual conversation blunders? Is there something specific that you’re working on? Are you aware of a problem in your way of conversing, but you’ve chosen to ignore it because no one seems to notice or care? Maybe you have an annoying habit and don’t know it.

The 1950 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia states, “The ability to engage in interesting conversation is one of the greatest personal assets a man or woman can have. It is a great aid to business and social success and also makes for greater enjoyment of the company of other persons.” I think we’ll agree that this is still true fifty years later.

It’s elementary, but worth repeating – there are two parts to effective conversation: speaking and listening. And both parts take thought and skill. Here are some tips for becoming a better, more respected conversationalist.

· Make eye contact. Looking directly at the other person is a courteous indication that you are listening. I have a deficiency in this area. I find it easy to look someone in the eyes when I’m talking to them, but when they are speaking to me, my eyes tend to wander. Of course, since I’m aware of this, it’s something that I consciously work on during my conversations with others.

· Speak clearly and audibly. It’s inconsiderate to mumble or to speak so softly that you can’t be heard, yet I frequently encounter people who do this. Most of us don’t know how we sound to others. If people consistently ask you to speak up or to repeat yourself, you may have an audibility problem. Record yourself speaking in conversational style. Listen to the tape and see if you are easily heard. Ask others to evaluate your voice and it’s volume. Is your voice pleasant? Too quiet? Too loud?

I have a friend whose voice trails off so it can scarcely be heard at the end of her sentences. She often speaks in front of large groups and, instead of changing this habit, she always apologizes for it before starting her talk. She’ll say, “Please forgive me if my voice trails off. It has a tendency to do that sometimes.”

Once you’re aware of any problems with your vocal volume or enunciation, start working to improve.

Additional tips:

• Ask a friend to remind you whenever you fall back into your old habits.
• Seek professional help from a voice coach for stubborn habits.

· Speak at a good pace. We’ve all been in conversations with people who talk so fast that you can’t keep up or so slowly that, by the time they finish expressing their thought, you’ve forgotten the topic. If you tend to speed talk or speak ever so s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y, here are some suggestions.

Speed talking sometimes develops from conversation anxiety. You may have learned from past experiences that if you don’t get your words in quickly, you might not get a chance to participate in the conversation. Relax. Concentrate on slowing down. Practice forming each word as you speak. Trust that you will have a chance to share your views and that people will listen. If your comments are well thought out and interesting, you will be heard.

Some slow talkers are created by an unconscious desire to control: “As long as I’m the speaker, I’m in control of the conversation.” Other people speak slowly because they’re still formulating their thoughts while they’re speaking. If the latter describes you, try thinking through your thoughts before delivering them and your pace may automatically improve.

· Use language and images familiar to the listener. You probably notice that you get more out of a conversation with someone who speaks and thinks like you do, than someone who uses vocabulary differently.

Your conversations will be more effective if you try to speak the language of the person with whom you’re talking. Use different words and inflection when speaking to your minister than when conversing with the teenager down the street, for example. A conversation with your type “A” boss will be more successful if you quickly get to the point. When visiting with your mother-in-law, you may want to be more relaxed and chatty.

· Stick to the topic. G. Robert Geyer, tells a lively story about “conversation stealers” (published in The Toastmaster, September, 1999 issue). He says that conversation stealers are people who jump in on your story to change the focus to themselves or to something that they know more about. As an example, I might want to tell a friend about having gone roller skating with my grandchildren over the weekend when she quickly says, “I remember the last time I went skating.” Or, “I had a great weekend, too. I went shopping and we had tea with the Marleys – did you know that Jim and Bev Marley bought the sporting goods store downtown?”

If you frequently steal the show in conversations, take steps to change this bad habit. How? When you’re talking with someone, try focusing your attention on them more. This is not to say that you shouldn’t tell your story. Of course, you can relate your experiences or thoughts. Just make sure that you also hear the other person’s saga and that you acknowledge it before sharing yours.

It’s also important to know when to change the subject. Whether you initiated the conversation or not, change the subject when there appears to be nothing new to say or when others begin to fidget or act bored.

· Know when to speak and when to listen. Conversation should be give and take. Each person involved in a conversation needs to speak and each needs to listen. Participate but don’t monopolize.

Sometimes someone else puts you in the position of monopolizing a conversation. They ask question after question about you without offering anything of themselves. You’d think that having someone express that much interest in your life would be the height of enjoyment and flattery. But after a while it begins to feel like an interrogation rather than a conversation.

I have a couple of friends who tend to grill me when we meet. I’ve learned to turn the tables on them after a couple of questions. I’ll say, for example, “Thanks for asking about my book – it’s scheduled for release next month. Now what about your son, how did he land the job writing for the church newsletter?”

· Express an interest in what’s being said. This seems like an elementary statement,

but, if you’re at all observant, you’ll notice that not everyone follows this good advice. Face the speaker with unfolded arms. Lean forward slightly. Make eye contact. Acknowledge statements with a nod, comment or question when appropriate.

· Ask open-ended questions to promote communication – that is, questions that require more than a yes or no response. Start questions with why, how or what. “Why did you move to this area from Florida?” “What caused you to enter the flower business?” “Tell me how you managed to keep your head above water in business during the recession.” “How has your profession changed since you entered it?”

· Be prepared. A good conversationalist engages his/her listeners and stimulates conversation. Hone your conversational skills by keeping up with trends and current events. Live an interesting life. Try new things so you’ll have something to talk about. Accept unusual invitations. See controversial plays. Do volunteer work. Begin a new hobby. Travel. Go back to school. Read. Change jobs or professions.

· Model someone whose conversational skills you admire. Who do you most enjoy conversing with? We all know someone who gets a lot of attention at social events and business meetings. What makes this person stand out in a crowd? What are some of his most endearing qualities? How does he make you feel when you’re conversing with him? Study his body language, his opening and closing statements and his speaking style. Ask him about his philosophy regarding communication. Does his attitude about people in general reflect in his approach to conversation? To improve your conversational skills, mimic someone who you consider successful in this area.

Being a good conversationalist isn’t a natural trait. It takes thought and practice. Apply these effectiveness tools and improve your ability to converse in any situation or circumstance.

Patricia Fry is the author of A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles for Book Promotion and Profit (Matilija Press, 2000).

Top 5 Ways Guys End Up In The Friend Zone

Every wondered how a potential romantic relationship ends up being fizzled out into “em, ah, you know, we are good friends” zone? Maybe you’d like to find out what some of these landmines are and learn to avoid them from this article… – The Real Ed.

Written By Matt S.

If you continually find yourself in the friend zone, you’re probably doing something on this list. Instead of landing in the friend zone again, equip yourself with some knowledge and learn the most common ways guys end up in the friend zone. By doing so, you’ll improve your chances of success and happiness in your dating life.

5. Thinking Wishfully
You’ve probably seen this happen in the past. A guy will become interested in a girl he stands no chance of actually dating, and ends up being flat out rejected. Because of his wishful thinking, he is destined for disaster. It’s good to set your sights high, but having unrealistic expectations will set you up for failure. The tricky part about this is telling the difference between confidence and wishful thinking. This is where good friends come in handy. If you’re pining over a girl and aren’t sure if you stand a chance of dating her, ask a trusted and experienced friend for his or her opinion on the matter. Doing so will help you determine if you’re thinking wishfully or realistically.

4. Being Too Available
People want what they can’t have. It’s a simple concept that can be seen just about anywhere, including dating. If you bend over backwards and cancel other plans to hang out with a particular girl, she’ll soon figure out that you’re too available and will likely lose interest. If you’re too available, she’ll never have the opportunity to miss you or long to spend time with you. If you stick to your schedule and fit her in when it’s convenient for you, she’ll understand that your time is as valuable as hers which reflects your confidence and importance.

3. Being Intensely Infatuated With Only One Girl
One problem many guys have when they first start dating is that they become intensely infatuated by only one girl. This is a problem for many reasons. The first reason is that becoming intensely infatuated with a single girl can come off as very creepy. It’s not a bad thing to develop small crushes here and there, but if you come off too strong with just one girl, she might get scared away. The other reason why being intensely infatuated with just one girl is that it makes you less of a challenge. As mentioned in the last section, people want what they can’t have. If you make yourself too available to just one person, they’ll have an easier time of passing you up. The third and final reason why being intensely infatuated with only one girl is because it severely limits your options. If you’re single and are dating, you should keep your options open and get a broad taste of what’s available to you.

2. Never making a move
If a guy never makes a move on a girl he is interested, she might get the wrong impression and think he has no interested in her at all. This happens for two main reasons, the first being fear of rejection. Whenever a guy expresses romantic interest in a girl, he opens himself to the possibility of being mercilessly rejected. This is one of the biggest hurdles guys have to overcome before asking a girl out. The second reason why guys never make a move is for fear of making friendships awkward. If a guy is rejected after asking out a girl, their friendship might become unbearably awkward. If they both are part of the same social circle, the awkwardness can be felt by others as well. Although it can be very difficult to make a move, there are many compelling reasons to do so: companionship, emotional grounding, and sex. The key to being able to make a move on a girl without any fear is to be able to control your emotions and gracefully handle rejection. This can be done by having rock solid confidence in yourself and not holding any resentment or ill feelings towards girls that reject you.

1. Acting Overly Nice
The top way guys usually end up in the friend zone is by acting overly nice to the girls they’re interested in. It’s been said a million times before, girls are attracted to jerks because of the challenge they present. That doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk in order to be more successful with women, but it does mean you can’t be a complete pushover. If you’re having trouble in this area, learn to develop your emotional strength, decisiveness, and overall confidence. Also, remember that you have a lot to offer to girls you date. Guys who act overly nice to girls they’re interested in do so because they feel like they have nothing to offer other girls and compensate be worshiping them. This rarely is a successful strategy.

Are You A Bad First Dater?

Written By Matt S.

Let’s face it. Not all guys are good first daters, but some aren’t even aware that they aren’t. The good news is that anyone can learn how to become a better first dater. And being a good first dater comes with its benefits. If you’re comfortable in a first date setting, you’ll have more confidence and feel more attractive. If you are unsure whether or not you are a bad first dater, continue reading this article and find out.

How Interesting Is Your Conversation
Conversation on a date is one of the most important and most challenging parts of a first date. First dates typically are awkward and involve a lot of fumbling around so it can be hard to start a good conversation that you both can enjoy. Make sure that you have her talk about herself enough to show you are interested. It can sometimes be easier to just ask questions and have her open up than it is to talk about yourself. Make sure you strike a good balance between speaking and listening and you’ll have the conversation aspect down.

Are You Flirty Enough
It is very important to be flirty on your first date. Be playful and humorous when you talk to her, and touch her. But make sure it is natural and not forced. If you feel like everything is forced, try to identify the root of the problem. Does it feel forced because you are nervous? Does it feel forced because she is nervous? Does it feel forced because there just isn’t any chemistry? Figure it out and decide where to go from there. If your flirting is forced, it won’t work.

Do You Make Her Feel Comfortable
Make sure you don’t say or do anything that would make her feel uncomfortable. Watch her body language to gauge how comfortable she is. If she seems uncomfortable, think about how comfortable you are during the date. If you are nervous and feel awkward, it is likely she will too.

Are You Having Fun
Do your first dates usually drag along, or are they fun and enjoyable? If you feel like your dates are a bit bland, this can be a definite area you should work on. Even if you are lacking in other areas, if you show a girl a good time, she’ll be far more attracted to you. Make sure the activity you do is fun for both of you.

Are You Dressed Well Enough
Make sure you’re dressed appropriately for your date. Wear clothes that are flattering to your body and make sure it’s all clean and free of wrinkles. No girl wants to date a slob. Give yourself a good shave, and shower thoroughly. Try not to chew gum during the date as it can be a distraction. Instead, make sure to brush your teeth well and avoid eating food that will make your breath smell.

Can You Close The Deal
At the end of the date, there are several things you should be able to do to end the night. A hug and kiss is a pretty standard way to end the night, but do some follow up work too. If things went well, make sure you arrange something else, or at least indicate an interest to do something later on. When you can end a first date well, it opens the door for future dates with girls you are interested in. So make sure you’re able to do this well to keep your future dates more successful.

18 ways to improve your body language

Published by Henrik Edberg October 27th, 2006 in Personal Development and People Skills.

Continuing from the previous post 6 reasons to improve your body language, here is just a few of many pointers on how to improve your body language. Improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood.
There is no specific advice on how to use your body language. What you do might be interpreted in several ways, depending on the setting and who you are talking to. You’ll probably want to use your body language differently when talking to your boss compared to when you talk to a girl/guy you’re interested in. These are some common interpretations of body language and often more effective ways to communicate with your body.
First, to change your body language you must be aware of your body language. Notice how you sit, how you stand, how you use you hands and legs, what you do while talking to someone.
You might want to practice in front of a mirror. Yeah, it might seem silly but no one is watching you. This will give you good feedback on how you look to other people and give you an opportunity to practise a bit before going out into the world.
Another tip is to close your eyes and visualize how you would stand and sit to feel confident, open and relaxed or whatever you want to communicate. See yourself move like that version of yourself. Then try it out.
You might also want observe friends, role models, movie stars or other people you think has good body language. Observe what they do and you don’t. Take bits and pieces you like from different people. Try using what you can learn from them.
Some of these tips might seem like you are faking something. But fake it til you make it is a useful way to learn something new. And remember, feelings work backwards too. If you smile a bit more you will feel happier. If you sit up straight you will feel more energetic and in control. If you slow down your movements you’ll feel calmer. Your feelings will actually reinforce your new behaviours and feelings of weirdness will dissipate.
In the beginning easy it’s to exaggerate your body language. You might sit with your legs almost ridiculously far apart or sit up straight in a tense pose all the time. That’s ok. And people aren’t looking as much as you think, they are worrying about their own problems. Just play around a bit, practice and monitor yourself to find a comfortable balance.
1. Don’t cross your arms or legs – You have probably already heard you shouldn’t cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open.
2. Have eye contact, but don’t stare – If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. If you are not used to keeping eye-contact it might feel a little hard or scary in the beginning but keep working on it and you’ll get used to it.
3. Don’t be afraid to take up some space – Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin.
4. Relax your shoulders – When you feel tense it’s easily winds up as tension in your shoulders. They might move up and forward a bit. Try to relax. Try to loosen up by shaking the shoulders a bit and move them back slightly.
5. Nod when they are talking – nod once in a while to signal that you are listening. But don’t overdo it and peck like Woody Woodpecker.
6. Don’t slouch, sit up straight – but in a relaxed way, not in a too tense manner.
7. Lean, but not too much – If you want to show that you are interested in what someone is saying, lean toward the person talking. If you want to show that you’re confident in yourself and relaxed lean back a bit. But don’t lean in too much or you might seem needy and desperate for some approval. Or lean back too much or you might seem arrogant and distant.
8. Smile and laugh – lighten up, don’t take yourself too seriously. Relax a bit, smile and laugh when someone says something funny. People will be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you seem to be a positive person. But don’t be the first to laugh at your own jokes, it makes you seem nervous and needy. Smile when you are introduced to someone but don’t keep a smile plastered on your face, you’ll seem insincere.
9. Don’t touch your face – it might make you seem nervous and can be distracting for the listeners or the people in the conversation.
10. Keep you head up – Don’t keep your eyes on the ground, it might make you seem insecure and a bit lost. Keep your head up straight and your eyes towards the horizon.
11. Slow down a bit – this goes for many things. Walking slower not only makes you seem more calm and confident, it will also make you feel less stressed. If someone addresses you, don’t snap you’re neck in their direction, turn it a bit more slowly instead.
12. Don’t fidget – try to avoid, phase out or transform fidgety movement and nervous ticks such as shaking your leg or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly. You’ll seem nervous and fidgeting can be a distracting when you try to get something across. Declutter your movements if you are all over the place. Try to relax, slow down and focus your movements.
13. Use your hands more confidently – instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. But don’t use them to much or it might become distracting. And don’t let your hands flail around, use them with some control.
14. Lower your drink – don’t hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, don’t hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead.
15. Realise where you spine ends – many people (including me until recently) might sit or stand with a straight back in a good posture. However, they might think that the spine ends where the neck begins and therefore crane the neck forward in a Montgomery Burns-pose. Your spine ends in the back of your head. Keep you whole spine straight and aligned for better posture.
16. Don’t stand too close –one of the things we learned from Seinfeld is that everybody gets weirded out by a close-talker. Let people have their personal space, don’t invade it.
17. Mirror – Often when you get along with a person, when the two of you get a good connection, you will start to mirror each other unconsciously. That means that you mirror the other person’s body language a bit. To make the connection better you can try a bit of proactive mirroring. If he leans forward, you might lean forward. If she holds her hands on her thighs, you might do the same. But don’t react instantly and don’t mirror every change in body language. Then weirdness will ensue.
18. Keep a good attitude – last but not least, keep a positive, open and relaxed attitude. How you feel will come through in your body language and can make a major difference. For information on how make yourself feel better read 10 ways to change how you feel and for relaxation try A very simple way to feel relaxed for 24 hours.
You can change your body language but as all new habits it takes a while. Especially things like keeping you head up might take time to correct if you have spent thousands of days looking at your feet. And if you try and change to many things at once it might become confusing and feel overwhelming.
Take a couple of these body language bits to work on every day for three to four weeks. By then they should have developed into new habits and something you’ll do without even thinking about it. If not, keep on until it sticks. Then take another couple of things you’d like to change and work on them.

How to Improve Your Social Skills

Published by Henrik Edberg September 10th, 2007 in Personal Development and People Skills.

Over the last 11 months I have written a whole bunch of articles on how to improve one of the most valuable skill sets; your social skills.

Some of you that have read this blog from the beginning might have already read these articles.

But since a lot of new readers have joined throughout this year I thought I´d collect and bring up the articles again in case you´ve missed some of them. I hope that they will provide you with at least a few useful tips.

And that you will give yourself a break.

Take it easy. Don´t beat yourself up if you at first fail when trying to improve a skill. And don´t try to improve everything at once. Focus on one or a few things for a month and try to work on them in your day to day life. If you fail, that’s ok and normal. Just brush yourself off and try again.

Want better results? Take more action.

The most important part of improving your social skills is just to take more chances, show up at more social functions and to interact more with people. So a good place to start might be with these three articles:

• 7 Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live a More Exciting Life
  ”If you want to improve your life you’ll sooner or later need to step out of that zone. Because it’s there you’ll find all those new and exciting experiences. Where you’ll find freedom from boredom.”
• Top 24 Tips for Making Your Self-Confidence Soar
  ”Although we may not want to admit it publicly I think a lot of us feel like we could use an improvement in self confidence. Fortunately there are better advice out there than the often exclaimed “Just be more confident, man!” or “Have another beer!”.”
• 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear
  ”What is stopping you from getting what you want in life? Your friends? Your family? A sense that failure – or success – might change your life and that feeling uncomfortable? A sense that the people around you might disapprove of you aiming for what you want, of you succeeding or failing.”
  <!–[endif]–>

Body language is a BIG part.

I think it’s pretty important to note early on that what you say is only 7 percent of communication. Body language is 55 percent and voice tonality 38 percent.

So if you are not getting the results you’d like, if something in general feels off about your people skills then it might have little to do with what words you are using. So, say that you’d like to improve your body language since it´s such a huge part of communication. Where do you go?

• 6 Reasons to Improve Your Body Language
  ”When we’re in school or at work, we’re taught to improve our words. We learn to improve our language and words to impress. We learn to construct clever chains of words to gain an upper hand and to communicate more clearly. But when we grow up we learn very little beyond improving our words.”
• 18 Ways to Improve Your Body Language
  ”Here is just a few of many pointers on how to improve your body language. Improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood.”

Talk, talk, talk.

Now, on to conversations. Here are six articles with both broad pointers and smaller, specific tips:

• How to Make a Great Impression
  ”First impressions can be quite important. Everyone stereotypes everyone on first impression, even if we are reluctant to do it. We all get a first impression of a new person that creates a mental image of his or her personality in our minds. That image of you often lasts and can affect the relationship that follows.”
• Five Awesome and Five Awful Conversation Topics
  ”“So, what should I talk about?” When it comes to conversations I think this is one question we have asked both others and ourselves many, many times. Often in our heads, when already in a conversation, with an awkward silence looming and while trying to scramble for something to say.”
• Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation?
  ”Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly. It might take a while to change the conversation habits that’s been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible. To not make this article longer than necessary let’s just skip right to some common mistakes many of us have made in conversations. And a couple of solutions.”
• 5 Conversational Mistakes that Can Make You Look Dumb
  “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
  - Dorothy Nevill”
• One Easy Way to Remember Someone’s Name
  ”I have a pretty good memory for faces. I can remember them for years after just meeting them once or twice. Names are a whole different thing though. I just can’t remember them. When I hear them they just seem flow into one ear and flap away to freedom from the other one.”
• Focus Outward to Win Friends and Improve your People Skills
  ”One common mistake in conversations of any kind is to turn your focus the wrong way. You (and I) may often focus too much on ourselves while at a party, at work, at school, online or in just about any setting instead of shifting your focus outward, toward the person we are talking with. Why do we do that?”

On Criticism.

Criticism is often a sore spot in communication that creates a lot of misunderstandings and can become hurtful (even if it was not intended to be). I’ve written two articles on this topic. One about giving criticism and one about receiving it.

• One Easy Way to Give More Effective Criticism
  ”It was back at the university that I first came across this technique for improving the way you criticise. Whenever we had done an exercise in writing, editing or something like that we used this method.”
• How to Handle Criticism and get Something Good Out of It
  ”Receiving criticism isn’t always fun. However there are ways to handle it in a less hurtful way and – sometimes – get something good out of it. Here are a few pointers I have found useful when dealing with criticism.”

What all those other people said about communication and relationships.

Finally, there are quite a few small collections with quotes from various wise and clever people in the archives of this blog. At least six of these collections are relevant – in some way or another – when you want to improve your social skills and relationships.

• 22 Inspirational Quotes on Fear
  ”When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson”
• 10 Inspirational Quotes on Forgiveness
  ”When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.
  - Catherine Ponder”
• 17 Inspirational Quotes on People Skills
  ”You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.
  - Dale Carnegie”
• 10 Inspirational Quotes on Relationships
  ”Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.
  - Anthony Robbins”
• 25 Great Quotes on Leadership
  ”To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!
  - Lao-Tsu”
• 9 Great Quotes on Criticism
  ”Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.
  - Emmet Fox”

Wayne Dyer’s Top 8 Tips for Building a Better Social Life

Published by Henrik Edberg December 12th, 2008 in Personal Development, People Skills and Success

“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.”

One of my favourite personal development people is the psychologist Wayne Dyer.

He seems to be a very warm person but he also someone who takes a lot personal responsibility and is assertive.

This is reflected in his work. He’s kind but he’s not here just to make you feel good. Through a no-nonsense approach he makes you realize obvious – but sometimes uncomfortable – things about how pretty much all of this is up to you. And how many things are quite simple but you are standing in your own way and overcomplicating it all.

Dr. Dyer’s advice can be applied to just about any part of life. Today I’d like to take a few of his thoughts and see how they can help you improve your social life. If you would like to read more from Wayne Dyer then two really solid books to start with are Pulling Your Own Strings and Your Erroneous Zones.

1. Your relationships are in your mind.

“As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.”

“Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. So much of our relationships may be perceived to happen out there somewhere.

But your underlying frame of mind – for instance an open one or a protective and closed up one – will determine much about your interactions with new people and people you know.

So you really have to go inside. You have to realize that your interpretations from the past are interpretations. Not reality. You have to take a look at your assumptions and expectations and thought habits. Find patterns that may be hurting you (and others). This isn’t easy. Or always pleasant. You may discover that you have had some negative underlying habits of thought for many years.

But to change you have to do it. Instead of just keep looking at yourself as some sort of unmoving and objective observer of the world and reality. A change in you could – over time – change your whole world.

2. Let go of the need for approval.

“People who want the most approval get the least and the people who need approval the least get the most.”

A lot of the actions you take – or do not take – may be because you need approval from other people. When we are young we get grades in school that tells us that we are “good”. This makes it very easy to create a life where you always go looking for the world to give you the next hit of approval. It may be from your family, boss, friends, co-workers and so on.

But this need creates neediness. And the stronger the need the stronger the neediness. And so other people will sense this. And approval may be withheld or used to manipulate you. Or they may just not like your neediness.

The people on the other hand that does not care that much about getting approval often do more of what they want deep inside. They may be considered courageous for instance. So the way they live their lives will gain appreciation and approval from the people around them. It’s a bit counterintuitive.

But it seems to me like this is how things work. If you really want approval in your life try letting go of that need – as best as you can of course, this is not easy – for a while. See what happens. You’ll probably be surprised by how much better you feel inside and the reactions you may get from the outside world.

3. Let go of judgement.

“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

“Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.”

“Judgement prevents us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.”

Judging can have a sense of fun to it and make you feel better about yourself as you put someone else down. So why give it up? Here are three reasons:

• People don’t like judgemental people. People don’t like to be judged. So there will be a resistance towards someone who is judgemental.
• Waste of time. You can spend your time doing more fun, constructive and positive things.
• The more you judge people, the more judge yourself. What you see in other people is often what you see in yourself. So if you judge them all the time for their looks or intelligence then you probably judge yourself often about these things too. To let go of judging others can lead you to letting go of judging yourself too. As you lift the limitations you put on others, you lift the limitations you put on yourself.

4. Enjoy the moment.

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.”

One technique that can help you improve your social skills is assuming rapport.

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

But why does it work? Well, I’d say it works because it puts you in the same mental state as when you are with your friends. When you’re with your friends you are relaxed, positive, in the present moment and without many cares in the world. This is a great place to be socially. You are just enjoying yourself and your moments with your friends without much thought of the past or future. You are just there. The more you can bring yourself into this mental headspace the more fun you will have with people. And the more fun they will have with you.

So try out assuming rapport. And explore other ways to bring yourself back into the present moment through articles like this one or by checking out Eckhart Tolle’s books (two good are A New Earth and Stillness Speaks).

5. People like positive people.

“Unhappiness is within.”

“Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.”

Now we are back in the same territory as in the first tip in this article. How you feel is up to you. You control you.

This is important to understand to be able to create and keep a more stable positive attitude. If you let what other people do control – or at least control you too much – then you are on a mental rollercoaster where your thoughts and feelings go up and down all the time. You have to look within to find a great stability to how you think and feel.

I’d say that one of the most attractive qualities a person can have is a positive attitude and energy. It is attractive to people at your job/school, family, friends or just that cute girl/guy in the bar. I think that one of the big things people want in any relationships is positive emotions. People simply want to create a flow back and forth with people where all of you exchange positive emotions and feel good.

Building yourself a more positive attitude will of course not only make you more likeable. It can also improve every other part of your life. Check out Take The Positivity Challenge! for more tips on how to create a positive attitude.

6. You teach them.

“Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.”

This is a very important point and something I think is perhaps often missed by people who want to improve their social lives and make it more positive. They may think “well, I have been so nice towards everyone for the last few months but it doesn’t seem to have changed their behaviour towards me much”.

This is the “nice guy/girl” problem. S/he is very nice but there is no assertiveness. There is no changed feeling within about how you feel you deserve to be treated. You may still be nice just to get approval from other people. You feel the craving need. And as point # 2 explains, you won’t get the approval.

We do to a large extent choose how we want to be treated. How you expect people to treat you can have a big effect on how you allow yourself to act and how people around you view and treat you. If you start creating a role for yourself where you always let people do what they want to you then you may create some pretty destructive and negative things.

• You may create an identity for yourself where you get used to always taking whatever anyone doles out. You create a kind of victim identity where you may look happy on the outside but don’t feel so good on the inside. But since you have gotten used to it after a while you may accept it and think that: this is just who I am.

• You may create a concept in the minds of the people around you that it’s OK to treat you this way. Either because you seem so positive despite what they are doing so they think it’s OK. Or just because you aren’t saying no and some people may take advantage of that.

Look, you can’t please everyone. I think both Eleanor Roosevelt and Buddha have mentioned something along the lines that whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing. And that’s OK. That’s normal.

Going around trying to please everyone at your own expense isn’t healthy though. Or even a realistic thing to attempt. It eats away at you both mentally and physically.

So be nice. Be positive. But make sure you set your own standards, rules and limits too. And remember that you might as well do what you want because there will always be critics.

7. Take responsibility for your social life.

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

I really like this quote from Nathaniel Branden’s excellent The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: “No one is coming”.

You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible.

You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life (or finances or health). You can always find scapegoats to judge and thought that feel better about yourself. For a while. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it.

Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation may arise in the outside world.

8. Like yourself.

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.”

Liking yourself is vital to live a happy life. If you like yourself people will of course like hanging out with your more too. A person who likes him/herself, who is positive but also assertive is a lot better than the opposite.

Obvious, yes but the hard thing is how to go about liking yourself more. This is a topic that has filled many books but here are few tips that have helped me.

• Follow the rest of tips above. For example, taking more personal responsibility, working on your attitude and being more assertive consistently will make you feel better about yourself.
• Do the right thing as much as you can. When you do the right thing you lift your own self-esteem. When you don’t do the right thing you tend to stay at the same self-esteem level that you are at the moment (or perhaps even lower it).
• Be appreciative of yourself, don’t just look at your flaws. By appreciating the positive and good things that you think and do you can replace the need for approval from outside sources. You are giving yourself approval instead. This is a lot better than the alternative, because this is an unlimited source that you are in control of.

How to Be More Social

Written by Scott H Young.

Money, health and productivity aren’t satisfying if you don’t have any friends.  It can be even worse to be stuck inside a social group that doesn’t respect you, forces you to conform or discourages you from making improvements in your life.  Social skills are vital, because our greatest victories and most sobering defeats will be with and through other people.

This is a longish article (~2000 words), exploring the idea of how to become more social, expanding on the ideas as I’ve written about them before.  You might want to bookmark this post if you don’t have time to read it all now.

How to Be More Social

I became a lot more social when I moved from my smaller town to the larger city of Winnipeg.  Before my move, I hadn’t built many strong relationships in my hometown.  This was partially due to my personal development efforts, as I distanced myself from the crowd to work on myself.  It was only after I moved that I realized I was missing a huge chunk of life, and I needed to take steps to fix it.

I’d like to go over the steps I took to become more outgoing.  So far, nearly three years later, those steps have been very successful.  I have several groups of friends, and any evening I spend by myself is a matter of choice, not a lack of options.  Although this article is about becoming more social in general, the same principles I’ll talk about here have improved my dating life, including meeting the woman I’m seeing right now.

First, Make it a Priority

If your social life is bankrupt, in order to change, you need to make it your top priority.  This means you actually need to invest time meeting people, spending time with new friends and being outgoing.  This can be hard for people who are less naturally outgoing for two reasons.

The first is that you might not value social activities as much.  I felt the same way when I went to University, believing that all the drinking and partying was mostly a waste of time.  Unfortunately, that value system got me into the problem of being isolated in the first place.  You don’t need to spend every night in the bar to make friends, but if you want to be more social you need to start spending time where people are.  Long nights playing MMORPGs or studying for final exams won’t help you meet people face to face.

The second problem can be the energy you need to put in to be social.  If you’ve been living a quiet life for awhile, your social muscles probably aren’t very strong.  Mine certainly weren’t.  This can be uncomfortable if you’re going to social events where everyone seems to be having effortless fun, while you feel drained and awkward just trying to keep up.

The solution to the first problem is to re-evaluate your priorities.  If building a strong circle of meaningful friends is important to you, your time should reflect that.  The solution to the second problem is to not worry about it.  Just like going to the gym, you’ll build social muscles so what drains you out initially will be relaxed and fun later.

What if your entire life is a mess?  Should you make social skills a priority?  My answer to this question is no.  Personal excellence always has to come first.  Without that, it’s likely that you won’t have built a strong enough individual life to make social relationships meaningful.

However, if you have a decent grip on the other realms of your life, but are struggling to build relationships, I suggest making it a top priority.  Building social skills has ripple effects that help you in your career, finances, health and productivity, so it’s an important investment.

Want to Have More Fun?  Be More Fun.

Life is a mirror, it tends to reflect whoever we are back to us in the people we meet and experiences we have.  Interesting experiences only happens to interesting people.  Fun events only occur for fun people.  And, success only happens to successful people.  This is the first rule of winning in any part of life.

Especially in your social life, you need to become the very thing you’re trying to attract.  If you want to meet fun, exciting people, then you need to be more fun and exciting.  If you want people to approach and meet you, you need to approach and meet other people.  If you want to have fun, be more fun.

This isn’t an easy step, so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t accomplish it immediately.  If you’re in an unfamiliar environment, it’s only human nature to close yourself up and be tense.  Just realize that 95% of the time you’re not getting the results you want, it is because you’re not putting out the energy you expect back from other people.

Be Friendly, Not Cool

There is a lot of advice on the internet about trying to be cool.  Much of it is associated with how to pick up women.  I’m not going to judge that content, because some of it can be useful.  But I think if anything can be said, it’s that people who try to be cool usually aren’t cool.

The scenario goes like this: the unsocial person sees that cool people are standoffish or arrogant.  Therefore, they mirror that attitude becoming standoffish or arrogant.  But this follows the first rule, and as a result, their environment mirrors them, being unfriendly and hostile.

Social skills are a mostly unconscious process.  I’m sure everyone here can remember a time where they met someone incredibly friendly, but who was also incredibly socially awkward.  However, the only way you can shake the feelings of awkwardness is to get used to the social norms of the people you’re meeting.  And the only way you can do that is practice.  Trying to fake confidence or project a false attitude is incredibly transparent.

I think a much better approach is to follow the first rule and treat other people how you want to be treated.  If you want other people to be nice, friendly and fun in meeting you, do the same.  If you take this attitude, it doesn’t take long to realize that the cool people aren’t arrogant or standoffish.  They are the people who are friendly and outgoing, who introduce themselves to new people with a smile and pay attention when other people talk.

Cultivate a habit of friendliness.  Friendliness, more than anything else, will improve your social skills.  This means be willing to initiate conversations, say hi to people, and make the first move.  If you’re not used to it, it takes a lot of energy.  But, if you start small you can build it into an automatic part of your life.

Start in Your Comfort Zone

You don’t need to start by doing the most daring event, completely outside your comfort zone to get started.  Although drastic measures can help, I think the internal dialog for many people goes like this:

1. They want to go meet people, so they think of the biggest, most anxiety-ridden step.
2. They pump themselves up to do this, but fail.
3. They beat themselves up for lacking the willpower and start back at step one.

There are plenty of ways to meet people.  Some require a lot more confidence and suave, like stopping to talk to people during a busy event.  Others are fairly easy, like going to a Toastmasters meeting (where you will probably be greeted by several people as you walk in).

My advice is this: start with the low-hanging fruit.  Don’t try building your confidence on the most daring social endeavors.  Start with the easy ways to meet people and work your way up.  As you gain more natural confidence, you can eventually bite off the social tasks that scare you the most.

When I started working out at the gym, I picked an amount of weight I could lift comfortably and slowly moved up.  I didn’t go back and forth from the gym, chastising myself because I didn’t start with 100 lbs.  Pick easy targets, build your confidence and move up.

Dispel Personality Myths

The biggest myth that holds people back from creating satisfying social lives is that introverts can’t be outgoing.  I’m an introvert.  As much as I hate labels, I would fit that definition.  I enjoy time by myself and prefer one-to-one conversations to large groups.

However, my status as an introvert has nothing to do with my ability to be outgoing.  Many people mistake me for an extrovert when I gladly introduce myself to strangers join in group discussions.  Innate personality differences do matter.  But, remember, that your desire to form a particular social life is also an innate personality difference.  The fact that you want a certain experience is more important than any past history of success or failure.

Don’t chase a social life you don’t want, just because you feel you should.  I’m never going to be a pickup artist, simply because I don’t have the desire.  I’d much rather have deeper, emotionally satisfying relationships.  But, if you do want something, never let the results of a questionnaire or beliefs of your current friends define what you’re capable of.

Be Socially Independent

I’ve written about social independence before.  If you’re interested in becoming more social, then I’d suggest reading this article.  Improving any area of your life often involves a dip.  You need to get worse before you can get better.  Sacrifice what you have, to start fresh.

The same is true of socializing.  If your social life is already filled with friends you don’t really connect with deep-down, you have a choice.  Either you can work to rebuild those relationships and be more authentic, or you can let them slip.  Letting them slip is sometimes the best decision, since it opens you up to form new relationships with people you’re more compatible with.

If you spend a lot of time investing in personal development, you’ll probably eventually outgrow your social group.  Most people don’t change significantly, so if you’re making rapid changes to your life, the people you originally connected with might be the same people that hold you back.  Loyalty to those people is dangerous, since it hurts your growth and builds resentment.

My suggestion isn’t to cut them off entirely (unless they are completely destructive to your life), but to free up time and start venturing out on your own.  If you build a separate, more compatible social circle, you’ll naturally shift your time towards new people.

Build Relationships, Don’t Just Start Them

One mistake I made early on, was to confuse social skills with the ability to meet people.  That’s like making the confusion of running an online business with registering the website name.  Meeting people is only the start, and if you get really good at meeting people, that does nothing for your social life unless you build lasting friendships.

Once you meet people you connect with, follow up with them.  Invite them to things you’re doing that they might be interested in.  This is even easier nowadays with instant messaging and Facebook, allowing you to build relationships faster.

Unless you want to be socially promiscuous (meeting many people for one evening, and never seeing them again), I’d suggest that at least half of your time improving your social skills should be devoted to improving the connections you’ve already made.  The joy of building a strong group, is that once you build more friends, those friends make it easier to meet new people.

The ultimate goal of becoming more social isn’t to sleep with the most attractive person at the bar, or to have a posse of friends who follow you.  The point is to enrich your life with people that inspire you, challenge you and imbue life with a richness that can’t come from private successes alone.  I believe that’s a goal worth striving for.

How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport

Published by Henrik Edberg December 11th, 2007 in Personal Development and People Skills.

Assuming rapport. This is definitely one of the best social skill tips I have ever learned about. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten a bit about it lately. Maybe you have too. Or missed it altogether. So I thought I’d bring it up again.

Now, what is assuming rapport?

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

I have found that this advice is surprisingly useful and easy to implement.

Just before the meeting, you just think that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind.

This also helps you and the other people to set a good frame for the interaction. A frame is always set in the at the start of an interaction. It might be a nervous and stiff frame, a formal and let’s-get-to-the-point kind of frame or perhaps a super relaxed one. The thing is that the frame that is set in the beginning of the conversation is often one that may stay on for a while. First impressions last.

If it’s a very stiff frame then it may very well continue to be so until the end. It can be quite difficult to for instance change that frame into a more relaxed one. Often people – you and the others – adapt to the frame that is set and interact within it. Breaking or changing that frame may feel uncomfortable or a bit weird. And so you and the others can become reluctant to do so and instead just play along.

First impressions last
So setting a good frame at the very beginning can bring more enjoyment and better results out of any kind of meeting. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so useful to smile when you first meet someone. And it’s also important to consider that the impression made and frame set may not just last during the first conversation. It may continue throughout your relationship with this new friend, classmate or co-worker.

Now, meeting your best friend might not always be the best thing to think about before a meeting. If it’s a meeting at work or in school then you may need to have use a more formal frame (for instance without hugs and the relaxed attitude you have with friends). In that case you may want to try to imagine a similar meeting that went well and your interactions with the people there.

If you go into a conversation with the right frame of mind a lot of the problems you may have encountered before or created outside and inside your mind just never come up. Much of communication is non-verbal and can be difficult to manually correct in a conversation. But when you go in with a positive and relaxed energy then that is fed into the interaction by you using your non-verbal communication – like your voice tonality and body language – in good way.

Just be yourself
When you’re with your friend you don’t think about what you should say next or what funny comment you could pull out of your sleeve. You just stay in the present moment, moment by moment, and the conversation flows easily and naturally.

I think this is what some people mean when they give the often confusing advice to “just be yourself”. When your friends give you that advice then they may mean that you should be “like you are when you are hanging out with us”. They want to see you bring out your natural and relaxed self in other interactions.

One final useful thing about assuming rapport is that you may also start to feel positive feelings towards this new person, just as you do with your friend when you meet him/her. This is a pretty good starting point for getting the new person to reciprocate and for developing a good relationship.

If you like this article, please bookmark it on del.icio.us or give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)