3 years ago, I was a total introvert. I spent most of my time reading books and working on my PC. And everytime I go out and wanted to talk to the person sitting right beside me, I would usually have no idea how to go at it. I used to go inside my head and be like “owkay, so how do I start this? hmmm…”

The first thing to do is get out of your head and actually start noticing things surrounding you. Be in the moment. I know this is not going to be easy at first especially guys who are usually work on IT stuff, books, and other activities that puts you inside your head. Once you get the hang on getting inside your head, thinking of things to say to initiate the conversation should be easy. After this, here are a few things you can do to get you started:

1. Make a comment/statement on the situation of the person you want to have a conversation with. First of all, be in the moment. Try to get an idea on what the person’s current situation is. Is he/she waiting for someone? Is she having a hard time using his/her new phone. If someone’s waiting for someone you can be like “Don’t you hate it when someone makes you wait?” or “so what time are you guys suppose to meet up?”

2. Compliments. Don’t underestimate the power of compliments. I actually do this a lot. I compliment people all the time! When you want to talk to someone and you see something interesting about him/her. Just tell him/her that you are interested. You can just be casual about it. An example is when you see that he/she has an interesting looking bag, you can say something like “Wow, I like your bag. Where’d you get it?”. You can actually use compliments as pick up lines like when a guy sees a beautiful girl, all he has to do is walk up to her and go like “Hey, u know what..i think you look cute and I would like to get to know you”.

3. Ask a question. This is very common. All you have to do is either think of something you want to ask and say it. If you still have no idea what I’m talking about.. a few examples are “what time is it?”, “do they sell salad here?”, “where’s the pizza bar?”, “how did you make that doll?”.

That’s all for now. I’m off to dinner. I’m so hungry

One of the first things you can do is to actually get out of your shell, your social community that you are used to and expose yourself to other people. I’m talking about chatting up random people, total strangers or famous people who you usually will not talk to. Unfortunately, this isn’t something most people can do.

So what’s stopping us from getting ourselves out there? Fear….shyness…lack of self confidence and other reasons. Those feelings have their roots, and they come from conditioned behaviors that we got ever since we were children. This fact was also supported by Kent Sayre in his book ‘Unstoppable Confidence‘ and I’ll base my explanation on this book so you can refer to it if you need some clarification or something. Anyway, these conditioned behaviors usually come from(these are only a few of them btw) parents, school, and media. Let me give some samples on how they play the part.

Parents:
These are the usual things that parents teach us:
“Don’t talk to strangers, it’s bad” <- Like duh!
“Stop acting childish”
you’re probably getting the picture already so I don’t need to expand on this

School:
Peer pressure and teachers are the main influences on behavioral conditioning in school. In a nut shell, school teaches children to try to fit in the society not allowing them to explore things outside the boundaries and the categorization of students in school(eg. high, medium, low learners) usually have an impact on children’s self esteem based on studies.

Media:
Remember those product commercials? Think about how they convey the message that you ain’t worth doing this and that when you don’t have this and that product. TV commercials usually sell products by playing on people’s insecurity, I suggest you look at Kent Sayre’s book for more explanation on this. These commercials can instill damaging/limiting beliefs in you such as “You can’t talk to this particular kind of person if you don’t have this X-Car or if you don’t use this Y-perfume”.

So how do we get rid of these limiting beliefs and behaviors? In a nut shell, challenge those beliefs and behaviors. Actually if you think about it, those limiting beliefs don’t even have any tangible evidences, they’re just things that people/media tell you. Like when your friends say “You can’t date that beautiful girl across the street because you dont have this X-Car and Y-Looks” Cmon! it can’t be true.. it’s not like the beautiful girl across said to you “You can’t date me coz you don’t have this X-Car and Y-Looks”. Or when you’re parents say “Stop acting childish!”, it’s not that acting childish is bad.

Challenging your current beliefs and behaviors might be hard for you at first but it can be addicting and it will help you open up lots of opportunities in life. Walk on!

til next time!

Jorn

Why make this blog?

I just got inspired by reading self help blogs and other materials written by popular self help experts. I was actually intending this blog to be a self help thing of some sort but almost all written self help materials are out there plus I can only talk about my own experience and other things I stumbled upon, I decided to focus on writing things about being a social person.

What I’m getting out of this blog?

Nothing.

ummm…. not really. Well aside from being a hobby, you see writing my thoughts on this blog allows me to recall and dwell on my knowledge that are hidden inside my mind which can help me practice and improve them.