Four mistakes when talking to others

hoddesdon

Well-known member
The following arrived in an email advertising an eBook. It is about "a few tips and pointers that you can take and implement immediately to improve the way you come across to people":

MISTAKE #1: Being Stuck In Your Head

Outgoing people talk to other people. Shy people talk to themselves.

Why? I believe itʼs a comfort mechanism more than anything else. You may be scared to talk to people, but you can still have a “conversation” with yourself inside your head. It makes you feel less lonely.

So whatʼs wrong with talking to yourself inside your head? Thereʼs nothing “wrong” with talking to yourself. In certain situations you should to do it.

For example, when you are by yourself or in a situation where you MUST carefully consider the words you are saying, like in a job interview, then feel free to talk to yourself.

But when you want to just talk to someone informally and naturally, the right thing to do is to stop the inner voice.

• If you donʼt talk to yourself, then you immediately become a more social and extroverted person. Itʼs an amazingly quick and easy change.

• Your attention will become outward instead of inward, which means you will be following along with the conversation and youʼll find it a lot easier to come up with things to say.

Right now the important thing to realize is that talking to yourself is simply a bad habit youʼve picked up as a side-effect of your shyness and social anxiety.

You can break any habit in the same way you form one: by repeating something over and over again until you do it automatically.

How To Stop Talking to Yourself:

Thereʼs two simple steps:

1.Realize when you are talking to yourself. It may take some time before you are able to consistently “catch yourself” doing it. Especially if itʼs a long-time habit. Keep at it, you will slowly become better and better.

2. Stop the inner voice. How? Often just realizing that you are talking to yourself will quiet that internal voice in your head. Itʼll go away as soon as you realize itʼs there.

Once you get the hang of doing this, then you should work
on...

MISTAKE #2: Over-Thinking What To Say

People with shyness and social anxiety have a huge tendency to overly analyze and micro-manage the words they say.

Maybe you try to come up with several “topics of conversation” before you even start talking to someone as a way to make sure you donʼt run out of things to say.

Maybe you play the words in your head before you actually say them to see how they will “sound”.

Maybe you think of something to say, wait too long, and then talk yourself out of saying it. Or maybe someone else says it before you.

All these behaviours are very common to people who have shyness and social anxiety.

You do them because you donʼt want to mess up. You donʼt want people to disapprove of you. So you try to “filter” everything you say.

You think that by filtering and micro-managing what comes out of your mouth, you will be able to make a better impression on people and make them like you.

On the surface, this type of strategy makes sense: if you want people to like you, make sure what you say is valuable. Thereʼs even a saying that goes: “Think before you speak.”

Unfortunately, the strategy backfires horribly in real life. In real life, over-thinking what you are going to say gives people the impression that you are too concerned about their opinion. You come across as needy for their approval, which turns them off.

Beyond that, when you “rehearse” the words in your mind before you say them, you are not acting spontaneously. When you say something spontaneously, without thinking, your words will have an energy behind them. People love that spontaneity and impulsiveness.

Think about the most social and popular people you know -- do you think “impulsive and spontaneous” would be good words to describe them? Do you think they pre-plan their words before they say them?

Itʼs impossible to be impulsive when you are over-thinking what to say. People can sense the difference between something said in-the-moment and something you have thought about for the last minute. Whenever you think about you words beforehand, people will sense they are pre-planned and contrived, they will sense your hesitation.

And the last reason why you should stop over-thinking what to say is because it is too much hard work! Always having to think and consider what is the best thing to say is stressful and difficult. On the other hand, not thinking makes conversations loose, natural and even fun. The reason most people talk spontaneously is because they donʼt have the time or energy to be doing all that extra thinking. If they have a dozen conversations a day, itʼs simply not practical to think too much about any one conversation.

The person they are talking to wonʼt even remember the exact words they said, anyway! All they may remember is the general message behind their words. See, so it makes no sense to over-think what you are going to say.

Do you ever have a conversation with someone and think about it for days afterward? Thinking about what you said, and what you should have said better...

Well, guess how much theyʼve thought about the conversation? Theyʼve probably forgotten 90% of it entirely.

Since the consequences of any one conversation are so low and unimportant, you should stop focusing so much on managing the words you say, and learn how to express yourself more freely and naturally.

How To Stop Over-Thinking:

Hereʼs two quick tips:

1. Stop talking to yourself. If you follow the steps I gave you above for not talking to yourself, then you will naturally stop over-analyzing your words.

2. Make it a rule that, from now on, you will say something within two seconds of it popping into your head. This will increase your spontaneity dramatically. If you donʼt say it within 2 seconds, then forget about it and keep your focus on the conversation and quit talking to yourself about it.

Okay, got it? Good.

One thing you may be thinking right now is: “If I donʼt think and I donʼt talk to myself, then how do I know what to say? And how do I keep myself from saying something stupid?” Iʼm glad you asked, because, this leads us to...

MISTAKE #3: Not Knowing What To Say

If thereʼs one thing that used to frustrate me more than anything a couple years ago, it was this. I simply didnʼt know what to say!

I didnʼt really know how to keep a conversation going. It always seems as if my mind would go blank at the worst times and I would run out of things to say. In group conversations, I would tend to just stand there listening, not saying a word, until people barely noticed I was even there.

Sound familiar?

The good news is, I discovered a way to fix the problem for good.

One day I was so frustrated by running out of things to say that I decided to do something kinda weird...

I knew it was a weird thing to do, but I was truly frustrated by my lack of conversation skills and started to feel like I would do anything to fix them. So what did I do?

I began studying people who were great at talking. I looked at what they were doing to try and figure out their “secret”. How were they able to keep on talking without ever worrying they were going to run out of things to say?

I didnʼt really expect to find anything, so I was surprised when I actually did figure some things out.

What I figured out is that there isnʼt a huge gap between normal people and people who have shyness and social anxiety. Itʼs just that normal people do a few little things differently that make all the difference.

Iʼll share with you one technique I learned right now...

Donʼt take this technique lightly. It may seem simple at first, but it helped me and countless others get great at making conversations with ease.

It took me a while to figure out. This is some hard earned wisdom...

This technique is one I call “threading”, because itʼll how you how to ʻweaveʼ a conversation together like a well-knit shirt or sweater. (I go into much, much great detail in both my ebook and the bonus report that comes along with it as well.)

So here it is in brief:

How To Know What To Say Next:

Here are the three main steps whenever you need to say something:

Step 1: The other person says something.

Step 2: You notice the threads. Sounds tough, but itʼs really easy. Let me explain...

“Threads” are basically topics inside a sentence.

Every sentence has a few of these threads in it.

For example, take the sentence, “I saw Bob at the mall last Saturday.” The threads, or topics, could be “Bob,” “mall” and “last Saturday”. All threading is, is noticing these topics and then saying something about them, which is...

Step 3: Pick a thread and respond. So for the last sentence you simply pick one of the topics mentioned and say something about it.

So letʼs respond to the threads in the last example:

• Bob - “I tried out for the football team with Bob last year. He made quarterback and crushed all the new guys.”

• Mall - “Have you been to the mall lately? I canʼt believe theyʼre closing down the movie theater to build a new clothing store!”

• Last Saturday - “Last Saturday I went camping for a family reunion. I never want to share a tent with my brother again.”

The cool thing is, all of these replies will make the conversation flow smoothly because they relate to what the other person said before you.

Best of all, this simple technique is amazing at eliminating awkward pauses once and for all!

Easy as pie :)

If you take the techniques I just taught you and put them into practice, you will see AMAZING things happening to your social skills.

Your conversation will become ten times better, which will instantly boost your confidence.

Now let me show you the last mistake...

MISTAKE #4: Not Getting HELP

This is the biggest mistake of all.

This is the mistake that keeps most shy and socially anxious people from EVER having the kind of social success that they truly want.

I know, we don't like to make ourselves look weak or helpless. We don't like to ask for help.
 
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Hottie

Well-known member
I read that this morning before i was of to volunteer in the helpline. And the 3rd will work great for on the phone. Even though i have been trained to pick up things in a persons sentances, that will help me lots too with normal conversations.

Thank you for posting this :)
 

SPV

Well-known member
I'm practically weak at number 3. I also thought about this technique before, and gave it a try a couple of times, like I would pick up anything from the last thing the person said to me, and try to make it relevant, I still sounded awkward unfortunately. The spontaneity part also needs a little bit of work.
 

JosephG

Well-known member
This post is fantastic. I think I have been sub-consciously working on these things or have myself worked these out.
However I find I can get really good at these things but when I'm depressed everything I've worked on falls apart.
anyway brilliant post :)
 

mikebird

Banned
Do you go outside, walking the streets, with a destination in mind, and a route, however far it might be?

That's what I do. During the journey, that's when I talk to myself, and think of what's happening next - today - tomorrow - next week / month / year...

Does anyone catch your blurbing out loud? I'm not sure, but I sometimes get lost in my own thoughts. There are definitely times of talking to myself, using my own voice. People might find it disturbing
 
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