Im a commuter, so i have a disadvantage of not sharing a building or floor with anyone to talk to
Primarily, how do i go up to people, possibly interrupt their conversations with others and say something, but what do i say? About myself, or them?
And when i eventually get past that, how do i keep the conversation alive? I find it happen often that we will talk a little bit and both of us fall into silence or we regress into saying shorter and shorter responses like “…yeah” as a response, how do you keep the conversation alive and moving?
I dont start many conversations but when i do its on trivial things and i want to make them deeper than surface level, how do i stop a conversation from petering out and how do i actually start good conversations?
Do these conversations lead to friendships or do i have it wrong??
1 comment
How do you stop a conversation from petering out? You dip out by saying something like, “Well, it’s nice meeting you all. I gotta head out. I’ll see you all next time.” And that’s it. Keep ‘em wanting more and don’t overstay your welcome. Of course update it with whatever turns of phrase you kiddos use these days. Or say it my way and they’ll start calling you dad. Which isn’t such a terrible thing lol because you can riff off that.
All good conversations start w trivial matters. Your discussion of trivial matters establishes a sense of rapport and trust. Once you feel comfortable enough, then you can share smaller, personal things about yourself like your ambition in life, your experiences generally, your insecurities or whatever. Maybe save the insecurities for later. Play it by ear. If they go a little deeper. You go a little deeper.
If I were to guess, your challenge right now is staying present in the conversation without worrying about how you’ll look to them. It’ll be a little challenging getting past this fear and requires practice to get around. If you keep up making conversation, you’ll get over this fear eventually.
As for interrupting conversations, you can wait until you hear something you can talk about. Then say, “Hey. Are you talking about blah blah blah?” They’ll say yeah. And then you can give your input. I use this technique and it works. Well, it works when I do it.