3 things to consider when talking about yourself

Follow up from[ How to \~tastefully\~ talk about yourself](https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/za8asm/how_to_tastefully_talk_about_yourself_in/).

Talking about yourself (tastefully) brings balance to a conversation. It also adds depth. It’s like going from 2D to 3D.

The 3 things to consider are:

* What you share
* When you share
* How long do you share for

Your goal should be to combine your interests, experience, and hardships with your conversational partner’s. Be relevant and find similarities. This builds *strong* bonds.

It leads to meaningful conversations, trust, better relationships, and more. It even improves conversational flow. Talking about yourself — when done right — is a powerful tool.

The trick is to **be intentional**

Intention gets thrown around a lot in woo-woo settings. Kind of an overused word tbh. But, in this post, I give it a simple definition we can work with, and hopefully, it changes all your conversations.

First, a lot of you asked how this works with real-life examples, so here’s a conversation I had over Friendsgiving:

//

A friend of mine is getting his pilot’s license.

Now, I am no pilot. I would crash that bitch in .02 seconds. I do, however, ride motorcycles.

I can relate to motorsport which requires intense focus, a lot of learning, and failure results in dire, permanent consequences. Therefore, I have a jumping point. An interest of mine *relates* to an interest of his, which means I can add my input and create tons of questions without thinking too hard.

Notice how the interests aren’t the same.

They aren’t even *that* similar. What makes this such a great topic to relate to is not the similarity of activity, but the reason we do it. Our love for adventure.

That gives me material to work with.

//

# Be intentional about what you share

Picture this: you are at a wedding, meeting someone for the first time.

5 minutes in, they’re telling about their shitty ex. You just met! Now, without asking, you are forced to bear a brutal conversational beatdown unless you make up an excuse or rudely leave the conversation.

Kind of a conversational turn-off, right? *(Side note: is anyone interested in how to leave a conversation respectfully, lmk in comments)*

This is called **oversharing**. Oversharing is when you share too much (or inappropriate) detail about your life with someone who is *not prepared or qualified* to hear it. Aka, you break someone’s conversational boundaries without permission.

In the case of the random wedding stranger, you are neither ready nor worthy to hear about a tragic breakup going on in someone’s life they just met.

Or, maybe you are, and nobody’s boundaries are broken!

Everyone’s conversational no-no zone is different. Oversharing can lead people to feel uncomfortable and it actually repels others. It also leads to some “cringe” moments that have you feeling shameful.

When I first started learning how to allow vulnerability into conversations, I ran into this oversharing problem *constantly*.

With time and practice, I learned how to open up about myself and be vulnerable in a conversation without oversharing. All it takes is being intentional about what you share. But, what is intentional?

Intentional get’s thrown around a lot but all it means is: **with purpose**.

The *best* way to do that is to add something relevant to the conversation. The point of talking about yourself is not to talk about yourself willy-nilly, but to relate it to what the other person is saying. That will create or strengthen a bond.

**From the real-life example**: Here’s a question I asked: “In motorcycling, I asked a skilled rider ‘what’s the most important skill for beginners’ and he said, ‘breaking.’ Does flying have a version of that?”

See how I share about myself and my experience, yet bring it back to him? You can even share more about your experience before turning the question around. In my 44 podcast interviews, the best tip I learned for the flow of conversation is to turn talking about yourself into a question on how it relates to them.

More on that next section.

//

# Be intentional about when you share

Now that we know what being intentional is (with purpose), we can go into intentional about *when* you share.

This is *crucial* for the flow and pace of conversations. First, what is flow? **Conversational flow** is the movement of ideas and responses in a conversation.

You want the flow to be smooth and effortless.

For that to happen, you need to know when to speak and when to listen. When to talk and when to shut up. It’s a dance.

Being intentional about when you share is all about listening for and getting a feeling of the pace of the conversation.

If the conversation pauses because they are thinking, you don’t want to talk. If the conversation pauses because they are done talking, you want to talk. It takes hundreds of conversations to reach the point where you can naturally intuit that.

And who’s got time for that?

What you can do instead is practice active listening. The cheat to a great conversational flow is to listen and listen and listen until there is a long pause, then talk. More on that here.

The reason this works is bc you’re avoiding interrupting, derailing into tangents, and other things that usually break the flow of conversation. You’re purposefully choosing the moments in which you speak. Moments that go with, or even improve, the flow of conversation.

After a while, you learn how to pace the conversation and can start interjecting more frequently.

**Real-world example**: I wasn’t interrupting my friend left and right to talk about motorcycling. I let him do most of the talking *until I heard something that relates to motorcycles*. Then, I brought up my input.

Even then, I still turned it into a question about him!

//

# Be intentional about how long you share

This is all about two problems people face when sharing about themselves: sharing too much or sharing too little.

Now, I want to preface this with there is no perfect formula. No amount of 50/50 or 80/20 split will solve your problem. It’s different for every conversation.

The question you want to keep in mind for this one is: **is one person dominating the conversation?**

If it’s all about them, feel free to inject your anecdotes or personal stories into the mix. You’ve been listening. You’ve earned the stage for a little bit.

If the person doesn’t want to give you any time of day to talk then you don’t have to be in that conversation.

Conversely, if you’re not allowing them to talk, fix that too. Take a second to pause and bring them in. Phrases like, “What are your thoughts // What about you // I’ve been going on – how are you doing today?”

I like to call myself out and bring conversational attention to my partner.

What happens is sometimes, they give you the ok! Sometimes people say things like, “No no, I enjoyed listening. Tell me more!” That’s when you know you can keep going for a little longer.

Once you have enough conversations under your belt, you’ll be able to understand who’s dominating the conversation without thinking about it.

Another thing you can pay attention to is how the other person is reacting. Are their eyes glossed over because you’re going on about yourself too much? Maybe they’re starting to ask you questions because they’re talking too much.

This takes more understanding of body language and is not an exact science (use at your discretion).

Real-world **example:** When my friend went on for a longer spell of talking, I knew it was my turn to share the points I’ve related to. After a good bit of time, I asked a question and brought it back to him. Smooth, effortless flow involves an even back and forth.

**TL;DR**: Be intentional about what you share, when you share, and how long you share for.

Thanks for reading.

I do these off the cuff with a few edits. Lmk if anything doesn’t make sense. I’ll clarify.

Last up in this series is: **How to flip the conversation from you back on to them.**