I Want To Have Better Conversations

Why can it be so hard at times to speak your mind?

So the other day I was scrolling on my phone (wasting time lets be honest) and a post came up saying how it had been 5 years since 2020, when the chaos surrounding lockdowns and the epidemic had started. I was shocked, like logically yes it has been 5 years, but when I think about myself in 2020 and myself now, not a lot has changed. Yeahhh, this made me go into a spiral of thoughts about how, if anything, my ability to socialise and just my personality and passion for life had really diminished since those lockdowns. It has felt like I’ve been stuck in this loop since 2020 and here I am 5 years later and I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress towards anything. Now obviously little things have changed and I do believe I am much more mature and I approach things with more thought then back then but I also think that the lockdowns definitely had a major affect on my ability to conversate with others. If this is you too then welcome. You're most definitely not alone and tbh this isn't any sort of proper advice this is just showing my thoughts and insight. Basically you get to hear how my brain works.

I was already struggling a little with the social aspect of school before 2020 even happened, let's just say high school was a pretty toxic environment in the beginning, which I think just happens because everyone is so young, people are going to be less empathetic, less aware of how they are impacting others and frankly it does cause pettiness. Anyways when 2020 arrived and the first lockdowns occurred it was so weird, and thinking back it's so interesting to imagine not being able to really go anywhere, interact with others and go from having to travel to school to doing it all online. It was weird but me being the fearful person I am I wasn't mad, infact I enjoyed being able to kind of create my own schedule. Most of my school work wasn't done through live calls, it was more so they would publish the work and we just had to complete it, the teachers were there to be messaged if needed. Which thank f**k because I can be quite the night owl a lot of the time. Anywho so I think that period of time was when I really began to lose those social connections and became quite isolated within myself. Which is why I want to improve and get to a place where I can start and hold a convo with almost anyone. There are so many interesting stories to hear and things to learn from others, that's the reason I want to keep at this goal.

Is Charisma a Skill or a Talent?

This has always been a debate in my mind, how much can you truly improve? I have no idea. There are thousands of YouTube videos and self-help books out there that say you can and I've only ever read a few self-help books and to be honest a lot of them don't have that magic effect I always expect them too. People comment how it changes their life and I think that makes me set my expectations way too high, like somehow I expect that reading this book will make me transform Superman-style into a whole new person. Then reality hits. But, I do believe that you can improve social skills and small talk, but reading those books most likely will not actually help you that much. Yeah bit of a wakeup call for me, words on a page aren't going to help. Unless you're actually going out into the world and using what you've learnt to interact with a bunch of different characters.

Curiousity

In my mind curiousity can equal to being more charismatic and being able to pull topics to talk about from thin air. You walk past a barbers with someone and simply asking "Why do you think barbers poles are red and blue?" Boom topic. I say this but in my mind I also know if you have a massive brain blank due to panicking about what to say this might not be so easy to actually do. But hey, just like most things in life it will most definitely take practice.

Being curious doesn't just mean looking around you, you should also be curious about the person sitting across from you. BE GENUINE. Trust me people can tell when you aren't genuinely interested in getting to know them. It's probably happened to you before where you notice someone asks you a question but you can tell they don't give a rats a** what your answer is. BTW not everything has to be deep questions, this is honestly something it took me awhile to get my head around. I thought that if I wasn't having these deep talks like in the movies then we weren't truly close. And while yes, it is important to have the ability to talk about more serious things, most conversations do not have to be that deep. Instead focus on lighter fun subjects that will give you and the other person a chance to bond and maybe be able to laugh at a few jokes together.

FEAR

Yup, fear is basically the biggest roadblock that invades every single piece of life. When it comes to fear I honestly don't have a clue about how to conquer it. For social anxiety and fear surrounding social interactions, I know for me personally its that fear of being judged or being mistunderstood. Like even over text I tend to accidentally overexplain something just so there isn't any misunderstanding about me or my intentions. Especially since it's so much easier to be misunderstood over text it can feel like a mountain of a task just to hit send sometimes. But I know that the amount of chances or opportunities I might've missed because I didn't send that message, or start that conversation would be far worse than having one person not like me because they misunderstood something I said. Small steps, baby steps as they say. It does get easier, I'm still very much near the beginning of the journey when it comes to defeating fear, but I'm hopeful.

Meeting New People

I mean we have to find people to conversate with right? Otherwise this whole discussion would be lowkey pointless. Hmm when you're out of school this becomes 10x harder. Life is busy, and a lot of the time you probably want to stay home. Which you know might work for finding new people if you like online activities such as gaming. But if not then venturing out into the world is the only way to do it. If you like switching between hobbies, this is where that can come in handy. If you find groups or clubs that surround that hobby then you can obviously find people who you already have something in common with. You won't mesh with everyone but its a good way to meet and hopefully find some long lasting friendships. It's so hard to make time for socialising and I'm not gonna sit here like I am great at this. Quite the opposite if I'm being honest, but thats the point of these type of articles, I'm using them to talk about things that I need to work on. And by writing what I know I should be doing it helps my brain process the steps that I need to take and I also hope it helps others who are similar not feel alone because with social media, film and tv shows the expectation that you are supposed to have this perfect friendship is so unrealistic and can really make you feel even more lonely.

Activity

Okay so peoople always say "what's your ideal first date?" and a lot of people answer like a nice dinner right. It's a classic. But, for us who struggle to think of anything to say, at least for me this sounds like I'll be served a bowl of anxiety alongside my dinner. So instead my answer to this is I would like to do an activity. Nothing extreme and food could be a part of it, like a picnic but we also play games or do a painting or whatever. Just doing an activity makes it so much less pressure, because we have something esle to focus on if needed and if the conversation starts to lack then we have a safe fallback topic, talk about the activity or event. Take the pressure off and enjoy doing the activity with that person and the conversation will flow so much better. To me that just seems a lot less daunting but hey everyones different.

Random Conversation Starters And Questions

I never used to just ask random questions, but then I met someone who would just simply ask a question completely out of the blue. It was actually so good for starting a discussion, so don't be afraid to ask a random question.

It might be easier to have a few of these on hand if you're ever in a jam:

-What Would Be Your Go To Karaoke Song - brings up the whole music taste discussion which is usually a great way to connect, you can build off this and offer eachother song suggestions and even offers a fun idea for a hangout.

-When In Doubt Talk About Food - food is such an easy discussion, favourite cuisines, talk about snacks you used to have as kids, ask them if they enjoy whatever food you've recently tried or eaten. Ask if they've been to this new restaurant that just opened, or even an old one that you enjoy. Boom another further hangout option for you.

-Ask For Their Opinion On Something - Don't you love it when someone asks for your opinion on something, it makes you feel kinda special right? So easy way to start a discussion, get their opinion. Maybe on what hair colour they think would suit you, if they like something your wearing. Just make sure not to make it feel like your fishing for compliments, just ask genuinely. GENUINE ALWAYS WINS.

Let's lock in an improve our communication together! Hopefully we'll all be having beautiful fun conversations and getting to hear all the amazing life stories.

-VE-