why you feel awkward in conversation

Aubrey Plaza is pretty well known for her awkward moments. But despite and even because of her awkwardness, she is extremely popular, successful, and attractive to many people. Which is why in this video, we are going to break down how to turn your awkward moments into ones that actually make people more drawn to you. And I'm not saying that everything Aubrey does is something you'll want to copy, but you can learn a ton from her approach, so you so to begin with, it helps to understand what causes awkwardness in the first place. One way that you can unintentionally cause an awkward situation is by not knowing and then not following social protocols. In any given situation, for instance, giving a one word answer to an icebreaker.

Thanks for being here.

Yep.

No, no, yup.

Is not the correct response.

To be clear, there isn't a hard and fast rule that says you need to say thanks for having me. In fact, as long as you display positivity and enthusiasm, you'll do fine. In any sort of greeting, there's not one specific to say, but one thing that you should really do, and it's one thing that I saw Aubrey miss early in her career, is shake people's hands or make some kind of physical contact in the greeting. Otherwise, awkward things like this can happen. Now, if you mess any of this up for whatever reason, you stumble on your words, you miss a handshake. The best thing to do is a key principle of turning awkwardness into attraction, and that is to call it out. Discomfort balloons. When everyone knows that something is awkward but no one acknowledges, and the person who does call out an awkward moment gets points for having the guts to do so. So allow yourself to lean into the awkwardness for a moment like this.

Yes, that was awful. It turned into a high five and it just fell apart.

Conan kinda teases PewDiePie here, but I generally recommend that you don't make it the other person's fault when you're calling out awkward moments. And this is actually something that Aubrey does very well, whatever bit of awkwardness occurs, you can act like it was planned in a joking manner. And this is what she does in this next when the music runs long at an acceptance speech.

Hi. Thank you.

This is.

Thank you. That's my theme song.

Now, calling a situation out can define you as a leader in a group, but if you want to take the extra step and really make people laugh from an awkward moment, you can call out that situation and then lean into it even further. Now, Aubrey demonstrates that idea in in this next clip as the camera lingers too Long on her inner thigh, she runs with this joke. Stop it.

You're getting me all hot and bottled. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so I'm putting that right up to bitestrokers.com.

Yeah, I'll stroke my bite any day for you, Conan.

Now, there is one category that I want to bring up in particular, and that is when someone makes a social mistake. I don't mean that you're going around fact checking people politically or scientifically, but when someone calls you by the wrong name or has a piece of food on their face or says nice to meet you, when you've met before, you definitely, definitely want to call these moments out. These are the ones that the awkwardness can get out of control if you don't say something early. And that brings us to the next group of things that can become awkward that we want to turn around. And that is when you give short answers as people are trying to make small talk with you. For instance, someone says, how are you? You respond good. Or they say, what did you do this weekend? You simply say, not much and convers conversation dies there. Or are you from.

Originally, I'm from Wilmington, Delaware.

Wilmington, Delaware. I don't, I don't know many people from Delaware.

Thank you.

Yeah. Now if you're not on television, you're not going to have a David Letterman to laugh it off and push the conversation forward. In fact, it might die right there. And you've probably experienced something like that. And that's why, as Aubrey has gone later into her career, you can see her answer these basic warm up small talk questions and then add something that the question reminds her of. That extra sentence carries the conversation and is an excellent habit to get into generally. No, really. As a little kid, did you really think that plazas were named after you?

I mean, no, but I did. I did. I do remember as a child, like one of the first, like lies I think that I ever like told was like I told a bunch of people in my class at the Plaza Hotel that my dad owned it or something.

Oh, wow. And that takes us to the third cause of awkwardness, which is not having appropriate expressions to give your words context. When people don't know what emotional response is appropriate in any given situation, they sometimes just freeze and they feel awkward, which can make you feel awkward and then the whole thing spirals out of control. This is why we look to someone's emotional expression as much as we listen to their words when we're paying attention to them. Those awkward moments occur when your delivery is flat and the appropriate Emotional response can become ambiguous.

Like here, I recently laughed so hard that I threw up.

Now you have a few options to make these sort of situations turn from awkward to more attractive. First off, if you're going with that more deadpan delivery, know that this actually works best when what you're saying is so over the top. Strange that the juxtaposition between your delivery and your words is undeniably humorous. Like in this clip.

You having a good summer so far?

Yes. So many penises.

If other people aren't picking up on your more deadpan style of humor, there is a time to break and simply laugh at yourself, which clues all the other people in and saves the joke from just becoming weird.

I caught myself yesterday singing a song out loud that goes, kill, kill, kill, die, die, die.

But in the worst case scenario, when the crowd is not getting the emotional response that you're going for, you can just pause and explain yourself. Again, this is following the theme from the first tip, which is that awkwardness is compounded when it goes unrecognized and unspoken. But when you have the social savviness and the confidence to just bring it up, it dissipate.

Can I recently laughed so hard that I threw up. And I'll tell you why. Because I was in an umami burger.

Now, the next type of awkwardness is maybe one of the most common, and this is one that you want to turn around when you don't know what to do in a conversation. We've all had that moment where you can't think of what to say and it leads to an awkward silence or worse, ends the conversation entirely. If you do run into this and you don't know how to respond to a question, straining to keep that trailing conversation going could be even more awkward. And instead, what you can do is something so awkward that it actually saves the conversation. The hard pivot. You just take the conversation in a brand new direction or drop something completely random in to lighten the mood. Like this.

What was that look about? I just offered to save your life by flying and you did look away. I felt terrible. Now?

No, I. Marry me.

Did you say chimpanzee or chimpanzee fork?

I like that we haven't done that before.

Wanna see my socks?

Yeah. Now, in my opinion, the best of these hard pivots is the first one. Marry me. And that's because the joke has a positive subtext towards Conan. So when you're flat out of things to say and you introduce one of these hard pivots, keep in mind that the more positive the subtext is, the more likely it is to be laughed at and accepted by whoever you're speaking to. Now, I have definitely been a bit random in covering these awkward moments because it can come up in so many different kinds of scenarios. But there is a common thread that ties all of these things together. And as always, this most important piece comes down to a mindset with Aubrey in particular. She isn't trying to do what she is supposed to do in any of these situations. She's not micromanaging what people think think of her.

Yeah, I try to have fun with it and not take it too seriously because I just, the minute that I like really get wrapped up in that and think like, oh, this is what I need to say or this is whatever, it's over.

This is the great paradox of self improvement as it relates to confidence, charisma and attraction. On the one hand, there are concrete things that you can do to be more likable and comfortable in social scenarios. On the other hand, overloading yourself with what you should do is no fun at all. And. And it's going to make you come across as stiff and robotic. So the best advice for using this channel is worth repeating now. And it's to pick just one thing to focus on at a time. Maybe it's adding another sentence after the small talk. Maybe it's playing around with some hard pivots. Let that be the one habit that you develop, while for everything else, just be as you are today. And that might mean that you say.

Random, vulnerable things and I've been really hormonal lately.

Or it might mean that you joke around about your own insecurities.

Do I look cool?

You look awesome. Sweet. But weirdly enough, when you allow these moments to just happen naturally and you don't try to fix all of them, you tap into the same core of Aubrey's appeal, which is that she isn't putting on airs. And in the long term, it's that comfort with your own awkwardness that winds up turning it into something attractive.

You're the most fascinating person I've talked to in quite a long time. I'm serious. This is really good stuff.

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