Dr. Aziz explains that sounding confident in conversations depends less on storytelling or appearance and more on asking better questions. He contrasts anxious conversational strategies (e.g., the generic “how's it going?”) with confident alternatives that take leadership of the interaction, such as “What are you into right now?” and “What are you excited about in your life right now?”
If you want to sound way more confident in conversations, it's not about telling the best story possible or looking really good. It's actually about asking really good questions. And confident people ask different questions than someone who's insecure or socially anxious. For example, if you're anxious, you might say, how's it going? Cool. That was like, my main conversation strategy for years. Confident people ask questions like this, so what are you into right now? Or what are you excited about in your life right now? Or what do you do for fun? And these aren't complicated questions. They're just different. And anxious people are afraid. I gotta stay on script. I shouldn't ask anything strange like that. But actually, those conversations are way more interesting. You're taking leadership of the interaction, which is a high confidence move.
