Ask The Shrink: How Do I Make My Conversations More Engaging?

And now it's time to Ask the Shrink. Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is Ask the Shrink, where I answer questions from you, the listener. And this question is all about conversation, confidence, and connecting, which is a theme we've been doing as we've been building up to the Super Early Bird and now during the Super Early Bird for the Supremely Confident Conversation Master event. So we have just a few more days to claim that ticket. If you haven't done that already, I would love to see you in Portland for that. You can find out about that@shrinkforthshyguy.com under this episode or go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and check out our events there. So here's the question. I can start conversations and even keep them going. The challenge for me is engagement. Either I'm just going through the motions but not really that interested, or it seems like they're doing that. It's a nice, friendly conversation, but it never leads beyond that. Oof. I can relate to this one. This is where I spent many years and there are so many circumstances that can create this. And so I'm going to share what I can in this answer. And of course, for a full unpacking and just the level of depth we can get into, I highly recommend coming to see me in Portland for the Conversation Master event. And you will leave that just a total understanding of conversations, why they're engaging, why they're not. But let me give you some answers now that will help you immediately today. So a couple of things. Let me ask you this. What do you think the main reason for a lack of engagement is? In conversations where one or both people don't feel that interested even if they're having the conversation, they might just be going through the motions, as this listener said. What do you think is that biggest reason for lack of engagement? What's your guess? Is it that someone doesn't know what to say? Is it that the topics are different? People aren't interested in the same topic? Actually, not really, because there's a technique called Follow the Fascination, which I was talking about in a previous episode recently where I've talked to people about something I know absolutely nothing about and would not even think that I was interested in. But I can always find questions to ask that keep me engaged. So it's not the topic. And no, you can not know what to say for a second or for a minute. You can halt, you can question, you can pause, you can be like, hmm, you know, I'm not sure what to ask here or whatever. And that's not a block to engaging conversations. In fact, that can make a conversation even more engaging when someone is authentic like that. No, that's not the biggest obstacle. The biggest obstacle to engaging lack of engaging conversations is excessive niceness. Excessive niceness leads to surface level phony, false or just superficial conversations that lack depth and engagement. And so the biggest obstacle then to engagement is our own old patterns of niceness. Here's a few examples of how that shows up. One is you don't want to ask anything that is outside the box. You don't want. You just stick to the straight and narrow of conversation scripts that people have had a thousand times before. So whether it's about their work or their family or their health or anything, you're just really narrow like, oh, neat, oh, what happened then? Oh, and you're not asking anything about what you really want to know or that's unusual or that you're really curious about. You're just sticking right there because you're like, well, I don't know if this would bother them, I don't know if this would upset them. I don't know if they'd want to answer this question. So a lot of people pleasing is going on there. Another reason why there can be a lack of engagement is because you're being excessively nice. And so you're not wanting to share too much information. Not wanting to share information that might, might be controversial or upsetting or you're thinking, I don't know if they're really going to be interested in this, so maybe I just won't share this part. Even though that's probably the most interesting juicy part. Or you just might not share much of yourself at all. We talked about this recently, about the necessity to share freely. So whatever the way it plays out, the biggest source of the problem is excessive niceness. And so what we need to do to have more engaging conversations is we need to be a bit edgier. Now this doesn't mean crazy shit and I don't know, taking your shirt off or whatever, you might try that. Watch me do these push ups. No, I'm just talking about just being a bit more raw, a bit more real, a bit more curious and it doesn't have to be shocking. In fact, oftentimes people don't even know that you're doing anything more or different. It's just more different for you. It feels shocking and raw to you because you've lived in this pattern and cage of niceness. For so long. But instead, we got to just experiment with practice being more real. So the way that might look is someone is sharing about something that's going on in their love life, and you ask them a real direct question. So do you love this person? Or what's the status? Have you guys hooked up yet? The context here is everything, right? So if they're talking about, yeah, we went on this date, and blah, blah, blah, and I really like them, you might say, oh, nice. So you guys hooked up yet? Right? See how I'm asking in a playful way, and all of a sudden that makes for a much more engaging conversation, doesn't it? But niceness, the old niceness in me would not let me ask that question. So you get to ask. You have more permission to ask what you really want. And then on the flip side, you can share more. You can share more directly or authentically about you, about what you like, about what you don't like, and about how you felt about something. Oftentimes the niceness makes us only want to share, like the vanilla version of the story. Yeah, we went out to dinner, and then we saw the show, and it was great. And that's your conversation. And then people are like, okay, well, that's boring, right? But if you're like, yeah, we went out to dinner, and there's this really strange thing that happened at dinner, and people are like, ooh, what's the strange thing that happened at dinner? Well, so we were sitting at this table, and across the way where there was this couple, and I was with some friends, and we were just talking and chatting. All of a sudden, one of my friends looked over and said, you know, I wonder if that couple's on their first date. And so we all kind of casually look over, not all at the same time, of course. And then my other friend's like, no way. They've been together for, like, months. And then I was like, oh, that's interesting. Let's take a bet. What do you guys think is how long they've been together? And there's like, four of us. And so everyone bet or said what they thought it was. There was no money on the line here. And I said, cool, let's go find out. So I walked over them to ask them that question. That's a true story, by the way. But so there, all of a sudden, now your sharing about the concert and the dinner or whatever is way more engaging because you're just sharing more in depth about what happened at the bland, vanilla version. And that could be anything. Instead of like, oh, the music was great. You could share about, oh, man, the music is great. Have you ever heard of. Have you ever listened to the Blank and Blank artist? And they're like, oh, no, that makes it even harder, right? Because you're like, you can't bond around your favorite songs. You can say, well, my favorite part of the concert was. And then you tell them about your favorite part. And not just like, they played the, you know, the platinum single. It was great, right? Because the person doesn't know that artist. So what are they going to engage on? We could say, you know, they played their biggest hit. It's been my favorite song for years. And I remember the first time I heard that song, I was, blah, blah, blah. I was driving in my car and I just, you know, looked out the window and started sobbing or. I don't know. Whatever your story is, it doesn't have to be crazy stuff. It's just a little more in depth, a little more detail, a little more you. You don't have to keep it all inside. And then, because the more nice you are, the more you keep it all inside, the less people know you. So let you out. As you can see, I get passionate about this topic. I get fired up about this. It's hard to contain this into just a bonus Q and A episode. So I'm gonna share one more time because the early bird ends in just a few days. The super early bird ends in just a few days where it's 90% off the full ticket price. After a couple days from now, it's going to go up to. From 197 to $9.97 for the standard early bird. So you get to save an additional 800 if you get it today or tomorrow. So I'm going to encourage you to do that. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while and you're like, you know, I think this is. I know this is helpful, but I think something more would serve me in this area of my life. The answer is yes. The more we invest in ourselves and in our growth, the further faster things happen. So if you want to really uplevel in this area of your life, come out to Portland. See me for the supremely confident conversation master. Go to shrinkforthshy guy.com to get the links for that. And until we speak again, you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Sam.