Confident Conversations: How To Talk To Anyone

Hey, Dr. Aziz here. Today, I wanted to share with you one simple concept about conversations that can help radically increase your ability to start conversations with people, sustain conversations, have engaging conversations. Just really have an experience that feels fluid and natural and organic and not stilted or awkward or full of those silences that are just so uncomfortable when you're starting to get to know someone. This is something that I've studied for quite a bit just in myself and also in a number of the clients that I've been working with. There's a sticking point, right? You know, there's this idea of, okay, you know, if I'm shy and I want to get more social and confident, I need to start putting myself out there a little more. Now, it's not new information. Everyone knows that, right? But then there's a sticking point, which is like, okay, if I were to see someone and I just said, hey, or how's it going? Or what's up? Then what do I do? There's this, like, moment of, like, what. What happens next? I don't quite understand. This is confusing to me. It's unknown. And I get nervous and I get tense and awkward. And so we have to have an idea of what to do in the initial part of the conversation to get it going. And I call this the bridge. So the bridge in a conversation is incredibly important. What's going to happen is the first part of a conversation is the greeting. You need to initiate contact. You need to initiate interaction. That could be by saying hi to someone, saying, you know, using a greeting. What's up? How's it going? Hey there. Or at least even if you don't start with that, you have to get their attention in some way, right? You have to be like, even sometimes you don't need to say something. You can just be looking at them and they can look back at you, and you can just jump into the bridge. But you just need to somehow start with a greeting. And a key thing about greetings is that the more warm and familiar you can make them, the better effect they have. So, you know, if you do a greeting, like, how do you do? You know, we tend to put on this over formal air when we're meeting someone. You know, just imagine. And this is not just necessarily for dating. This could be meeting anyone, right? This is just general social comfort, putting yourself out there, starting conversations. But it applies to dating as well. You tend to go into overly formal mode. Hi, how do you do? Hello there. Who talks like that? Just more casual, like, what's up? How's it going, hey there. Something like that. Notice the tone. So you can do the same wording in a very stilted way. Hey there versus hey there, how's it going? What's up? So, and this is not rocket science. This is the kind of, this is probably how you communicate with your friends. You know, you get, you know, pick up the phone with a friend, like, hey, what's up? Right? It's just very casual, very comfortable. That's how you want to initiate with people. And that greetings, that warmth, that familiarity. But then here's the piece that's missing because you know how to have a conversation. You've done this before. Even if you're, you know, tend to not have that much social interaction right now, you know how to have a conversation, you know, so that means, you know, you talk to someone about what's, what's going on in your life or ask them questions. And if you don't, you know, check out more on this blog about social skills and you will know how to start to have a conversation. But my sense is you already, when you're comfortable, then as someone you know well and your friends, or you've known them for a long time, family member, you know how to have a conversation. You know, tell them what's going on about something or ask some questions or share. But the challenge is when it's someone you don't know that well, it would be really challenging to go up to someone and say, hey, how's it going? And they're like, oh, hey. And you say, so, you know, what do you got going on this weekend? Now that might work, right? I'm not saying that there's nothing here is set in stone, but if you try to get too deep with someone right away, they're going to be like, you know, if you're in a bookstore or something or at a bus stop, they're going to be like, I don't know you. I don't know how much to tell you. And maybe you'll find someone who's really friendly and they'll just share everything. But, you know, just to be able to have a skill set that gives you more options, more, you know, more sort of refined ability. In this area, you need to know how to use the bridge. And the bridge is, is basically how to bring the conversation to a place where you can say basically what's going on with you and they feel comfortable to share with you. And the bridge is you can use something in the environment or a shared experience that you can then ask a question about comment on. All conversations just consist of comments or statements and questions. So the bridge is you make a comment or a statement or both about something that you both are experiencing. So just think about this for a minute. It depends on what environment you're in. If you're in a bookstore, what kind of bridges could you make? They could say, hey, how's it going? They look up, you could say, what book do you have there? That is a bridge, right? It's something in the environment. You're not saying, hey, how's it going? So what are you doing tonight? They're like. But you say, hey, how's it going? What book do you have there? I just did this the other day. I was out with a client doing some in field work and we were in a bookstore and we were working on conversation starters. And he was actually, the first time we went out and he was stalling out. He was really nervous. And so what I do in that instance is I berate him mercilessly and then I push him to go talk to someone. No, no, at that point I say, don't worry about it. You're just getting familiar. Why don't you just watch me do it? I'm going to model it a few times. And once you've seen it, you realize it's not that hard to do and you can do it too. So I think that's. We learn much better by modeling than by shame or punishment or all that stuff that we do to ourselves. So we're in the bookstore and just right after I said that, I turned, there's a person there. He's walking by, and I say, hey, what is that? And I happened to see the name of the author and I said, is that a Heinlein book? And if you're a fantasy buff, Robert Heinlein, he wrote Starship Troopers. And it was a. Was it Starship Troopers or a different book? I don't remember. I believe it was Starship Troopers. And so. So I said, oh, is that a highland book? The guy's like, yeah, it's Starship Troopers. And I was like, oh. And that point, I'd read the book because I'm a sci fi geek. So I was like, oh, yeah, that's a cool book. And then we just talked for about a minute about the book and then the movie, which is terrible in an awesome way if you haven't seen it. Xander, the nemesis of Caspar Van Dien. And so we chatted about the book for a little while now. That was it. And I said, oh, Take it easy. And I walked off. That was the bridge. I could have at that point deepened the conversation, you know, oh, are you into more sci fi books or what else have you read? Or, you know, we could branch out of the immediate environment in the book he's holding to more about him, or I could share more about myself and we can have a more deep conversation in a way. But that's not part of the bridge. The bridge is just that initial thing that you can bond over in the environment. So other examples of bridge, this one is, you know, tried and true, but the weather. Now, I wouldn't recommend always relying on this one, but sometimes, you know, just a quick bridge. Hey, how's it going? Pretty good, man. It's hot. Yeah. Hey, blah, blah, blah. That could be the bridge right there. Just a short comment, you know, shared experience. I was, you know, I'm in my office building here and it's really hot right now. It's summertime in Portland. It was 90 degrees yesterday. Now if you're from other places in the world, you might think, small potatoes, 90 degrees. But for me, that's hot. And our air conditioning broke yesterday and it's fixed now, thank God. But yesterday was broke. And I remember I was walking around outside doing some errands and I had maybe four conversations with people where they're like, of course it's hot outside, it's hot out. And I'm like, yeah, my air conditioning broke. And then we commiserate over that for a minute and that's. Those are perfect bridges. So whether you are going to, you know, chat with everyone you see, which recommend it's good social experiment. But whether you're going to do that or you just want to develop that skill and use it when there is that person you want to talk to. So that's a great way to start a conversation. And if you watch 30 Days to Dating Mastery and get in that program, go in depth on how to use this to start conversations with women that you find incredibly beautiful and compelling and drawn to. You might even think they're out of your league, but you can go start a conversation with them. Now. It doesn't involve some sort of weird, you know, pickup line or running a script or something like that where you, you know, you number close her in five minutes. If you're familiar with the whole pickup artist community, then you know that stuff. But this is just about being your authentic self and being able to put yourself out there. And so if you see a beautiful woman, say, in a coffee shop at a Starbucks, you know, and you have, you know, she. She's in front of you in line and you're thinking there like, oh, God, she's pretty. I always remember, makes me think of the line from an old Simpsons where Homer. It's like Homer's. It's one of their flashback episodes where Homer's dating Marge. And I don't know what he's doing. He's doing something stupid. He's like smashing something. I think it's like a meteorological box up on the hills of Springfield. And he's smashing it. And then for no reason, just because he's like, you know, kind of an immature, stupid guy, he smashes the thing and then he runs over to her and he's like. He starts patting her head and he goes, you got purdy hair. This is one of the greatest lines that I think. And I always think of that when I think of a woman. I think she's really beautiful. I just imagine the horribly awkward rejection practice of going up to her and saying, you got pretty hair. Who knows? It might work. But instead of doing something like that, what you can do is use this concept of the bridge. So let's say it's a Starbucks and you're thinking, what am I going to say to her? And then she orders her drink and she's standing over in the area and waiting for it. And then you order your drink and you're standing, you know, you walk over there. First of all, I'd recommend using what I call the three second rule, which you might have heard of before. And I talk about it in one of my products. But the idea is that if there's an attractive woman and there's a moment to start a conversation with her, you got to do it within three seconds or else you're going to talk yourself out of it. But that's a side thing. So you walk over and she's ordered a drink, and you walk over to her and instead of hovering and looking at the CD rack for 10 minutes, you just say something to her. What's a perfect bridge to say in that moment? Now you're not in the situation, so maybe your mind's a little clearer and you can think about this stuff. You can just imagine, you know, next time you're in a coffee shop and you see an attractive woman, even if you're not at the point where you're going to go talk to her, notice the environment. What are bridges that you can use? So what's the most obvious simple one? What did you order? What are you Waiting on. You can say, hey, how's it going? What are you waiting on? Simple as that, right? And she says, oh, I'm waiting on such and such. And then from there, you can start flirting with her, which I go into in 30 days to dating Master. You can start teasing her. You can ask her questions. You can, you know, kind of help her feel more comfortable. There's so many things you can do. But what we're talking about now is the bridge. And so just a simple thing to comment in the environment. So what I really recommend is going out and about during your day and whether you want to start conversations with attractive women, women that you want to be dating right now, or you're in a relationship and you just want to get more comfortable talking to people. You just want to build your social confidence, or you're interested in making friendships with men and women and just really getting a better social network going. The key here is to just look for opportunities for bridges, basically. So think about that. When you're out in an environment, you see someone, they're holding something like, oh, I could ask on that, or I could comment on that. I could comment on their clothing. I could. I could ask them where they got that bag. I could comment on this environment. Or there's like a loud noise and you're like, God, that's intense. Right? That's just a simple use of the environment around you. So start really paying attention to your environment. And the key thing you have to do in order to be able to do this and take advantage of this fully is you got to be engaged in the environment. That means not all the time, because I love to walk around with my headphones and listen to music or audio books or whatever. But when you want to practice this, you have to take out the headphones. You have to put the cell phone in your pocket. You can't be looking at it and texting as you walk. Just really being engaged and present in the environment around you. And you'll find dozens of things to comment on, dozens of things to use in this bridge. So that's the key concept of the bridge for today. I can go more in depth in other blogs about conversations, including how to have great goodbyes that are comfortable and clear and not those awkward like, see ya, where you just kind of end it in this weird way or you drift apart. No, I had a clear, you know, comfortable goodbye. I'm gonna get into that later in a different blog. But today was all about the bridge. So go out, look for those bridges and practice them and I'll talk to you soon. Until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are.