Bbc planet earth. How to Always Have Something Better to Talk About Than the Weather. Six years ago, when I lived in a snowy mountain village and paid my bills by cleaning high-end sinks and toilets, someone said something that prompted me to confront an uncomfortable truth about myself. A well-meaning coworker mentioned that she had been talking to another housekeeper about me. Oh? “She said, ‘David is a such great guy to work with, it’s just that he’s just so quiet.‘” I don’t remember how I responded, but I assume I tried to disagree somehow, and went back to my work hoping nobody would ever say that to me again. Quiet. As if I have nothing to say. I remember the rest of that day. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about what any of you want to talk about.
My little internal rant echoed a common human pattern, though I didn’t see it at the time: When people feel inadequate in some way, they tend to make up whatever prejudices or beliefs they need to feel okay about it. Of course, nobody realizes it while they’re doing it. The Black Hole of Social Anxiety Recovering From Shyness. The Secret to Connecting With People. When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. ~ Ernest Hemingway For a long time I didn’t feel like I had a lot of people to relate to.
Being shy, I didn’t find myself in a lot of conversations with people I didn’t know, and when I did, I was uncomfortable. Bonds did form, deep ones sometimes, but it was always a product of circumstance. I’ve shed much of my shyness through deliberately speaking up more and other forms of comfort-zone-pushing, but I eventually made a discovery that really opened the floodgates for me. The secret to connecting with people is this: Always try to understand what people really mean when they speak. It doesn’t sound like a huge revelation. Next time you’re out, try watching an exchange between two people. However, things do flow more smoothly when one person’s opinion matches the other’s. But that leaves only a small segment of the population with which we have the potential to connect.
Always let the speaker be the star. The Barrier Relax. ParaNorman | The New Animated Zombie Comedy from LAIKA.