You can tell when I’m passionate about a topic. My hands flail around, I make intense eye contact and most importantly, I’m well spoken. It’s as if I become another person entirely – my words flow together and I speak intelligently about an issue. I engage the other person with questions and thoughts.
The rest of the time, however, I’m fumbling around like an idiot.
Lately, several of my friends have made comments about how they converse or would like to converse. I myself have been thinking about this topic lately as I seem to have had more awkward conversations than usual as of late. Here are some of the common concerns I’m hearing.
Moving beyond small talk
I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of small talk. I don’t have the patience for it. My definition of small talk means the typical response to “How are you?” (Fine), moving into what you did that day, and talk about trending topics without any deeper discussion. No personal opinion, thought or story shared. You don’t care about the conversation nor try to steer it in another direction.
Small talk is necessary up front. You can’t delve straight into the person’s inner thoughts and feelings. To move to the next level, I ask open-ended questions and pay lots of attention (yes, more so then I usually do). If they don’t respond to the open-ended questions or body language is shifty, I move on.
Sustaining conversation
As I said, it is easy to tell when I’m passionate about a topic. Trouble is I cannot have that level of passion all the time, for every subject. I have to rely on the other person to take the reins occasionally. I love hearing your stories, I want to hear your stories, but I can’t always be asking YOU questions. It’s fairly simple. I ask you a question – you tell me your story – then you say, “How about you?” If you’re not interested, don’t bother. But then neither will I.
Awkward moments
Not having a filter, I often dig myself into holes during conversations. Most of the time I can self-deprecate out of such a situation, but what if that person does not respond? What if you find yourself without anything to talk about? What if you have no idea what they are talking about but feel like you should? If you care about the person, do you work through the awkward conversation moments or is that a red flag?
I’m very curious as to people’s pet peeves, thoughts and suggestions on how to combat these conversation blunders. I’m pretty sure my pet peeve came out in sustaining conversation, but I’m sure there are others. Please share.
I could *fill* your blog with my conversational pet peeves. Examples:
- It’s all about you! Because everything you say is INTERESTING!
- You giggle submissively, a lot.
- Although I am weird, you make zero effort to learn about my world, which makes me feel marginalized.
- You. Talk. Like. A. Valley. Girl. STOP IT. You’re a grown woman, for god’s sake.
- You aren’t funny, but think you are. And never get the hint when nobody laughs.
- You’re just waiting to talk.
- Non-sequitirs. Sorry, was I boring you?
Pet peeves? People who talk too slow, say like or um a lot, repeat themselves or misuse big words.
I do tend to talk a lot, but let’s face it, I’m pretty damn interesting.
At least my mom says so. Er, wait, no, she ignores me. Damn it.