TSSL - Episode 19 - More Great Tips for Talking to People!

Once again we are just talking shop. We talk about body language, barriers to communication (from People Skills by Robert Bolton), seeing things at gray as opposed to everything being black & white, overcoming the fear of rejections and much more. 


Music by Wax Mustang - Powerball


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Transcript

Unknown: 0:51

The window baby running away from the body I'm taking much in the back seat. For the Powerball we can do it all with the with the wineo newest games off of she sing along, man. And just when it couldn't get better, she talked to my ear saying you got the chance. You got to choose us the bison. You told me to walk in the right way sundown on a highway, you know the feeling. Hey. Welcome back to another episode of the Social Skills Lab. I'm your host, Nathan, Ahmet. This is episode number 19. I don't know it's today. Saturday, February 5 2022. So it's the first episode of the year I think it might be. Well, Happy. Happy New Year. So how's it going out there? How's your social skills coming along? Yeah, so this is a podcast, about learning social skills, if you want to improve your social skills, or expand your social circle, for like, very shy, I used to be I still am somewhat of an introvert. But so yeah, I grew up as a pretty shy kid and learn quite a bit along the way, and was able to improve my social skills, it's just a skill. It's a skill set, like anything else. Like you know, if you wanted to learn how to, if you want to learn how to work on a car, just start learning and then eventually you get really, really good at it. If you put the time in and the effort, eventually, you'll get a lot better. And you'll be very proficient. So social skills are pretty much the same thing. They seem like a real enigma. Sometimes, if you if you aren't aware that you can actually get better at it. Or if there's a lot of information that you can read. I mean, I don't know how you aren't aware that information is just flying through the air at this point. I mean, pretty much everyone has a computer smartphone, you can just google how to be better at anything, you know, find stuff. So and then that's podcast, it's I tried to be a one stop shop resource, I just pretty much tried to tell you everything that I've learned along the way, and give you a lot of other resources that you can use that that helped me that I found to be very helpful. But yeah, just use this one, this podcast as a resource. There'll be a lot of information. So I always recommend going back to the very beginning episode one, I kind of I kind of have some, or I try to have a natural progression through one every episode. I mean, the later episodes, I'm kind of just jumping around and lots of more lots of tips. But the first 10 or so episodes, I tried to give the very, very basics, where to start and whatnot. So I very much recommend going back and listening, listening to every single episode, not just once or twice, but you know, use this as a reference. So in a year, go back and listen to every episode again. And then another couple years, listen to it again. Because if you're improving your social skills, you'll definitely find stuff that you've forgot about or something that would make a lot more sense as you get better. So let's see here. I kept mentioning that I wanted to go through this one book. This is one of the books I recommend. It's called people skills by Robert Bolton. This is one of the first books I read. It's really really good. Let me see it's about it's almost 300 pages. That's why I'm saying I can only really be a resource because this book has so much great information. I would literally have to read the whole book to you. There's no way I could give you all the information that's in this book. And then like another other books and stuff like that. It's just There's way, way, way, way too much information. So a lot of times when people like I'll see posted online, like I'm on the Reddit subreddit called social skills, just put in social skills, read it. People put questions and stuff like that in there. And they're like, am I'm really shy, I can only be friends. I don't know what to do. And people will like, put little, the respond. And there's definitely a lot of good, really good information. But there's no way you could tell someone how to be a lot better at social skills in a paragraph. It's like saying, How do I become a mechanic, and then hoping that someone will explain to you how to be a mechanic in 200 words, you know, you actually have to go out and learn how to become a mechanic just like you have to go out and learn how to be a social person. Luckily, we have so much resources that, like I said, if you're patient, very, very patient, and willing to make the mistakes and willing to just talk to new people, that you'll get better. Over time, you'll get better. At least that's what I think. But I'm no doctor, so or a lawyer. So don't don't sue me if it doesn't work. What else? Oh, see, I was saying this book, Robert Bolton. He has. This is a this is one of the things I thought was pretty interesting. He wrote down barriers, it's all in chapter two barriers to communication. And he said, Okay, let me he starts this with a quote that says, By role, how theologian and educator a barrier to communication is something that keeps meaning from meeting, meaning barriers exists between all people, making communication much more difficult than most people seem to realize. It is false to assume that if one can talk he can communicate, because so much of our education misleads people into thinking that communication is easier than it is, they become discouraged, and they give up when they run into difficulty, because they do not understand the nature of the problem. They do not know what to do. The Wonder is not that communicating is difficult as it is but it but that it occurs as much as it does. kind of goes I think this is similar to what I understood, way back when I was learning. Occasionally you'll meet someone who is a talker will talk a lot. Sometimes they're actually very good at communicating, and are fun to talk to you. But sometimes, you'll meet someone that talks a lot. And they don't really understand. They're not they're not actually making very good communication, because they're annoying or the they talk you're off or whatever. So just because someone talks a lot doesn't mean they're really good at a, an effective communicator. And I've noticed that after reading this, they're getting a lot of stuff in here. So it says here why roadblocks are high risk responses, so he can talk about roadblocks. At first glance, some of these barriers seem quite innocent. Praise, reassurance, logical responses, questions and well intentioned, well intentioned advice are often thought of as positive factors in interpersonal relations. Why then do behavioral scientists think that these 12 types of responses think of these 12 types of responses as potentially damaging to communication, these 12 ways of responding are viewed as high risk responses rather than inevitable destructive elements of all communication, they are more likely to block conversation, thwart the other person's problem solving efficiency, and increase the emotional distance between people then other ways of communication. However, at times, people use these responses with little or no obvious negative effect. So I'm just gonna run through these real quick. So these first four are judging. They are criticizing namecalling diagnosing, praising evaluative Lee. The next ones are sending solutions, ordering threatening moralizing, excessive or inappropriate questioning, advising. And then these last ones are avoiding the others concerns. Diverting, logical argument reassuring and then he goes into each one and discusses Why? I'm not going to get into it because it is kind of a long chapter. But so those are the 12 things that people will often do that create roadblocks communication. And like he said, not always, but they're definitely more risk risky to do. So read the book, if you want to get into that. I remember a lot of these I was like, Oh, wow, that's weird, like, praising invaluably. Asking questions. I mean, it's very I would just read it, because it'll make a lot more sense. I can read the book to you. Alright. So yeah, I mentioned that wanted to go over that. So we did. I just want to say too, I noticed, a couple episodes ago, I talked about sympathy and empathy. And why one was better than the other in certain situations or whatnot. Just make a, I just want to make a correction, I had those backwards. So I said, I said empathy was recognizing emotion, but not going there with them. And sympathy was understanding emotion, and going there with and going there with them, but I hadn't I had them backwards or something like that. So I just want to make that correction real quick. I don't know if I said this before, but if I didn't, I noticed sometimes I'll ask someone a question. Like, uh, I don't know, let's just say I ask someone what their favorite football team is. Because I hear them talking about football. And they'll tell me and blah, blah, blah. We'll talk about a little bit. And then like, I was like, Well, usually when I ask someone a question like that, I kind of want them to ask me the same question back. You know, it'll kind of like keep the conversation going, or whatever. So if anyone, if anybody asks you like, Oh, hey, what would you do this weekend? Stuff like that. Just make sure to ask them the same question back. Because sometimes they actually just want you to ask them. And it's cool. Like, I mean, it keeps the conversation going. You can get always getting some good discussions about whatever. But I mean, I've noticed that actually, people aren't very good at doing this. So a lot of times, either No, I want them to ask me the question back and they don't. I'll either just forget about it. But sometimes if I want to, I'll just be like, all this tell. I'll just, I'll just answer my own question. I've noticed that it's really not a big deal to do that. But yeah, just keep that in mind. Ask them the same question back. Sometimes it's, you know, it works out. I had some friends over. My buddy and his girlfriend were over. And we're watching movies, like all day and stuff. And I were kind of going around, see who wants to pick the next movie, or the next show? His girlfriend? We asked her several times, she's like, Oh, no, I like her. And then one time, like you sure you don't want to pick she's like, she said, Now I don't want to pick because if I pick, and it's bad, I don't. It's I'll feel bad or whatever. And as it was funny to me, because I totally get that. Like, sometimes you feel you feel pressure when you when you're making the decisions. And you can, it's hard to even enjoy it because you're worried if other people are enjoying it or not. And it was just funny to hear someone actually say it out loud. And I guess in some ways, you could, you could you could say, oh, like, you know, lack of confidence or whatever. I don't know what it was. But at the same time, hearing someone be so transparent, and authentic. was a kind of life's like so refreshing. You don't really hear people just verbalize their own vulnerabilities. So clearly, she kind of decided nonchalantly so it was like I don't know. I just appreciated it. I thought it was pretty cool. Like I'm, I'm personally trying to be more authentic and transparent. It's a real journey, man. Having we talked about having a good attitude. And I wrote this down. I think it's a good tip. It says, if you're gonna if someone asks you to do something, do your best to. And if like a lot of times if someone asks you to do something, you don't really want to do it. Like my sister moved. And I she asked me she asked if she's if I can help her move. And, you know, anytime someone asked me to move, I don't want to do it. It's a lot of work. Part of me is like, yeah, totally. I mean, it's my sister, of course I'm gonna help her. So anytime you have to do something like that. Just do it with a really good attitude. Like I was just, you know, I made sure I got some good night's sleep and And they're bright and early. I wasn't pissy or annoyed or acted that way. I was just like, hey, how's it going? Let's get Alright, let's let's, let's rock and roll. Let's get it done. And bam, we banged it up real quick. It's a real drain, when if you're working on people, and someone just has it like a pissy attitude, it just sucks the energy out of the room. And it makes everything like a job that is going to take eight hours, can easily take 16 Just because the team's morale drops when someone has a pissy attitude. So I mean, if anything, if you're having a hard time mustering up a great attitude, at least try to be neutral, or not feeling great, you can at least be neutral, but don't have a shitty attitude. Especially if you have a shitty attitude at work, you're not going to go very far. If you have to do something do with a good attitude. There's something I was thinking of, I see posted, a lot of people have a big fear of rejection. And, you know, if I go and do this, I'm going to look dumb, it definitely happens. And I still feel it, here and there. But when it comes up, this is something that I I personally tried to do. I think it's, it can be very helpful. Sometimes I think, you know, if I if I do this thing, or if I try to be like social and I mess up or talk to new people try to talk someone new and just falls flat on my face or try to reach out to someone I haven't talked to and just doesn't go or whatever. Sometimes I think it feels like it's gonna be like a, a big mark on me or whatever, I don't know, I just inflate the risks involved when actually the risk is very low. But sometimes I'll think, you know, in 100 years, no one is actually really gonna care. No one is going to be on like, Wikipedia and 100 years, and your your fuckup is gonna be on the front page. It's not like, you go and try to talk someone and then or you try to like talk to a group of people. And they all just like, look at you weird, and you feel dumb. And then you go there the next day, and they'd like there's a plaque up on the wall. It says in this spot, Jake Anderson tried to talk to a group of people and he looked really stupid. Everyone make fun of them. And that plaque is there forever. That's I mean, that's what it can feel sometimes, like, everybody's gonna remember this. But really, in 100 years, no one's really going to no one's even going to know your name, probably. So I wouldn't worry about something else, too, that I wrote down is I know that sometimes people feel very concerned about others around them and in society. And I the only way to sing is how do I describe this? I guess it's just being too nice. So I think some people are like total assholes. But a lot of people are just like way, way, way too nice. And I noticed that they're uncomfortable asking for stuff or whatever. I've noticed that I've actually become very comfortable or much more comfortable doing this. So I wrote down here it says, I'm okay with slightly inconveniencing others. So trying to think what good, good example. So let me think, Oh, I think it was like at the Verizon place, trying to get a switch and a bill over. Like, my sister was paying for like, internet and I was like, I'll take care of it. So we're switching it over. And then I was asking the guy, he said it was gonna be like, $100 a month. And I was like, Is there a way I could get a discount on it? My sister's like, I don't know. She said something like, Nate, he can't do it, blah, blah. Why even bother asking? I'm like, I'm just asking. And he's like, yeah, sorry, I can't and it's like, don't be afraid to ask people for discounts and shit. I actually do it a lot. And unsurprisingly, more than I would expect, I am able to get a discount. So just that's just one example of being willing to slightly inconvenient others. Just I think it's, it's okay to do I mean, like I said, it's only a slight inconvenience. I noticed too that I came across this thing again about body language and said body language was 50% of the communique of communication. And I just want to then that needs to be said so many times over and over again. If you are not 100% sure that your body language looks really good. Then you need to focus on that for the next month, next year. Okay, next two years, because it is such a huge part of communication that if you aren't really really conscious of it, it will it will be make you less effective. And I was watching some videos on a Body language the other night, it's been a while since I've even really thought about it. But I was like, you know, I should probably check out some videos on it. And particularly, I was looking at hand gestures. There's a lot of really good videos out there for this stuff. And most people aren't studying body language and hand gestures, but they're so but they're so important communicating and can make you a much more interesting and effective communicator. That yeah, I mean, so many, most people aren't doing this. So if you're the one person that is, you can make significant gains very quickly. In that area. Something else I wanted to mention is I wrote down here, a good vibe is like, high quality oil. For your Social Engine, having a good vibe really is like the high octane jump, pushing the Nitro button for talking to people, because everybody likes to be around someone with a good vibe. I mean, that's just a fact. So joke around, don't take yourself too seriously, don't take life. So seriously, be very, very present, have really good eye contact and smile, stuff like that. That'll improve your vibe. And it makes everything so much easier. It makes something that's kind of effective will make it super effective. And then I guess one more thing I want to mention is it says here. Don't say yes. But say yes. And so this is something I learned. It's I guess it's kind of like when you're talking to someone, maybe in a i, it's hard to say what situations I think this comes up in a lot. I can't really think of any specifically on the top of my head. But basically, if you're having a discussion with someone, and then and you say yeah, but this kind of just basically, you sounded like you were agreeing with him. But what you did was you just in a way negated everything that they just said to you. And that's kind of like a roadblock. So I found that it's more effective to say yes, and in a lot of situations, that way, you don't negate what the other person just said. Because if you negate what they just said, they're going to be much less willing to listen to what you're saying. So that's gonna be it for today. Hope you guys are having a good time. And others pandemics to run on. So I heard that people's levels of stress, or anxiety or depression or are on the rise. I think I've managed to keep my levels relatively low. I mean, I definitely don't feel depressed, I feel pretty good. And I think that's because I'm out there still socializing with people, I'm still connecting with people. I'm meeting new people. And I'm also I'm also working on new skills, I'm trying new things. And like I said, I think life is really about becoming a better person. I think that's what makes life rich and enjoyable. So So yeah, if you're, if you're stressed out or whatever, just you know, keep working on yourself and go for a walk out in nature. Like I went out to the beach, yesterday. And a lot of times when I go walks in nature, I make sure to leave my phone, and my headphones in my car. I that's one of the times where I'm not plugged in. Because I'm so much. I'm on my phone a lot. I'm on my laptop a lot. I'm connected to the internet, a lot. Basically, I'm watching TV a lot, or a movie, some watching something. If I'm out in nature, I want to be completely in nature. I want to reconnect with the analog, you know, be very present, I think, yeah, I think it helps me to be more present person when I can, you know, consciously unplug and just get back out into this floating rockin space. But I noticed that, you know, if you're depressed, I would talk to someone, I think there's like, I'll see, I'll check this out. I'm going to look for a website or something, because I thought I found some free places. Or I heard a place where you can call people and talk to him or whatever. Because you can always talk to your friends or your family about stuff. But it does feel very good to talk to a professional if you can. Because I saw that or I heard something like talking to a therapist is basically like going to the gym for your brain. So I actually signed up for better help. It was it's about like 200 I think it was like 254 a month, which basically is like four sessions. I just figured I was like hey, everyone's going to therapy, maybe we'll try it out to see what it's like. And I'll tell you what, man it's been awesome. I've been able to talk about things with my therapist that I kind of just wanted to work out because life is very confusing things you go through sometimes you don't always process it the correct way you feel like you you have a good sense of what's going on but man the brain is so complicated man there's no way you could figure it out. Sometimes it's good to like talk things out because things that I thought were just black and white Hey, you know what turns out the mature way to look at it is it's gray not everything is exactly the way I thought it was. And even though my assessment might be correct, it's more healthy to just to know that there's no way it could be 100 Correct 100% Correct about anything things are you know, there's a lot of nuance to stuff so like I said, Not everything's black and white but it's been very helpful to talk to someone I recommend it like I said, it is kind of expensive but I felt I felt it was worth it and I'm definitely feel like I'm getting my money out of it so I guess that's about it for this week. I hope you guys have a super awesome week. Go out there don't take yourself too seriously like I always say and that's it for you lady may be feeling the effects of a past life have to haul from a past life took the right path on the wrong 90 Japan's taking this right. What a bizarre life I'll pull up the car right it's a Mustang with the beats Where have you seen him? What'd it look like? Oh, women are taken for granted. Upper Milan and a cannon issue for the moon and the stars numerous bras beautiful being the Godfather Keep the chin cell below people with the lucky young Lennon and the nice to see to press down so now in life is better with Buddy you bet on the brother you win wax month in a tank tops with the eight ball. It's a check. If it wasn't for you, we could be if it wasn't for you, we could be