In this episode we dive into some great ways to develop a social lifestyle and where to meet new people. We also talk about some great ways to always have something cool to talk about with people, how to always have fresh topics for you socializing.
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Thank you!! - Nathan. : D
In this episode we dive into some great ways to develop a social lifestyle and where to meet new people. We also talk about some great ways to always have something cool to talk about with people, how to always have fresh topics for you socializing.
Help buy my beer ; D
https://www.patreon.com/TSSLpodcast
paypal.me/TSSLpodcast
Thank you!! - Nathan. : D
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the social skills lab, where we dive into the most important skill you'll ever learn your social skills. Why is that? Well, because it makes life more fun. It also makes it easier and more interesting. makes your job a lot easier. opens up all kinds of avenues. I'm your host, Nathan Ahmet. I've been learning social skills for about 15 years. And yeah, just I'm just a regular guy that went from being pretty shy to pretty social. And I have a lot. I've got a long way to go myself, but I just figured, hey, I'll just take a Why don't we just take a little journey with me, I guess. Okay, so last week, we talked about body language, and approbation, which also just means praise a couple things about that one dimension. So body language. Another aspect of body language is like your hand gestures. Like when you talk like how emotive you are, how expressive you are with your hands, you can actually do quite a bit of expressiveness with your hands as well. So something that I'd recommend is go on YouTube and watch some videos of some of the big late night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, or I'm trying to blank right now, Steven Cole, bear anyone. That's kind of like a regular late night host. Oh, Jimmy Fallon, too. And then, so just watch some clips of when they do their monologues, like when they were in front of a live audience. And you can see how expressive they are with their hands. And then it's so natural. It's basically expert level hand gestures. Just to give you an idea of some hand gestures you might want to adopt, like, if you see anyone doing something cool. Just take it, you know, make it your own. No one's got a patent on like, Great hand gestures, or great phrases. So it's a good way to learn how to make your hands more expressive, just helps you communicate better. Another thing about having really good body languages, it really plays a big part in your vibe. So that's another key thing about communicating is you always want to have a really good vibe. Your body language is basically a big part of having an interesting and positive vibe. On the another on the other topic of our probation, we talked about, you know, giving genuine compliments when you actually felt when you actually experience something that like, Oh, yeah, that was great. One thing I don't think I mentioned was at work, that's like a really great place, give approbation and praise out. When I was working at this company. We were doing installations of copiers and printers at these different hospitals. We were on different we were on teams, and we all were pretty much brand new. We all started at the same time. The boss was always checking in to make sure things how things were going. I always made it a point to remember which co workers were doing really well. And I would mention to him, oh, yeah, you know, Mike is doing a really good job. Or, you know, Phil, he, he, we had this issue in the, in the, in the pharmacy department. And he knew how to he was really good with the software he like, I didn't think we were going to get it figured out. But he was able to get it get it going. So I mentioned these things to the boss, like who was doing a good job, like a really good job. And I was very specific. Like I wouldn't just be generalizing like, Oh, yeah, he's good. I always made specific points of why the personnel doing a good job and so next thing you know, he I found out that he would regularly ask me how someone was doing. And I don't know, just for some reason, I believe when you do that at work, it gives you credibility, just by giving other people praise and specific praise. It just actually not only makes them look better, it makes you look better. So kind of like a decent tactic to use to use at work. This one co worker of mine I mean, everyone already knew he was really good. But I told the boss, I'm like, Man, this guy's like a genius at the job. Like, he knows everything about the product. And every time, I feel like I have an issue, I always call him and he usually helps me quite a bit. And the guy actually ended up getting promoted to be my supervisor. I think about a year later, or six months later, he was still like, doing a really good job. So I sent an email to my boss, about how like, Oh, yeah, you know, Dustin's been doing a really good job. Just wanna let you know that every time I call him, he's always available, and bla bla, bla, bla, bla. I don't really remember specifics, but I was just, you know, I just thought I'd give a shout out to him, send an email to my boss about it. And then, you know, a couple hours later, I realized, I saw an email that he had forwarded back to his boss, and then another manager, and then also to Dustin. And then Dustin replied back, thanking for He's like, really appreciate it. Getting positive. He likes positive feedback from customers. But positive feedback from co workers means even more, and I don't know, I was just like, there's something so easy to do. I mean, I was bored at work anyway, there wasn't really much going on. So I just felt like, oh, let's do this. And it goes around pretty quick. And, yeah, so stuff like that just, I think it can be very effective at work. Because you know, most people at work, they very rarely get positive feedback, at least genuine positive feedback. So, hey, I recommend doing it, I ended up getting pushed up to being a lead to as well. So, you know, it also helps your career for me in in weird ways that you don't really expect. Okay, so, this week, we are going to go into where to meet new people, and also, what to talk about. I hear that quite a bit. It's like, Well, what do you what do you talk about when you're socializing? And I totally get that, because when I was first starting out, like I'm so I was so in my head. And, you know, I would think of things to talk about, but I just wouldn't say it, because I don't know just didn't seem like oh, no, maybe they didn't really want to talk about that, or whatever. I actually have difficulty remembering what it was, like, when I first started because it was a it was a long time ago. But be it's like, now it just seems so natural and relatively easy that it's hard for me to put myself back in that mind space, I hope that you are getting something out of it. At least, you know, I tried to give a lot of like, a lot of tips and stuff and, you know, small practical ideas, as well as like big overarching ideas, I really hope you're getting something at least out of it. I just say that if you don't really know where to start, just start somewhere. I remember I was studying with a friend of mine. And he was kind of behind and we had like a test coming up. And he's like, like, I had some ideas of what we're gonna go over. And he's like, man, I don't even know where to start. And I was like, do you just start somewhere? Because that's what I do. Actually, when I feel overwhelmed, just start somewhere. And next, you know, you'll start figuring out, okay, I need to work on that. And that in this order, or whatever. Let's talk about where to meet new people. So back, let's go back to when I was kind of getting started. I was I mentioned before that I was really into the music scene, I was really into DJing and electronic music, like house and techno and stuff. And I would go out to like events and stuff like that go to underground parties or clubs. I started going to mark more to clubs and stuff just because of where I was living. There was more clubs, there was like weekly events going on. And I had just moved back to California. And most of my friends had moved away. But I did have one friend that was still around. So who was also interested in into the same music. So I started going out to these different music clubs. And I found a good weekly event that was in Northern California was in Sacramento. And I started going almost every week, because I liked the the music. They were playing there. And I just kept running into the same people. And I'd be by the by the speaker or something. And I noticed someone else was there by themselves. And I'm like, Hey, how's it going? I was like, What do you think of the DJ or something like that? We just start start talking about music or something. Sometimes you'd hit it off. Sometimes you wouldn't. After so many weeks of doing this. I kept running into the same people. So you'd be like talking to them and talking for a minute and you're like, Hey, I'm going to go get a beer you want one? They're like yeah, sure to get next, you know, you both go over to the bar and you're just chopping it up at the bar. And then maybe their friend would come up and they would say hi and introduce you to their friend and stuff like that, which is a godsend because it's a way easier way to meet people's when they're being introduced to someone. So I make it a very big point to always introduce people to each other, it's really important to always introduce people because some people aren't very good at that. They, I don't know, you'll just be talking and they'll be talking. And after a while, you're like, hey, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm so and so. And they're like, Oh, yeah, be just because the third, the second person didn't introduce you. So always make it a point to introduce people. I do, I do it a lot. So, back to the I was just going to a lot of these events. And next, you know, you're starting to meet people, these music things. And if you're going regularly, if it's a relatively small music scene, which just was you just run into the same people. And the next thing, you know, they're like, Oh, so what are you doing after after this is over? Like, yeah, I'm not sure. And they're like, well, there's a, there's an after party at so and says, You should go. So next thing, you know, you're going to an after party, you meet more people there, you meet their friends. This would this actually started to snowball pretty quickly to where I was, I'd go out, a lot of times, it'd be an after party, you go to an after party. And then you find out about another event. Like you don't always find out about events, like just pop up on your phone or something like that you actually hear about him from other people. And especially if you I don't know, I always found the people that I hit it off with the most, we're into almost the exact same type of music I was into. So when they found out when they would mention it in a music event. And make it a point to go because it's probably the type of music I was into. Because there's so many different types of genres of music, you never really always. Sometimes you weren't really into the music or whatever. So I found that basically, this was one of the best places to socialize and meet new people and practice my social skills. Because people who go to music events were usually very social themselves. I mean, there was shy people too, but they wanted to socialize, you go out, you want to socialize. So they were very upbeat. They like to have fun, which is, Hey, who doesn't like to have fun? That's basically the name of the game, isn't it? So I just found that if you have Well, let me just segue into the next section I was going to talk about is, I heard this advice that if you really want to maximize your ability to socialize, if you really want to maximize your ability to socialize with a lot of people, a lot of new people, you may want to move to a city. Like if you live in the boonies, if you live in the middle of nowhere, if you live in a place where you've grown up all your life, and you keep basically meeting the same people and it's hard to meet new people or whatever. It's a pretty big step, obviously, to move to a big city, or to a bigger city. Holy cow, it was it really changed the game. And I remember when I heard that I'm like, okay, that's that sounds like pretty good advice. But I'm, I don't know if I can move right away. But it, it might be something I want to work towards. So I mean, it took me probably about a year or two, but it wasn't long. And next thing you know, I was in a big city and holy cow just really all sudden, there's so much more stuff to do. There's so many more people to mean, I don't know people live in big cities, or they'd like to do a lot of stuff because there's so much stuff going on. And just really makes things so much easier to, to get out and do stuff. When I was moving. When I lived in Sacramento, there was a weekly newspaper or magazine that would come out. And there's like these newsstands all around the city. It's called Sacramento news and review. And I would make sure to go and get one every week. And then I would just like I had a calendar up on my wall, make sure you have a calendar up on your wall. And so I had a calendar up on my wall. And I would get this weekly newspaper. And what I would do is basically I'd open it up and go through it. And there was a calendar. It's just like a music, arts and culture, weekly magazine, almost every big city has one. And I would just open it up, look at the calendar, see what's coming up for this week or this month, circle everything that look interesting to me, and I would put it on my calendar if I was, you know, I wasn't ever sure if I was going to go or not. But at least I had it on my calendar. Usually, a couple days before I might get pretty excited about going to something I might call up someone and be like, hey, this thing is going on, you want to go. And a lot of times I would just go by myself, if I couldn't find anyone else that wanted to go. And I'm a shy person. That's not something I really liked to do to go out and do something by myself, especially when I first started. But I said you know what, I'm just gonna start saying yes to everything that comes my way. That's a really good tip. Just start saying yes to everything that comes your way. Because you'll find that a lot of stuff actually does pop up, like someone says, oh, they're having a barbecue, or there's this event at work, or there's, here's something on the radio, that sounds cool. Just start saying yes to everything and to get in the habit of going out a lot more. So like I said, I've circled these events, put them up on my calendar. And then I made it a point to because I kind of had a made it make a deal with myself, because I didn't really want to go to some of these things. I said, Look, I'll go, I'll go for at least 30 to 45 minutes. And if it's not fun, I'll leave as simple as that, like, I don't have to stay, if you go to something, you don't have to stay, you can always leave if you're not having a good time. And then I'd also make it a point to Okay, so I'm going to go, I'm going to try to talk to at least one or two people knew that I don't know, that's a really great, a really great way to get in the habit of talking to new people. So when you go out stuff, you want to keep in mind that a lot of places that are very conducive to socializing, where people are out walking around, like if you go to a movie, it's not really a great place to socialize, obviously, because everyone's sitting down quietly and watching a movie, maybe afterwards, or something like that, like if it's a retro movie, because they would sometimes be retro movie nights. In the city, those are pretty fun. I would say that, just be aware that some places are very conducive to socializing like a like a, like an art gallery opening, or a music event, stuff like that places, that wouldn't be very good, as you know, like, think about like, if at the emergency room of a hospital, or at a funeral, those aren't very good places to start chatting up new people probably. I mean, you probably could, but probably not as good as like a an art fair downtown or something or block party. So there's definitely a lot of places to meet new people we'll go into more later as we go along. But just be more, just be aware that there's a lot of places that you're probably not checking out that you could if you just expand your expand your repertoire of places you go out to, I mean, other things that I check out is like new restaurants that look good, that I wanted to check out or new new bars or new bars that opened up something like a, you know, open air, beer garden or something like that, always want to check out new places, because the more places that you know, have in your plate in your, in your city that are new, and that you could take other people to because you know people are always no matter who you are, is a little nervous about going somewhere new. But if you go with someone who's already been there and kind of knows the scene, it's kind of like you're a little you're kind of like acting like a shepherd. In some ways, I don't know. But it's always cool to take people to places that you know of that are new, and they're, they're cool, and they're fun. And just be in the know, you always want to be in the know. Okay, so let's now talk about what to talk about. I mean, it's basically the heart of a conversation, the meat, the meat of the platter. Or if you're a vegetarian, the kale of the platter. Something that would be good to develop is your sense of curiosity. I think I've always been somewhat curious. But now that we have the internet, now that we have YouTube, and now that everyone's got a smartphone, you can always look up stuff, anything that pops in your head, like some kind of weird topic off off the top of your head topic. Just look it up and just start diving into it. I know like a couple months ago, I heard that the heavyweight champion of the world. This guy named Tyson fury had just became the champion of the world. And I used to be into boxing a lot when I was younger. I'd watch it every Thursday night. It'd be Thursday night boxing. But then I got out of it. But I don't know anytime I hear about a new heavyweight champ. I'm always curious who it is. So I went on YouTube and I just typed in Tyson fury. You know, best fight highlights or whatever. And I was blown away. This guy is an amazing boxer. He's got like the most brutal body shot right hand I've ever seen in my life. He like knocks people out with body shots, which is which is very rare to ever see. Somebody get knocked out with a body shot. So I mean, just like you know, I heard about it. I looked it up. Now I know. And I actually ended up I was with the new coworker and we were talking and the conversation was kind of dying down and I asked him if he's ever heard of Tyson fury. He's like, No, I'm like, Oh, do you watch fox and he's like, oh yeah. I like boxing. I'm like in MMA and stuff like that. So next, you know, we're talking about boxing and stuff. And that's just like, you know, I was curious about something, I looked it up. And next thing you know, it helped the conversation, keep going and stuff like that. So be curious. I heard a good tip A long time ago was to be a renaissance man, or a renaissance woman. Basically, someone who may think like Leonardo da Vinci would be considered the original renaissance man, because he was into engineering and science and art. He was like a brilliant artist, a brilliant engineer. And also maybe someone else like Benjamin Franklin. He was a real renaissance man. It was like a really good writer, great politician, and inventor, he invented a lot of a lot of things. So be like that, just be interested in every range of topic you can think of. Because not only is having range in your conversation, I want to mention it as well. You should have range when you go out, you should be able to be comfortable. In a dive bar, or a fancy club, like dressed up, or just dressed way down, you should be able to have range in your social life and also in your topics. So things like science, history, politics, art, music, pop culture, technology, like video games, or whatever. Film sports in line. Now, a lot of people aren't into sports. I am in the sports Not that I really spent a lot of time watching them. Like I always watch. If a championship game is on. I'll definitely watch it. I think that sports is always it's always like a very, it's like one. It's just one thing in your tool bag of tools. You can like always talk about sports, like oh, yeah, you got a favorite football team. My favorite team is the LA Rams. I mean, I could always talk about sports to someone, just because like, I kind of follow it. But I'll definitely watch like highlights of like, Star athletes like, you know, Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan or Mike Tyson. Like anyone I could remember. Like Ray Lewis was like a defensive football player. He had like the most brutal hits. So just watch highlights of sports athletes and stuff. I mean, it doesn't take a long time. And it's like, you might find that it's actually super cool to watch those highlight reels are pretty cool. I noticed too, that like if I'm watching, like a TV show, or a movie, and they mentioned something, that's I'm like, Oh, I'm not sure what they're talking about. I'll look it up. Like I was watching goodwill hunting the other day. The professor was trying to convince Robin Williams into taking on the new client that will hunting and he's like he's he mentioned. He's like, he mentioned this guy. He's like, you remember Ramana and john, or something like that. And he's like, he's just like the next Romana john. I'm like, What the Who the hell's he talking? I never heard of this guy. So I looked him up. And next thing, I'm watching a biography on Ramana. JOHN, like I paused that movie. And I jumped over to another window and sort of watching this biography on this guy named Ramana. JOHN, I think it was like the 1940s or 50s. This, this guy from India had was a math genius, but he had no formal education. But he had like, a couple math books. And he had just mastered mathematics. And I don't know, it was a really interesting biography. But I do that a lot. Like I'll watch, I'll hear about something and I'll, I'll type in the person's biography. Like I was watching, I was driving the other day for work. And I heard a old Tupac song and I used to like to park a lot. And I was like, I, you know, I should when I get home, I want to watch a Tupac biography, because I don't really know that much about him. But it was pretty interesting watching. Like, I found out that his mother was in was actually in the Black Panthers and stuff like that. And, and she had talked to him a lot about, you know, society and, and their culture and stuff like that. And I was like, Oh, well, that makes a lot of sense. Because he does talk about not only I mean, he obviously talks a lot about thug life, but he had actually had a lot of positive messages to in his music. So I would recommend just watching as many biographies as you can about people. Yeah, so I would recommend watching just a lot of biographies about all kinds of people that you've heard of people in pop culture, look up. You know, history. Watch a lot of stuff about history and stuff, because that's really interesting topics that people do like to talk about anything that it's good to know more about politics. Whatever your political wherever you land on the political spectrum, like I watch a lot of stuff from both on the left and the right, like I try to be somewhere in the center, at least know what people are saying on both sides of the dome, don't just be in a bubble where you only hear stuff from your side, spending quite a bit of time listening to both sides. I think that's really important. I watch a lot of music biographies, too, anything about music was really interesting to me. I'll read a lot about science stuff stuff going on in science. Because what happens is, the more you know about so many different topics in different areas, the more you can actually make different subtle connections between them. That way, like if someone mentioned something that you might not have anything, you know, don't know anything about. Like, if someone's talking about like a car they bought, you can at least like talk about the era that the car came in, came up, or maybe the company that it was made by, like, you know, that's another thing I'm really interested in, too, is businesses, like, you know, different companies and stuff like I'm into, like, I'll watch stock market and stuff like that information. So make sure you just dive as much into every topic sheet as you can, it just helps so much more. When, when you're in conversation, like if you'll hear about a big movie that comes out, you don't even have to watch the movie, at least just watch the trailer. Like I watch a lot of film trailers, oh, watch a lot of movie reviews. Like if there's a movie that I really liked. I'll go back, like even if it was 10 years ago, I'll just like if I remember it, I'll watch a movie review from that. And I might even watch several movie reviews about it. That helps a lot, because you'll see a lot of stuff that you didn't catch. Like, I watched a lot of I watched several Movie Reviews recently on the matrix. Like I started watching the matrix again. The first one was amazing. Other two weren't that good. So I'll actually watch movie reviews for movies that are bad, too. And to see why exactly. They were bad. And now I know why. The second matrix was terrible. Basically just wasn't, I just wasn't written very well, they didn't really know what to do with the characters. And I realized why it didn't make sense either. Because the whole time in the second matrix, when Neo is trying to get back to the source. And all the guys are trying to everyone's trying to stop them from the matrix. It's like, well, he's supposed to go back to the source. Why is everyone in the matrix trying to stop them? Like it just doesn't make sense. So anyway, I would also recommend, as far as what to talk about, trying a lot of new things like going out and try a lot of new restaurants and stuff like different foods, like if you go to the same five restaurants. I'm sure they're great. But you should always be trying that new place like I made it a point for like six months to like, always go eat somewhere new. And Holy cow, man, you've really quickly learned a lot of different places. If you can, one thing that I do when I get there, especially if I go somewhere new, I always ask the person who's serving me, I'm like, Well, what do you recommend, like what's really good, I've never been here. And you'll usually get like something really good. I'm and I would also say try to be very discerning or develop your ability ability to be discerning. And I want to quickly say about that. I like to look up words, because I want to know that I'm saying the exact right word for what I mean which which hold on. So discerning find the definition. It just means discernment is the ability, ability to obtain sharp perceptions or to judge Well, in the case of judgment, discernment can be psychological, moral or aesthetic in nature. The ability to judge Well, basically. So what I what I mean by that is, so, you know, I like hamburgers, but I always have in the back in my mind of like, I'm trying to find the very best burger in the city. So I do have like, some favorite places. So like if someone says, I'll ask other people like who like I'm like, Well, where do you Where do you think the best burger in the city is? And then I'll check it out if it's if I've never been there before. I don't know. It's just something fun to do. Like I also do that with like pizza like what's the best pizza? And my brother? he's a he's a he's a chef. And I asked him the other day. I was like, Oh, hey, so what's what's your favorite burger? We're like, what's your favorite burger places you've been do? Like your favorite burger. And you know when he told me he said, he said well, i think i think i think Carl's Jr. has the best burger and I was like, dude, I If the racers asked you what the best I didn't ask you what the best fast food burger was. And like you're a chef, you should have like more discernment about this. Like you don't have like a favorite burger. I was like blown away. Like I expected him to say something bad as burger spot like no one no one knew about but no, no, he can't. He gave me like he gave me like, Burger King or Carl's Jr. Or something like that. I was so disappointed and I let them know how disappointed I was. I think that's about it for this week. So yeah, so this week, we talked about where didn't meet new people and things to talk about. We'll definitely go into more of that stuff as we go along. But I just wanted to give you a big chunk of it right now because it's good to know that stuff. Next week, we're going to be talking about active listening and being present, because listening and being present, obviously, is very important. So I appreciate guys tuning in again. I hope your week as well. And I will talk to you next week. Take care