Hello Friend,

If this is your first visit to SoSuave, I would advise you to START HERE.

It will be the most efficient use of your time.

And you will learn everything you need to know to become a huge success with women.

Thank you for visiting and have a great day!

A good place to practice starting convos

Take A Number

Don Juan
Joined
May 16, 2002
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Queens, NY, USA
Someone recently suggested chatrooms as a great place to “practice conversation,” but I just realized I know of a great place to safely practice actually meeting new people and starting conversations. And it’s not Starbuck’s.

I go to a number of annual events (spiritual/religious, although that is irrelevant to the point), and this year I finally got tired of “waiting” for conversations to “just happen,” for friendships to develop spontaneously (which does happen, slowly, but not enough for me), got tired of feeling “out of the loop” with all these people I’ve seen year after year who seem to be great buddies, and made a concerted effort to introduce myself to everybody I could: my neighbor in line, everybody in reach at lunch, paying visits to campsites where there is partying (bringing my own contribution, of course
), etc. Being by nature pretty shy and awkward (although in real life I disguise it pretty well), I had to overcome a couple of big fears, such as not being able to remember names (in reality, everybody has this problem, and it can be worked with), and, of course, the biggie: “not knowing what to say.”

The key here is that in any social organization where people deliberately congregate, and hence a community develops, walking up to total strangers and commencing an acquaintanceship is totally normal, in a way it isn’t on the street or in the mall. (The idea that they may well be seeing more of you in the future is assumed.) (This is also known as “schmoozing” or “working the room.”)

It occurs to me as I write this that the more focused the group (e.g., windsurfing or cars), the more you will have the crutch of having your favorite topic to converse about, and, conversely, the less focused the group (e.g., a block/neighborhood party, church, hiking group, dance organization — see MotU’s recent post, http://www.sosuave.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/015514.html), the more the conversation will be about the individuals involved. (I think a new job falls somewhere in the middle here; you can stay focused on the work, or really make an effort to get to know everyone better.)

The point here is that, even if your worst fear is realized and you find nothing to talk about, you don’t feel stupid for having reached out and introduced yourself, the way you would at the mall. Then, once you gain practice with starting, advancing, and gracefully bowing out of literally hundreds of conversations with total strangers, although the rules for approach in a public place are totally different, at least you won’t have “but what will I talk about?” hanging over your head when you get that eye contact and smile and those three seconds start ticking!
 
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