0:00 you can get ahead of 90% of people in your life just by learning how to hold a conversation well i have seen good conversations change careers relationships confidence levels even lives overnight but I also understand that it is not always easy we are not all natural conversationalists that is why for this video I spoke to a number of different people to understand exactly why they struggle with holding conversations what is the problem and I got a list of different reasons from running out of things to say to feeling shy to not knowing a language well enough and so many others so in this video I am going to break down each of these problems i'm going to tell you one by one what these problems are and I
0:45 will give you practical psychologybacked ways to overcome them and thereby improve your communication on screen is every single problem I'm covering in the video with the timestamps you can go directly to the one that you think you are facing and that way is by the end of this video your communication will not just improve it will transform people will want to talk to you they will remember you you will not go home thinking "Could I have handled that better?" And you will finally start getting the respect and the opportunities that you have always deserved all right let's get into it now the first most common problem I see in people who struggle with conversations is just not knowing what to say or running out of things to say midway in the middle of a conversation you know those moments when a conversation just dies and sometimes it happens to the
1:30 best of us just uh last year I was at a party and I was talking to this professional acquaintance who I had just met once or twice before in life we spoke for literally 2 minutes and then like pin drop silence there was nothing else to say i stood there awkwardly for another 2 minutes and it felt like the longest time in the world it was so cringe it still lives in my head rentree and when this happens you feel awkward they feel awkward and that moment just feels like a silent standoff now this from a psychological perspective happens for a couple of different reasons the first most obvious reason is cognitive overload usually when you are in such a setting people tend to be nervous even when they don't think they are and when you're nervous your brain is just too busy managing your self-image the way you present yourself to think on its
2:17 feet to think creatively to hold a conversation and another thing that's closely linked to this another issue that this arises out of is perfection paralysis we feel that we need to say the right thing all of the time that if we don't then we are not having a good conversation and then we get too in our heads and it's very difficult to continue that conversation and it you know ends and dies so how exactly do you solve this problem okay there are a couple of different ways to do this you basically use anchor points in your conversations these are things that you can come back to if a conversation dies midway so that there's not too long of an awkward pause and it feels like the conversation is flowing smoothly the first sort of anchor is something called the Ford framework ford basically stands for family occupation recreation and
3:04 dreams these are four topics within the Ford framework that you can ask questions around and it will always help you tie the conversation in together it basically gives you a set of safe and interesting topics to pivot into so for example let's say you're at a marriage function so you can use the family part of the Ford framework and you can ask conversations about people's siblings or you know how their life is going personally or anything interesting that has happened in the town that they've come from things like that if you're in a professional setting occupation and even dreams are like a safe bet to take so you can ask questions like how did you get into this line of work what made you decide to choose this career path oh what is something new that you have always wanted to try now these again are pivot points so you are not supposed to
3:51 use these as rapid fire questions like bam bam bam no you use these you have them in your back pocket and you use these whenever you feel like a conversation is just you know getting too dull and you want to pivot to something different so you use it as a jumping point another way to anchor your conversations is to use something called threads or conversational threads what this basically means is that when somebody is talking every sentence they say or every insight they share gives you a tangent that you can take the conversation towards that tangent is basically a thread that you can pull on for example let's say that you're in a wedding function and somebody says "Hey I just got back from a trip to Udapur." Now this is an interesting part and you can use this to steer the conversation into multiple different directions so you can ask about how it was or how was
4:37 the wedding or you can take it to a completely different direction and say oh oh my god I love Udapur i was just there last week for a wedding how's the weather right now did you try this XYZ and that basically gives you a whole new tangent to talk about without feeling like you need to drag on this one particular part of the conversation this is a little bit tricky and you need to train your brain to think in conversational threads to keep the conversation going but it is not very difficult it just takes a little bit of intention and a little bit of practice and you start to build on top of these very very quickly the key here is just to have a little bit of curiosity about the person you are talking to and if both of these things don't work you can also have a list of conversation prompts in your mental back pocket right these
5:24 are great for when nobody knows what to talk about and they can ignite deeper more memorable conversations so questions like what's something you're excited about right now or how do you make life interesting or what's one thing people misunderstand about your work what's a weird memory that you have uh recently a friend of mine asked me this question which is very very fun is what is a weird food combination that you love and these can be so many different questions that can make a conversation interesting you can take your pick you can create your own list and just have them on you you know mentally at the back of your head so that anytime a conversation feels like it's dying you can just start off with these you can actually start conversations with these prompts and that ways you always have something to say now the second most common problem that I see is people not knowing how to
6:09 exit a conversation right enter you've started talking but now there's nothing more to talk about you have lost interest they probably have or have not but you don't want to talk anymore you want to move on but you just don't know how to do it and now it feels like it's dragging and repetitive the reason that this happens is that most of us are not taught how to end conversations politely we're just taught to politely listen to other people but we never really given a lesson on how to end conversations we're told start but what exactly do you do when you want to move away from it and what this can end up doing sometimes is creating resentment or fatigue that could have been avoided with a simple graceful exit so how do you solve for this problem the first thing is to have a few graceful exit lines up your sleeve
6:55 my favorite one is um I just need to go to the washroom i'll see you in a bit and then I move away from it and that conversation thread is broken and you don't need to come back to it you know if you don't want to another example is it's been lovely chatting but I'm going to go mingle around a bit this is perfect for events gatherings social settings where you have a bunch of different people so you can easily segue between groups or you can put the onus on the other person also you can say something like I don't want to keep you you know from other people i'm glad we got to talk carry on things like that this is a gamble to take it may work sometimes but if the other person is very invested in the conversation this might not always work but it's better to have it in the back of your head rather than to not know it at all things like this that just basically segue the
7:41 conversation away from what you're currently talking about it breaks that flow and that gives you enough time to recollect your thoughts and move away from it without being rude it's also very important for you to remember that you do not owe anybody unlimited access to your time or your energy so it's okay to end conversations it's okay to want to end conversations a good conversation is not measured by how long it is but it is measured by how pleasant and respectful it felt now the third problem that I see a lot of people facing and a lot of you have commented about this also is not having good enough hold over the language that you're communicating in which for most of us is English you want to express your thoughts clearly but the words just don't come out and this makes you feel limited
8:26 self-conscious even embarrassed when speaking in a language that you're not fully confident in especially if it's like I said English now this usually happens because language barriers trigger fear of judgment and there's good reason for it because a lot of people have been shamed for not speaking properly you might worry about your grammar your pronunciation your vocabulary all of these things and then your brain feels overwhelmed and it makes it very difficult for the brain to figure out what to say and how to communicate it well now I've already made two videos on this topic one is on English communication and English speaking and the other one is on improving your communication skills both of these will help you if this is the problem that you're facing if you don't have a good enough hold over your language I don't want to go over all of those points all over again because that will make this video very long so I
9:13 highly recommend you go check both of these out but a few quick fixes you can focus on that you can take away from this video first thing is to focus on clarity not on perfection when you're speaking in real life most people don't really care about the grammar as much as you think they do right they care about what you mean whether you're able to say what you mean so instead of fumbling or beating around the bush it's okay to not speak in English if everybody around you understands another language for example Hindi speak in Hindi communicate your point clearly you can also acknowledge the fact that you know I'm not the best at English is it okay if I you know communicate in English and 90% of the times people will be absolutely okay with it you don't need fancy words you don't need complicated sentences to be impactful as long as your point is getting communicated clearly you don't
9:58 need to fret about language as much besides that if you go watch the other videos I'll tell you tips like you need to practice speaking regularly you need to read more books you need to watch content in the language that you're trying to communicate in all of those things help you build vocabulary to be able to communicate in that language in the future all right just remember that confidence in communication comes from connection not perfection so even if there is a language barrier and this happens so much if you go travel to foreign countries people are not going to shrug you away just because you don't know their language they will try their best to communicate with you and that is what happens in real life scenarios so if your fear of judgment is holding you back just remember this now coming to the fourth problem which is either oversharing or underssharing in
10:46 conversational settings or when you're having a conversation with another person so I want you to take a pause here and think which category you fall into are you an oversharer or are you an unsharer are you somebody who pours your entire life story into the first 5 minutes or are you somebody who barely scratches the surface keeping everything polite but forgettable and surface level let me know in the comments which of these categories you fall into now the truth is that both of these cases are extremes and these extremes can make conversations feel imbalanced or awkward or emotionally disconnected i have a friend who is very shy who's not very well trained in the art of conversing and speaking to him sometimes feels like you're speaking to a wall i'm not blaming him he is working on this skill
11:31 right now he also acknowledges it but I know where that gap in communication comes from so oversharing often comes from a desire to bond very quickly or to fill silences with vulnerability thinking that it will fasttrack trust building on the other hand underssharing like my friend usually stems either from fear fear of judgment awkwardness losing control or just from the desire to not communicate with others or from being shy in both cases the flow of the conversation gets disrupted right so either the other person will feel overwhelmed if you're an oversharer or they will feel like they're talking to a wall like I do in the case of my friend but great conversations are about balance and connection and flow and how exactly do you build that you build that by mirroring your communication to the person that you are talking to you try
12:18 to match their energy so if they're keeping things light and breezy if their tone is fun and peppy you don't dive into your deepest trauma and you don't stay serious and somber right you try and match that energy if they open up and they reflect vulnerability then you can also share vulnerable parts of yourself you ease into it it's like this dance that you do with each other another thing you can do is use something called the sliding door approach basically when you're talking you give the other person an open-ended cue something like "Oh that reminds me of a tough phase that I went through." And then you let the other person decide if they want to use that tangent that sliding door that you've opened up or if they don't want to follow that chain of thought so if they respond with oh what happened then you know that they want to continue this conversation and you carry
13:04 on but if they ignore it or if they change the topic then you know that they don't want to talk about something like this and you change your direction accordingly you have to remember that in conversations you share to connect not to unload your feelings onto other people or not to just keep everything inside of yourself it's okay to went with friends with confidants and it's also completely okay to be the silent type and stay in your own zone but certain situations do call for good communication right you don't want to let it become the norm and you don't want to let both of these things oversharing or under sharing hold you back so before you start a conversation just ask yourself why is this important is this conversation important for me to connect with this person and if so how can I do that best when you ask yourself this you open yourself to more curiosity
13:50 coming to problem number five which is monopolizing the conversation this happens when you start dominating the dialogue without even realizing this we all know we all have that one friend who just keeps talking and talking and does not ever listen and they just want to talk all of the time sometimes it's okay sometimes you're having fun because they're also the life of the party but a lot of the times it can make other people in the conversation feel very disconnected now on that person's part it is not usually because of ill intention they don't have the bad intention of shadowing everybody else maybe they're passionate about the subject maybe they're too excited about what they're talking about or maybe they're trying to impress somebody and they feel like talking more is going to help them achieve that faster but often over time it leaves people feeling unheard and invisible like I said so how
14:38 exactly do you get to a stage in the conversation where both people or any number of people in a group feel like they're all communicating their point without overpowering each other first check your balance every time you're in the middle of a conversation remind yourself to check in with yourself hey have I been speaking more than I've been listening if yes you can always take a pause you can invite other people to chime in you can use something called the loop back rule where after you share something you throw the ball back to the other person or to you know the other people in the group something like oh that's been my experience what about you you know do you have something to share or enough about me how have things been on your end you basically ask them to participate in the conversation and finally try not to turn every story into
15:24 a personal competition so if somebody says oh I just started running you do not have to reply by giving your running routine or your marathon awards right you can just say "Oh that's awesome what got you into it?" And that keeps the conversation going you have to remember that conversations are not about oneupping each other they're about building connection and sharing vulnerable parts of yourself so in every scenario in a conversation if you lead with curiosity that acts as your compass where instead of trying to be interesting you focus on being interested and that just helps you keep the conversation very very balanced coming to problem number six which is misreading social cues and this happens so much more often than we realize you're in deep conversation you are telling a story or maybe you are sharing
16:10 an opinion and meanwhile the other person is glancing at their phone they are just responding with h yeah they are not asking follow-up questions they're looking around the room these are small non-verbal gestures or cues that show that they're either losing interest they're feeling overwhelmed or unsure of how to respond now most people who miss social cues they're not trying to be inconsiderate right they're just caught up in their own head again maybe they're nervous or maybe they're so focused on saying the right thing that they just miss the social cues in front of them so their attention turns inward instead of outwards but again like I said before a conversation is a two-way street so reading social cues is just as important a part of having a good conversation as
16:57 talking is so how do you learn to read social cues you basically tune in to body language and tone not everybody's directly going to tell you when they're disengaged right we've already learned how to exit a conversation gracefully but not everybody knows that so you have to understand what their body language is telling you so watch out for quick replies like "Mhm uh-huh." no follow-up questions people glancing around the room their body language shifting fidgeting lack of eye contact crossed arms distracted glances all of those things if that is happening it's your cue to slightly wean off the conversation maybe take it in a different direction or exit gracefully from that conversation so that the other person can have the space to recover do whatever they want to right another thing you can do is listen for conversational reciprocity what this means is the other person responding
17:45 back with the same energy with the same enthusiasm as you are talking with right if you're just getting one-word answer or they're not asking anything back they may not be fully engaged so you need to develop your social radar and after you go back home in conversation especially initially when you're doing this just ask yourself whether that felt like a two-way exchange were you present enough to notice their social cues or were you the one constantly talking coming to problem number seven getting emotionally triggered or defensive and my god in today's political climate this happens so often I cannot even begin to tell you just last week I was with a group where people got into a heated debate over the government and this happens a lot it happens to the best of us sometimes
18:30 someone says something that hits a nerve and suddenly you are tense you are reactive maybe you are even a little snappy and this is one of the most common blocks in communication when we get triggered mid-con conversation we stop listening to understand and we start reacting maybe somebody questions your choices or unintentionally touches a sore spot or just disagrees with you and suddenly it feels like an attack for you you jump into defense mode your tone shifts and what could have been a calm conversation turns into a very tense argument this happens because we all carry emotional baggage things from our past our self-doubts unhealed criticism that can get activated when we feel misunderstood and when we feel threatened even emotionally our brain's amygdala which is this area in our brain
19:15 lights up like a fire alarm basically it's not about what the other person said it's about what we heard or what we thought we heard through our internal filters so how do you stop this how do you fix for this how do you stop getting triggered every time somebody brings up a topic that is triggering for you the easiest way is to take a pause before reacting take three simple breaths before you respond and even then instead of immediately lashing out you ask for clarity that's an interesting perspective can you explain further or that's an interesting perspective let me think about it for a second right this gives you space to respond rather than react you need to remember that you always always have the power to choose how you respond you don't have the power over other people on how they speak how
20:00 they communicate what they say but you always have the power to choose how you respond so instead of assuming bad intent immediately when you feel attacked you have to remember most people are not out to hurt you they are just trying to say something that comes from their experience it's called anecdotal evidence so instead of jumping to conclusion ask for clarification take a minute to gather your thoughts before you respond and it will go a lot more smoothly and even then if the conversation starts to feel too charged it's okay to wrap it up you can say something like you know let's come back to this or let's talk about this later i really want to give it proper thought and I'm not in the right headsp space right now coming to problem number eight which is feeling boring or not interesting enough now this is a quiet fear that a lot of people carry they
20:45 just feel that they're not interesting enough you listen to other people talk about their cool trips and their wild stories and their very over-the-top opinions and suddenly everything you are saying feels very small feels very insignificant but what most people including you if you face this fail to realize is that this feeling does not mean you're boring it just usually means that you are judging yourself too harshly comparing your behind the scenes to somebody else's highlight reel we often assume that being a good conversationalist or having good conversations means constantly having witty stories or facts but the truth is that people don't remember what you said as much as they remember how you made them feel so the easiest way to be interesting is to stop trying to be
21:31 interesting and focus on being interested aka become curious about others ask questions that go a little beyond the usual instead of your how's your day try asking what's something you've been enjoying lately the intention behind this is not to snoop around but rather to make people light up when they get to talk about what matters to them now another thing you can focus on is that instead of trying to be the most interesting person in the room you try to be the most engaged person in the room and that automatically makes you interesting to the people around you and while you're at it start consuming interesting content and fill your own interest tank with books articles videos this gives you ammo or ammunition to always have something to talk about so we've covered what to do when you feel like you are
22:17 boring in the conversation but what about the times when you feel bored in a conversation when you zone out now this is not necessarily because the other person is boring although sometimes it can be sometimes it's about you not having the mental capacity to engage in conversation or maybe it's just the kind of conversation that does not light you up in either case it's absolutely okay to politely excuse yourself from that conversation and do something else or talk to somebody else if you do feel like the conversation can be salvaged you can try to steer the conversation to a different topic a deeper topic that interests you but like I said it's completely okay to not want to converse as well i think of conversations like books if the first few chapters or the
23:03 first few minutes in a conversation don't help you develop an interest it's okay to not engage with it anymore this brings me to problem number 10 which is getting tired of being in a conversation or tired of listening now there are two kinds of moments when you feel disconnected in a conversation one is when the topic itself feels flat which we have already talked about but the other one is trickier because here everything seems to be going fine yet you walk away feeling drained from that interaction you might wonder why am I so tired when nothing even went wrong so what we fail to realize is that the issue is not just the conversation itself it's your energy management maybe you are a shy person or an introverted person who needs solo time to reset or
23:48 maybe you are unconsciously giving too much energy in every interaction the second thing happens to me a lot and if that is you one thing that really helps in such cases is setting internal boundaries before you start a conversation or before you enter a conversation so for example uh before you enter a social setup or like a gathering whatever decide internally how long you can give to this interaction to be fully present maybe it's 30 minutes on some days maybe it's just one deep conversation on other days and once that is decided you permit yourself to take a break when you reach your limit even during the conversation itself you can do a few little check-ins to ground yourself to make yourself come back to your present moment to internally just align yourself with how you're feeling
24:35 so you can just start to focus on your breath you can touch your sleeve you can have a rubber band to just you know bring yourself and to prevent yourself from zoning out just these small changes help you stay present at times when you are zoning out but it's okay to not give your full energy to every conversation all of the times most conversations actually don't need 100% of your energy you might be giving it but they don't need it sometimes 60% is enough sometimes 40% is enough to leave a good impression and still have some energy left for yourself coming to problem number 11 which is the fear of offending or hurting the other person so if you've ever found yourself holding back in conversations because you don't want to offend somebody else maybe you second guess your words maybe you soften your
25:22 tone too much or maybe you avoid certain topics altogether because you don't want to hurt other people trust me when I tell you you're not alone we all have our own fair share of such incidents and while doing the above things can feel polite it can also feel suffocating over time because over time you become that person who refuses to take up space just to please other people and that is not something that you want to do so one of the best ways to deal with this situation where you're too concerned with other people's opinions or hurting other people is to not walk around thin eyes but to actually lead with intention you know if you're talking about a sensitive subject or if you're saying something that could be misunderstood you give a disclaimer beforehand try opening with well I'm saying this with respect or you know I hope this comes
26:07 out right but here is what I think use I statements instead of you statements so instead of putting the onus on the other person speak from your own experience do not make generalized statements and that will take away a lot of that fear that comes with it that small disclaimer will basically disarm tension that may arise in the future because it shows that you're coming from a thoughtful place similarly if somebody else says something and you have a counterpoint to communicate which you might feel offends the other person again instead of using you statements like you're not making sense you say something like you know I feel confused can you explain it again this lands a lot softer than you know you're not making sense and it basically steers the conversation into a more meaningful direction as opposed to turning it into a confrontation which is
26:54 the difference that you need to find whether it's a connection or a confrontation but whatever you do please do not undermine yourself just to be kind because often times that politeness is not doing anybody any good you can be direct while still being gentle this brings me to problem number 12 getting too excited or aggressive while making a point my brother tends to do this a lot when he deeply cares about what he's saying and that's great but sometimes that passion turns into intensity without the other person realizing it you start speeding up you start raising your voice a little and suddenly the other person is looking either a bit offended or overwhelmed and frankly it's nobody's fault it's just that maybe your delivery was too heavy for the moment so
27:41 in such situations the easiest thing to do is pause between sentences right take a deep breath between each sentence before you speak it and that small break gives your word more weight and also give the other person time to absorb what you're saying you can again like we talked about matching energy you can try to match the other person's energy so if they are more calm try to mirror that calmness and that rhythm if they are as energetic as you are it's absolutely okay to go off on the same tangent if you notice yourself going fullon aggressive you can always just acknowledge it and that lands very very well you know simply saying something like "Sorry I get excited about this topic please don't mind." And that honesty just softens the intensity of that moment and nobody feels offended but what if you don't care about offending anybody else what if your ego
28:28 comes in the way of the conversation this is something that I've seen happen a lot with people in their early 20s or their teens where they don't want to be the first person to initiate the conversation this could be with acquaintances or with romantic partners specifically or you know people they're pursuing and this stems from a subtle blend of fear and pride so they're afraid of rejection but instead of naming that fear their ego tries to play it up as indifference right and they will say things like it's not worth it i'm not going to initiate the conversation first and this becomes even more apparent in people who are generally the ones who are used to being approached maybe because of their social status maybe because of attractiveness
29:14 maybe because of confidence and then they start to feel initiate like initiating a conversation is beneath them but what most people who are in this situation fail to realize is that this passive stance and conversation actually holds you back from real connection so what do you do you basically flip the script you don't see initiating a conversation as a sign of weakness but as a power move because it shows leadership it shows presence it shows social fluency you do not need a deep opener but something just as simple as "Hey I don't think we've met properly." Or "Hey that's a cool outfit where's that from is more than enough to break the ice and start a conversation the point is not to be impressive it is just to be open to having a conversation
30:00 every conversation starts with somebody who is willing to go first so why can't that be you at the end of the day guys a good conversation is not about having perfect timing or clever lines it is about knowing how to listen when to lean in and when to pull back it's a dance that you do with the other person it requires your constant presence it's not something that you can do passively you do not need to be the most outgoing person the most confident person you don't need to be the most attractive person in the room to have a good conversation to make people feel seen all you need is to be real and to be curious and the more you practice being curious being authentic the easier it gets to have more meaningful conversations you'll start to notice that silences feel less scary exits feel
30:47 smoother your voice feels more like your voice okay so this video was too long to have a recap on one single screen but the points were fairly solid i've added timestamps so that you can go back watch whatever point feels you know connected to you and just remember that conversations are shared moment you do not need to be afraid of them you do not need to be perfect at them you're just trying to connect with another human being and that's as real as it gets and as always check out this video next because YouTube says that you're going to love it and I want you to watch something that you love and I'm going to see you guys very very soon in the next one bye
