We just got an email about getting stuck in the “listener trap”:
“[…] to make friends, we got to be interested in the other party, and people make friends with people who make them feel good about themselves. I believe I have done so, by being interested in others’ daily lives, and made new friends.
However, after about 6 months of “friendship”, these people turn to me as someone to talk to, as I’ll always seem to be interested in their daily affairs. The difficulty is that after listening to them talk, they don’t seem to give the slightest about my own daily affairs – they just want to talk about themselves. Most of my newfound friends are like this. I am afraid that if I start talking about myself, these friends would find me whiny and stop being friends with me!
Today I’m going to talk about why some people are so incredibly popular socially DESPITE their looks (and without having anything else in life going for them at all).
You see, once I was at a computer LAN (Dreamhack, here in Sweden). There, I came across a woman who was both obese and short. There was nothing about her looks that was in her favor. Her cheeks and shoulders connected seamlessly. She resembled a squish ball.
Let’s be honest. People who are unattractive often have a harder time in social life.
Have you ever come across people who only seem confident on the surface? Like if their loudness, dominant manners and urge to take the center stage are more about compensating for insecurity?
Often, the reason for their overly confident manners deep down is a lack of confidence.
Then there are those whose confidence instead feels grounded and authentic. These people don’t need to show off. They can let others take the center stage, and when you talk to them, they don’t have to talk about how great they are. Still, they’re the ones people end up gravitating towards.
If there’s one thing I remember from school, it’s the terror of arriving in the mornings.
I remember clearly that walk over the school courtyard, feeling everyone’s eyes on me like lasers scanning my every move.
I used to become so self-conscious that it felt like I’d forgotten how to walk. I had to manually control every move my body made and was certain that now, people didn’t just look, they probably took notes and had discussions about what a strange breed I was.
It wasn’t until one of my last years in school that someone told me something that permanently changed how I viewed things.
In the survey I did for our upcoming program on confidence, a lot of you asked me how to deal with intimidating people. One comment summed it up pretty well:
What if you become intimidated by individuals or groups who are attractive and/or loud. How do you even begin to put yourself at ease, or stop putting them on a social pedestal, so you can be yourself? – Alexis
I got lots of questions about that from both men and women. Some examples that came up was talking to your boss or manager, talk to tall people, good looking people, mean/unpleasant people, and those you’re attracted to. The number one example men brought up was talking to women they’re attracted to.
A few weeks ago, I and Viktor sent out questions to over 10 000 of you. We asked you about how you view confidence and what specifically you wanted to be better at. It was fascinating to read.
Here are some stats from the survey:
Male to female ratio
Becoming more confident turned out to be universal for both men and women. Here, women were somewhat overrepresented.
Age
We were surprised by how people from all ages are interested in improving their confidence. The youngest being 16 and the oldest being 60, with the majority being 18-28.
Many believe that building rapport (that is – adjusting your behavior to the person you talk to) makes you less authentic because you compromise the real “you”.
I was also sure this was the case a few years ago. This belief kept me from improving my rapport building skills which in turn hampered my social life.
For example, I often used to think that “Being high energy in social settings is just who I am” and I sometimes annoyed people because I didn’t adapt to the setting. When I finally realized that I could also be a calm person without compromising who I was, my social interactions became much more rewarding.
Today we’ll look at why people who try to be likable just aren’t that likable. We’ll look at what they do wrong and what truly likable people do instead.
When my social awareness grew in my late teens, I looked for different ways to increase my social status and be more likable. I was sure that for people to like me, I had to show that I was just as good as everyone else, if not better.
For example, when I started an import business and had some early success I assumed that it would set me apart from the average Joe. I was sure that it would make me more likable. It took me years to realize the psychology behind it, but talking about my business created the opposite effect of what I had tried to achieve.
I recently sent out a survey to just over 10 000 of my email subscribers. I wanted to know their thoughts on self-confidence.
It caught my attention that several people came across the same problem when they tried to increase their confidence:
“…your friends and relatives think that you are becoming arrogant and you are showing off, mainly when you try to stand up for yourself or to become self-reliant.”
Robin
“I can come across as too confident. I feel uncomfortable, fake, and annoying and it feels like I am being arrogant.”
He said: “It feels like I help people a lot, but get nothing in return. I’m considering to stop helping people but I don’t want to be a douche”.
I remembered how much I struggled with this. When I was a kid I helped my friends with their mopeds because I was tech savvy, and I remember how painful it was when they just took it for granted.
On the other hand, to just stop helping people is a surefire way to lose your friends. Help people the right way and you will get a ton of benefits in life. This was the advice I gave my friend:
How do you avoid getting pushed out of a group conversation and suddenly realize you’re nothing more than a spectator of people talking? Today, I want to share a method that you can use to make sure that others will include you throughout the group conversation.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that a lot of you told me you liked, called “How do you join a group conversation if you’re not supposed to interrupt?”. That article focused on how to join a conversation. Today’s article will build on that one and focus on how to in a natural way remain part of an ongoing conversation – and even be the center of it or the leader of it if that’s something you’d like to be.
When I created one of my early programs on confidence it backfired…
It turned out that several participants became MORE nervous and LESS confident after they’ve followed my advice. That puzzled me because when I’d tested it on a small beta tester group, they had great results.
Here’s some of the advice that backfired:
Be more confident by using a more confident body language (Made popular by Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk)
“Fake it til you make it” by playing the role of a confident person, such as a movie actor.
Interestingly enough, SOME people have great help by the methods above, and some instead get more nervous.
The methods above force you to focus your attention on yourself. If you already have skeptical self-thoughts, like “What will people think of me?” and “People think I’m weird”, these thoughts will naturally become stronger the more you focus on yourself.
How energetic should you be in a social setting? Should you speak fast and loud and fill the room with your energy, or should you stay calm and chill and just let your confidence speak for itself?
At face value, both seem like viable alternatives. However, to be honest, I never got a consistently good response from either of those approaches.
You see, yesterday a friend invited me over for some pancakes. (“Some pancakes” was an understatement. I went into pancake induced coma) One thing that happened at my friends place made me realize that I need to write this article.
How do you enter a group conversation? On one hand you’re not supposed to interrupt people, but on the other hand, someone else always seems to start talking before you get the chance to say anything.
In this article, I give you 4 powerful techniques you can use to enter and be part of an ongoing conversation without being rude.
A few days ago, a friend invited me to a mingle his company arranged.
I spoke to one girl there who was really fun and interesting.
If I had left the mingle at that point, I would have described her as socially savvy.
One night a couple of years ago I was out with two friends.
A third dude, Shadi, joined up. I think he was friends with one of my friends.
We went to buy a something to eat from the local kiosk.
Anyway, Shadi wasn’t that hungry it seemed… After he had eaten half his hot dog, he smeared it all over the table attached to the kiosk. Then he looked at us as if he thought we would laugh with him. Because it’s so fun to make the kiosk attendant clean up after you (not).
At first, I was shocked he would behave like that. Then I got pissed off.
A few years ago I was at a conference in London. There was this one guy there who seemed to know EVERYONE.
He seemed to have nothing holding him back socially. The best way to sum this guy up is something he once said: “It takes too long time to walk through town because people I know come up to me all the time.”
This would earn him the title of “social genius”, right?
Well, here’s the problem: I happen to know that he has almost no close friends.
Apparently, there’s a difference between the ability to make lots of friends and to make close friends.
When I was in my early 20’s I had some sort of fear of contacting people if I didn’t have a specific reason to do so. When I was on the phone with friends and acquaintances, I didn’t want anyone to be bored or annoyed so I always tried to keep it short. Especially, I was afraid it would get awkward. So I stuck strictly to the topic and ended the call as soon as possible.
Then I met my friend Oscar. He sometimes called me for no reason other than to talk. This made me quite uncomfortable at first. I always tried my best to come up with something to talk about to avoid awkward silence. When I couldn’t, I tried to end the call prematurely.
A while back, I was at a friend’s small house party. As I was making conversation, I hear a loud voice behind me.
“HELLO EVERYBODY, HOW ARE YOU DOING?”
Everyone turned their heads.
I (and probably everyone else) thought: “Wow, here’s a confident person”
But in a series of events, this person who had made such a confident approach turned out to be the most unlikeable person at the party.
As an example, he went up to my group of people and started talking. Pretty soon, it was obvious that he was more interested in hearing his own voice than others.
Do you ever think “Should I start talking to this person or not?”
Last weekend, we had amazing weather. I took the opportunity to go down to my allotment to do some gardening. Unsurprisingly, a lot of other cooperative members had the same thought. So it became more of a social gathering than anything else.
The thing is, most people in the cooperative barely know each other, if at all.
So this situation is ripe for awkward introductions if you’re feeling sociable.
But I actually enjoy socializing down there, because it’s not awkward when you get it right. It’s fun and a little bit exciting.
A few years ago I moved to a new town (Gothenburg, Sweden) and I didn’t know anyone. On my journey to build a social circle, I made six powerful realizations that have helped me tremendously. I think these realizations will help anyone who wants to build a social circle from scratch or make friends in a new city, especially introverts.
Realization 1: For adults, mutual interests is the foundation on which almost every friendship is based
Throughout life, the easiest way for you to find friends is through shared interests. This is especially true after school age where you could just hang out because “why not”.
To me, that’s a strength, because thinking about stuff has helped me solve a lot of problems in life.
But in social settings, overthinking used to make me get stuck in my own head and blank out in conversations.
Because of that, I got self-conscious and I felt like everyone kept track of my screw-ups.
I either talked too little or too much and ended up saying stupid stuff that I beat myself up about for months afterward.
Often, my conversations hit a wall and then there was awkward silence.
I thought it all would get better if I “succeeded in life”. I started an import business and after a few years, it turned into a multi-million dollar company. (It’s now owned by the Swedish concern MEC Group).
But - surprise surprise - that didn’t change anything in my social life.
So I committed to becoming really good at making conversation and bonding with people. It turned out that I was able to become really good at all that, without having to transform into one of those shallow, superficial persons I’ve always despised.
The interest for what I’ve learned has been huge. Perhaps you've seen my writing in magazines like Business Insider and Lifehacker.
Viktor Sander (B. Sc.)
Viktor studied psychology both personally and professionally since 2007.
He specialized in Social Psychology when he took his Bachelor of Science (University of Gothenburg).
He’s making sure that what we write is based in science and proven to work.
Viktor has been working with SocialPro since 2012.
