How to have a den like a criminal
Have you ever gone to a pub with that friend who knows everybody in there? The barman, the waiters, the director, the other people that hang out at the same pub… he/she says “hi!” to everyone. And you look at him/her with big eyes like “how do you do that?!?”. Unless you are the one greeting when joining the place, you better continue reading.
How do you feel?
Probably you are feeling both happiness and envy. You like so many attention at your table but at the same time you’d like them to be directed to you.
That’s when you start trying awkwardly to get the attention of the people that come at your table. A joke there, a stupid sentence here, a fake smile to give it a little more taste, 5gr of salt, stir a little bit and bake at 200 °C. There you go!
How does it taste? “A SH*T!”. I know, that’s really bad. You don’t really get into people.
So how should you change all this?
Learn from your friend
How do you think he made it? The answer is as easy as you think. Yes, he just went there, over and over and over… again!
“Really?? Just that?? So if I come here in the same place everyday for one month straight I become like him?”
The answer is: “it depends”. It depends on how you behave while you are there. Just to calm you down a little bit: it is not necessary to go everyday for one month… but you should go at least 2–3 times a week, for several months (like 3–4 at least).
The fact is, your friend built relationships in there, and you can’t pretend to create the same deep connections in just one month by going there and doing nothing. You have to work on creating those relationships. But how?
Start with a simple “Hi!”
Everything starts like this. You told “hi!” to your actual best friends. You told “hi!” to your collegues. Your mother told “hi!” to you when you born.
So why not start with a simple “hi!”? It’s the easiest way to start a conversation. You don’t need anything fancy to get into their heart, because you don’t get that far so quickly. They still have to know you before sharing deep thoughts. Remember: to create connections, you have to make baby steps.
And you already made one by starting the conversation. I know that social anxiety easily comes into play in that moments, but you’ll get quickly used to it.
Quick tip to start fast: close your eyes and do it before 3 seconds pass. Why 3 seconds? Because after that time you start thinking too much and you just don’t do it.
And now? What should I say?
There is no script here, but there are a lot of arguments you can talk about. Probably one thing you’ll be interested in is his/her name. So you have a way to avoid “hey!”, “oh!”, “yo man!” to attract their attention (don’t worry, you’ll still use those, as soon as you forget their name. Good luck with that).
Knowing the name of the other person is one of the most important thing as Dale Carnagie says:
A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
So find a way to remember it.
On how to lead the rest of the conversation, there are an infinite number of tips and tricks that I could tell you, but it’s not the aim of this story. We’ll leave it for later posts. But if there is one thing that you should always keep in mind is:
Be willing to truly know the person that is standing in front of you.
In this way, you’ll have the other person sharing their deepest thoughts with you. But this doesn’t come immediatly. You must have patience. A lot of patience. They need time to get to know you. That’s why you must go to the same place over and over again. Moreover there are a lot of people working and attending the same pub/club, how should I get to the others?
Who said that was easy?
No one, actually. Indeed is a journey that depends on your social skill level. However in time it gets a lot easier, as it grows up, as You grow up. It takes time to really get to know a person, but once you strengthen that relationship enough, that same person will take you to meet other people that he/she knows. So don’t worry, you’ll get to know everybody wherever you want. It’s just a matter of when.
