| Let me give you extremely specific advice that’s guaranteed to work. People like to do things that fulfill their desires. The fact that people don’t want to listen to you should indicate that your speech isn’t fulfilling their desires. Most of the time people are not having a conversation to share information, but instead to fulfill one of their psychological needs. This can include having fun, feeling connection, gaining social approval, gaining direct benefit, something like this. What this psychological need is changes person by person and moment by moment. It can be hard to determine but it can be done! The other psychological motivator is fear of loss. It’s simply the truth that people don’t want to be dragged in to boring conversations by people with low self-esteem, because everyone is busy and time is precious. It seems a very simple way to analyze conversation, but it’s very powerful to do what people like and don’t do what they don’t like. Notice how this framework in itself has nothing to do with your enunciation, language barriers, body language, and so on. It’s all about reading the other person! I recommend reading “The Psychology of Sales” by Brian Tracy. It’s nominally about being a salesperson, but you can apply it to practically any social situation. Because what is socializing really about other than mutual benefit? You know already that you want to talk about traveling, and once you figure out what other people need from the conversation everyone will be happy! |