Defend Your Conversations From Boredom
We’ve all been in boring conversations. Those conversations that feel like a pair of smartphones talking to one another. Maybe it’s new people without a lot of common ground, or maybe it is just very surface-level topics, but whatever the reason, you just can’t seem to make a genuine connection.
On the other hand, some conversations just seem to flow. People are engaged, energized, and there is an almost palpable sense of connection in the air. Conversations like that just seem to feel… important.
Wouldn’t it be nice to create that spark in any conversation?
In this 3 part series, we’ll explore concepts, techniques, and gambits that you can use to charge up your social interactions with more meaning.
Meaningful Conversations
What makes a meaningful conversation so meaningful in the first place? Is there some kind of essence to be distilled?
As a trained philosopher, I have spent a literal fuck-ton of time (how could that possibly be true? 
) thinking about meaning. Specifically, what gives things their meaning.
Popular consensus is that nothing has any objective meaning. In other words, things only mean something to someONE. Whether that seems obvious to you or not, it is relevant to the topic at hand because it means that what gives a conversation its meaning are the people participating in that conversation.
What are they interested in? What do they consider important? How do they determine what’s valuable? These are the questions that you want to ask yourself to connect with the people listening.
https://media.giphy.com/media/LwHaQCGZMdD9Ghalrl/giphy.gif
Use the following techniques to elicit meaning from your conversational companions. Once you identify areas of meaning for them, you can use those as conversational threads to build mutual connections and fascinating exchanges. In part one, we’ll reinvigorate the boring small talk with a quest for deeper meaning.
Technique the First — Small Talk Icebergs
“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.”
Curiosity is an engine that drives interesting conversation. All of us have things that we find fascinating. By making an effort to discover the fascinating topics to the person you are speaking with, you will have an endless source of engaging conversation… for them.
Take small talk, for instance. I used to hate small talk because it’s so boring. I was worried that by engaging in small talk, I would become boring by association. Then I discovered how to use small talk as a tool to discover meaning.
People aren’t random. We continually act in the context of our values and what is important to us. That’s not to say that we always do that in the most efficient, effective, or healthy ways, but people are always driven by their values.
Each moment of a person’s life is like an iceberg tip, attached to a much deeper meaning. If you figure out what they think, say, and do, you can discover what is important to them.
For Example…
A question as simple as “What did you do this weekend?” seems simple and maybe even a little boring, but you can think of the answer as the dotted line on a treasure map. Get curious about why they did that, so you can follow the path to conversational treasure.
Let’s say they went for a hike. Don’t just jump into the cool hike that you did last month. Figure out what was important about why they went for a hike. Was it for exercise, nature, or simply because their friend asked them to go?
While all of these reasons are tied together with “hiking,” they are different motivations and point to different values. Get curious. Try to understand what are the abstract nouns that are important to them. Health? Connection? Beauty? Each of these values opens up a whole new pathway for connection.
Take the time to figure out their motivation, so you can tap into that motivation in your current conversation. When used in the context of curiosity, small talk can become a well-spring of deeper meaning.
In part two of this series, we will discuss what to do when the conversational group seems hopelessly diverse and you just can’t seem to find common connections…
