Good morning. Good morning. How do you do? Happy Wednesday, guys. So today I want to do a really, really quick confidence tip. I haven’t done many of these, but given in business I talk about it a lot, [inaudible 00:00:17] confidence, I thought I should do some little quick tips during the next 100 days or 98 days, whatever it is left. I forgot my 98 bottles of beer song. Oh no!
So today’s tip is, start a conversation. Yep. And you’re going to go, “What the hell has starting a conversation got to do with feeling confident?” It has everything to do with feeling confident. So the more adept you get at starting conversations with random people, or starting conversations with people that you don’t really want to have a conversation with, but you know something needs to be said, or starting a conversation with someone from long gone past that you just think you should reach out and say hello to you, but something’s holding you back, you’re like, “Oh God, I haven’t rung them for a year. It’ll be really weird if I ring them. Maybe they’ll think I want something if I ring them now, so I can’t ring them. I’ll wait till they ring me.” And then before you know it, two more years have gone past and you still haven’t spoken to the person.
So the more you do these little conversation starters with anybody, the better you get at just either picking up the phone, old fashioned picking up the phone, picking up your mobile, I can’t do that because I’m on it, or typing an email to start a conversation, or being in a checkout line and starting a conversation, being at the doctor’s, being walking to the bus stop, on a train, in a bar; the more you get comfortable with reaching out and conversing with people, the easier, I promise, the easier everything gets.
You then won’t be so scared to reach out to someone on LinkedIn and go, “Look, I saw your post. I do X, Y and Z. I thought maybe we could have a chat.” Something like that. It just gets easier.
So if you’re a bit nervous about starting conversation, especially if it’s a person to person conversation or phone conversations, I’m not talking about the typing conversations, but any of those face to face or phone to phone conversations where it’s audible, you need to prepare yourself. And I’m not talking getting on a mini tramp and jumping up and down. I’m talking just a couple of deep breaths and just thinking one positive thing about yourself before you start the conversation, and one positive thing about the other person before you start the conversation.
So, give you an example, say you’re in a grocery line, and you’re feeling really stressed. And you’re like, “Oh, Sam told me I need to do this conversation thing because it’ll build my confidence muscle. Oh God, I don’t want to do it. Oh, okay. Now I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. Take a deep breath.” Think of one positive thing from that day for yourself, “I completed that report on time. I feel good about myself.” Then look at the person that you want to have the conversation with, or in the case of on the phone, think about the person, and think, “What’s one thing positive about them?” The lady in front of you at the checkout, it might be, “Oh, she’s got that great rose I love. Awesome, she’s got good taste.” And say hi.
The worst thing that can happen is you get ignored. And you know what? 99.9% of people in those situations aren’t that rude unless there’s a language barrier. But a lot of the time you can tell if there’s going to be a language barrier. Just, “Oh, I see you love the same wine I do. What do you eat it with?” Anything like that. Gosh, these days you can say, “Oh, did you get any toilet paper?” But the more you do that, and then you never know, a conversation might strike up.
And if you’re on the phone and it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for ages, again, take that deep breath, really center yourself. Think one positive thing about yourself. Random. It can be anything. “Oh, I remembered to clean my teeth this morning. Yay. I’m a rockstar.” And then think one positive thing about the person you’re calling, the long lost friend think, “Oh, remember that birthday party where we all did the limbo and they won. That was so funny.” Pick up the phone, call them. You’re in a good space about yourself and about them before you have the conversation.
If it’s somebody that you’ve got to have a conversation with that you’re feeling a bit kind of icky about, like there’s been a bit of a trouble or a bit of drama, or you know the conversation has to be a little bit confrontational, I still want you to do the same thing. So still ground yourself, center yourself, think something positive about yourself, think something positive about the other person. Because even if they have completely stuffed up, ballsed up something really, really important in the office, and you need to have a conversation with them about them, and you’re scared crapless, they’ve still got something positive in their history with you that you can really think about before you start that conversation. Okay?
Because it’s really important that you feel in an even keel with the people you start conversations with. If you go into conversations feeling like. “I am better than you”, or, “Oh my God, I’m so not better than you, you’re just like the king, and I’m hopeless”, either of those, the conversation’s not going to work. Actually, the conversation may work, but it’s not going to build your confidence muscle because you’re not going into it in a really grounded, equal place.
So that’s my challenge for you today. There is so much more on that in the Seven Day Confidence Challenge, but you’ve heard me talk about that before. So I want you to start a conversation today with either someone completely random, a long lost friend, reach out to someone you want to get in contact with, or someone you’ve got to have a difficult conversation. Is your ex maybe not pulling their weight with the kids? Doesn’t matter. Just pick a conversation and go for it today to start working on that confidence muscle.
And remember, if you want to join me in the last 90 days of my 365 Days of Extraordinary, please send me a message or email vip@samanthaleith.com and join in on all the fun. It’s going to be so good. I made us a party. Have a great day, guys. And I’ll see you tomorrow.