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My biggest problem making conversation was I’d run out of things to say. And then, to make matters worse, I’d consciously try to come up with something. The universal law of conversation is spontaneity: if you think about what you’re gonna say before the words come out of your mouth, they’re guaranteed to sound awkward. Casual conversation provides the opportunity to really connect with your fellow human beings, a rendezvous in the middle of a bridge separating remote islands. People don’t want to connect like that with a computer. If you’re busy calculating the best things to say, you’re not just a computer, you’re an old Apple IIe, your words as shallow as black-and-green monochrome pixels. Ideally, you should just speak whatever comes to your mind, but the problem is, what if nothing comes?

Canned Material

In the seduction community, a lot of guys memorize canned materials, little routines calculated in advance to have maximum conversational power, to be whipped out whenever you get lost for words. I strongly discourage canned material. When I was a pickup artist, I did try canned material. Some guys can really pull it off. But generally it just made me seem creepy. It would’ve been better if I’d stood there with a dumb look on my face. Even if I could pull it off, it wouldn’t really accomplish the goals I was after. There would be no real connection with people: at very best, I’d still be a computer, just one which passes the Turing Test The best metaphor is that canned material is like a “mask”, behind which its user hides and cowers. The way I see it, life is so short, I want to spend the time I have bearing my face openly to the world, living a real life and not an illusion.

But we’re back exactly where we started. The problem is a loss for words, and all I’ve done is rule out one possible solution. So I asked myself, what’s the alternative to canned material, which will give me the words I need when I need them, and yet still allow me to connect with people openly and honestly? Me, I’d overcome my conversational shyness long ago. I just wasn’t sure how I’d done it. I thought long and hard about the events which had transpired in the past few years. What had cleansed the figurative soot off my tongue and freed my voice? And then I realized what it was, in an “Aha!” moment after which I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it for so long.

The Magic Bullet: Article-Writing

A few years back, I couldn’t even hold a conversation with the old ladies at my parents’ church. Nowadays, conversation flows easily and effortlessly off my tongue. How did I make that change? I wrote hundreds of articles right here at Xamuel.com. At first, I was my only reader, but as I wrote more articles, more and more visitors came. Although I’d always thought of myself as an okay writer, I gradually became aware that my writing was improving with practice. What I didn’t realize for a long time, though, was that my conversation skills were also increasing.

When I write an article, I take something that’s been on my mind, I research it, I organize it and make it coherent, I ponder it and meditate upon it, finally I broadcast it to the world at large. Throughout that journey, it goes from a rambling wisp of an idea, into something very much concrete and fleshed-out. And then, any time I want, I can use that as a starting point for conversation. It’s not that I’m carefully memorizing my own articles so I can whip them out at just the right calculated moment; matter of fact, I’ve written so many now, sometimes I’ll notice an article in my own archives and be like, “oh yeah, I wrote that, didn’t I!” There’s no need to memorize anything. The ideas I write about originated from my own mind in the first place: I own them. But as I write, the ideas are ironed out and refined, and they’re programmed into my unconscious mind.

It’s like this. If you go skiing, that becomes something you can whip out in a conversation. Same thing if you visit Japan, or if you meet a celebrity, or learn the guitar, read a famous novel, and so on. It’s not canned material; it’s not like the guitarist is scheming to herself, “I’ll impress them with my knowledge of electric vs. acoustic.” These experiences become a part of your personality, and you “own” them. You don’t have to consciously search for them when you’re talking to friends; your subconscious mind suggests them to you with no effort on your own part. Before you know it, you realize you’ve been having a close, heartfelt talk for two hours with someone you just met! The same exact thing happens when you write an article. The difference is, you can write an article every single day, if you want. You gain the same kind of conversational fuel for your subconscious mind, but it takes only an hour or so for an article, versus dozens of hours and thousands of dollars to learn how to ski.

“I hear and I forget;
I see and I remember;
I write and I understand.” -Chinese proverb

FURTHER READING

Become More Intelligent by Doing New Things
Three Ways to Be More Present
Reality Expansion
Being Open
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