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Real Life Acting Tip #1: Meeting People
How many times when you “run to the store” or go on some kind of errand are you actually doing an urgently important task, and how often are you actually just inventing an excuse to go out and be around other people?
Maybe I just think like this because I spend all day writing in an attic (well, almost) overlooking a city full of people I am not interacting with. So when I do go out, I am aware of the simple fact that there are other people there and it is quite lovely to be around them.
As such, I go to certain lengths to make sure that all of my interactions with people are enriching: because I am consciously choosing to make them so, and I am consciously choosing to engage in them in the first place.
Maybe you feel like you don’t have that ability to consciously choose your interactions and on top of that to choose to make them enriching. If that’s the case, go deal with that on your own time. We have bigger fish to fry here.
For some reason, these things were never obvious to me before I began mastering myself and reformulating my life. So I feel inclined to share the stupidly obvious and frankly quite sad observations I should have been living according to all along - just on the off-chance that somewhere, somebody out there doesn’t think this is obvious either. I like to think of them as acting tips for playing the character of “You” in the musical of your life.
- Stand up straight.
- Look people in the eye.
- Shake hands firmly.
- Speak clearly.
- Ask people how they are, seriously mean it, listen to and consider what they have said, and if the response they transmit is positive, continue engaging in what ordinary humans call “pleasant chit-chat” or “small-talk.”
- Do not expect people to talk to you if you have earphones in. It is a symbolic gesture in which, if you’re wearing them, you are communicating: “I can’t or don’t want to hear you”. People, for the most part, will oblige you in your pretensions.
- Do not be creepy. I define “being creepy” as, roughly: “acting unaware that you are putting undue emotional demands on other people, potentially caused by being unaware that no one else can fulfill you emotionally and you need to first master yourself.” Or something along those lines. I think you see my point though.
- Added (see comments): “For some reason people younger than baby boomers don’t know how to introduce anyone”.
I guarantee with 100% certainty or your money back that this shit works. I mean, it is not fucking “rocket science” or “brain surgery” as they say. For some reason though, nobody seems to be aware of this stuff. It’s almost like we as a culture need to go back and re-watch all those helpful 1950’s government/corporate propaganda education films; because hell, they may have spawned a psychotic out of control culture, or they may have been full of good ideas and intentions expressed perhaps not always in the best way.
The point of these “tips” and the rest which will follow in this on-going instructional series are simply all about that: acting with intention, so that your thoughts, words, feelings and deeds are all in harmony.
September 17th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
No, its not just you. Those are all good things. There is one thing I would like to add. For some reason people younger than baby boomers don’t know how to introduce anyone.
If you have a bunch of friends that don’t know each other and you invite them over, its good to tell everyone their name and somthing about them that other people would be interested in. It will hopefully facilitate a conversation and help people become connected. That’s the host’s job.
So mant times, generally friendly outgoing people, don’t seem to know how to do this. So some one comes over they say hi and then there is a long uncomfortable pause and everyone stands around shifting from foot to foot.
names are good, plus one thing about them, or where you know them from or how you met them. Same for when you are with a friend and run into another friend.
September 17th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
[…] They say that grocery stores are a great place to meet women. I don’t know who “they” are and I haven’t ever actually tried to pick up a woman at the grocery store: but it seems like an entertaining pastime. […]
September 17th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
You mean to say that I didn’t get a money back guarantee with my rocket or my brain surgery?
September 17th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Holy shit! God yes! This drives me fucking nuts! I’m going to add that into the post…
September 17th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Ted, that is a perfect description of what I am trying to articulate with the shared value communities and the skills bank.
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007.../17/what-is-a-shared-value-community/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007/09/17/creating-a-skills-bank/
September 17th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
cool! btw I wrote a skillz list.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I was wondering if you were writing about meeting people you don’t know, for the first time. I looked at it carefully and thought you weren’t, but then I looked at the title again, “meeting people,” which tends to imply meeting for the first time. Maybe it just implies that to me, since I don’t have anyone to go and meet out in public that I already know.
How in the world are you supposed to get to the stage of shaking hands with someone you haven’t met before? I just don’t see people doing that out in public. Of course, what I mean by “out” and what you mean by “out” could be completely different sorts of places, although I do live in the Seattle area. I would mean like on the sidewalk or in a grocery store or other store in a strip mall or mall. Any other place (that I know of where there are people) would involve using some kind of ID or membership or having some business there that makes it not really “in public” as much.
Maybe the handshake thing isn’t the important question here. I’m still looking at what you wrote like a puzzle, and I think there might be a message there that when other people say “how are you?” or “how ya doin’?” or something like that, they mean to start up a conversation and possibly make friends with you. That’s a possibility I’ve considered sometimes, but I’ve never been able to switch from my habitual reaction to hearing those sorts of things, which is to say “okay” or “fine” and shrug it off because it’s just a store clerk saying “how are you” because they’re paid to do that and if I took time to answer and start a conversation it would slow business for other customers and make everyone uncomfortable: other customers, the clerk, me.
So I guess a few times a year, maybe 2 to 10, someone says “how are you?” to me who isn’t a clerk, and I’m supposed to respond to that socially in a friendly way according to a set of rules about “small talk” and “chit chat” that I’ve never done before? I guess I could try to learn those rules, but if I’m not good enough at picking up social signals to know already that people want me to say something more than “okay” when they ask that, then how am I going pick up the social signals that would tell me whether I’m following the rules of small talk right or making a nuisance of myself?
Maybe what I’m saying here is that telling people how to start at something doesn’t usually do any good, because if they had the talent to be good at it, they would have experimented with and figured out the beginning steps for themselves already.
I realize that what you wrote was the active “ask people how they are” not the passive: when you hear it realize someone’s trying to talk to you and respond positively. But I switched it around for me. It would be really dangerous for a person with as little social skill as me to go around speaking first to strangers and trying to get a response. Once I tried that for a few days, being talkative with strangers, at a community college, and a lot of people complained behind my back to the dean about it. I asked him and he told me yes, they were uncomfortable talking to me but they couldn’t tell me so they told him.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
You are analyzing this way too much, don’t you think?
September 18th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Dangerous to whom? You, because you’re scared to extend yourself emotionally? This is completely stupid and by that I mean logically inconsistent. If you don’t have social skills, how are you ever going to get them, except through practice?
Read this for elaboration:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007/09/17/self-expression-oppression/
Although this is much better:
http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2007/09/1...ple-want-to-help-you-if-you-let-them/
So what you’re saying is that if you try something once and aren’t successful, then you have every right to run back to your cave and hide forever? Good luck with that!
See rule number 7 above.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:54 am
I came back to see if there was a response. Good, a response from Tim, I’m thinking, now I can really work on myself with potentially insightful advice.
Your response was a bit critical. I asked myself what I was feeling about it and felt sore physically, sore eyes, but I was careful not to misinterpret that as anything different from what I would have felt physically anyway, viewed with some words and experiences in mind.
Then I started writing my reply and realized: You were just a bit critical. That means almost everything I wrote was actually about the subject you were writing about. Yea! I win.
So my emotional and social life isn’t logically consistent. So what? I never asked for advice on how to be more robot-like. (I’ll get practice the way I want, when I feel like it. I don’t have to do it exactly the way you say.)
(from your article you linked in response) Yes. I read that post before I commented on this one. Possibly it helped inspire me to put myself out here on the Internet, honestly as I can.
I’m thinking about how active vs. passive I might be to create more social life for myself. You can argue I should be active, take the initiative, and that’s defending the advice piece the way you wrote it. Moderately passive, responding to others, could work too, and give me social experience, if I at least get out there and pay attention to others so I can respond as soon as they show interest.
On the Internet, the blogger is the more passive role. The commenters are taking the initiative to impose themselves on someone else’s space and hope they aren’t unwelcome. I’m careful not to be creepy as in rule 7, so I don’t ask every complete stranger I see “Will you be my friend?”
Is this comment creepy? I don’t know. It has emotional value for me, because I’m the one working on myself as I write it. Maybe it doesn’t have so much value for you or your readers, but whatever. “ADD + VALUE” Besides, isn’t there a right to try to respond on Internet threads if someone calls your point stupid, not just a right to hide in a cave?
September 20th, 2007 at 9:45 am
> For some reason people younger than baby boomers don’t know how to introduce anyone
Yeah, that’s good. That’s the line of the show right there. I bet there’s a frikkin’ rabbit hole under that one if we sit down and think about it.
September 20th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Yeah, there must really be something to this. Why is it such a widespread problem? I am beginning to think that simple manners, and knowing how to approach people and treat them are some of the most important things in the world.
September 21st, 2007 at 4:46 am
Thinking about it, the more outrageous I’ve been when introducing people to each other, the better friends they’ve become…
September 21st, 2007 at 8:17 pm
A lot of Baby Boomers think their parents are fucking assholes and still talk shit about them even though most of them are dead know.
But Lo and behold, “The greatest generation” taught baby boomers some manners. But the Baby Boomers resented it and thought it was oppressive to be taught manners and made damn sure they didn’t teach their kids any.
I mean I am exaggerating for effect but i think that is part of it. Plus, baby boomer Mom’s mostly all worked and wer not in the home as much, and families don’t spend as much time together.
There are lots of factors, But anyway. My Grandparents had manners and used to eat at the same time everynight and only watched one hour of t.v. a night and went to church etc. They were more orderly and disciplined in general. I think the pedulum swung a little too far and baby boomes thought life in the 50’s was too stiff and formal and swung it back too far the other way.