A good way of improving your communication skills is to practice talking to strangers in a casual way. Though it has been said so many times that talking to strangers may seem to be a dangerous thing to do, the dangers don’t apply to all cases. You might be surprised that talking to strangers occasionally may have good benefits in terms of improving your interpersonal skills.
A perfect way to start talking to strangers is to make small conversations with your next door neighbors every now and then. Now, it’s normally perfect if you don’t know a lot of your neighbors because you have a busy lifestyle, and you may not see the necessity of connecting with them. But, you can at least try to talking to those neighbors who live directly next to your home. When you have neighbors whom you have connections to, you may have people who will look after your home when you are gone, or check if there’s something odd going on in your eyes. You will also have the chance to chat with your neighbors when you feel bored, or you can borrow stuff that you can use in the kitchen in case you run out of your supply. A new study has observed that people who have more connections in their neighborhood have healthier mentalities, and this is a good factor in the overall physical health of an individual. Connecting with your neighbors can also help you avoid hassles of noise and unruly things that your neighbors may do. Plus you may even have more chances to socialize as your neighbors may invite you to their private home parties from time to time.
Have you tried waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and you commute to work feeling like you are already having a disastrous day? You can reverse this feeling by talking your neighbor. A study has proven that people who have a good time while commuting can have a better outlook on their days unlike people who just put their headsets on to listen to music. Talking to people who don’t have a lot of judgment about how spiteful you previously acted can actually be a stress reliever, though you are not really sharing the bad stuff that happened to your day. This will also make the commute shorter!
Meeting different cultures is also a good way of talking to strangers because it gives you the chance to know different kinds of people and appreciate your differences to other people from across the world. If you are someone who doesn’t go out of your house, then you can still meet people using social media sites, chat sites and dating sites. Getting to know people from different cultures and backgrounds will force you to get out of your comfort zone and test how much you can connect to other individuals. By connecting to people who come from unfamiliar lifestyles will also broaden your understanding and form you into a “less judgmental” individual. The joining of different cultures have paved for building diverse and powerful communities, just like what happened with Western and European countries where equal opportunities are offered for all nationalities as a sign of an open connection with people from different races. Meeting people from different cultures can also help create relationships based on trust, understanding and shared interests and life goals. When you learn how to trust and to love people who have different cultures, it can make you approach problems on a better perspective as you know that you can trust people into helping you rise from the hard situations. If you don’t feel like connecting to people from different cultures yet, then you can try listing down things that you can do, and start off with the easiest ones. You can start by consciously deciding to be friends with someone from a different race or culture, and then you can expose yourself to different cultures. You can observe people and take a good look at the biases you have formed over time about the other cultures and figure out if it’s a realistic bias or not. Then once you have done enough observation, you can try making small talks about the cultures, customs and views, but you should be careful in the statements and the kinds of questions you make in order to avoid offending the person you are talking to. Listen to them intently and note your differences, and your similarities, and from there, you can learn how to become really good friends with this stranger.
You can also try casually talking to strangers in supermarkets, coffee shops, the local diner, the gym or at the clubs. More or less, you will meet people who are of the same race and shares the same interests on these places. Talking to strangers you find in these places may help you improve on opening conversations to regular people, and will help you feel confident and comfortable about yourself. You can ask simple questions to people who are buying the same things you are shopping for in the supermarket, or ask to share a table with someone in the coffee shop or the diner. You can talk strangers into becoming your gym buddy in the local gym and you can help each other work on a few work-out routines. Just make sure that you approach them causally and in a friendly manner, and make sure that you do not talk to them about intimate or personal stuff to avoid sounding so prying. A great way of casually talking to strangers is by sharing a drink or two at bars or clubs. At least you have the drinks to make you feel relaxed when you talk to the strangers. But be careful about sharing so much information especially if you don’t know the person a lot.
Talking to strangers will help you form bonds that will make you healthier in terms of your mental and emotional health! Practice talking to strangers occasionally and you will soon find that you have a healthier social life, plus you will rarely feel depression and anxiety.
