Many shy and socially anxious people are interested in learning how to be more talkative. Some people seem to naturally be talkative and connect easy with others. They on the other hand struggle with this.
The good news is that you don’t have to struggle. Equipped with some savvy advice on how to be more talkative, you can get out of your shell and participate more in conversations with other people.
As a social confidence coach, one of my biggest delights is to see my clients speedily become more talkative under my guidance. I want to reveal to you the top four pieces of advice regarding how to be more talkative that they apply to achieve this.
Step 1: Manage Your Expectations
People who are quiet go into social settings with flawed expectations that make it almost impossible for them to be social and talkative.
For example, the may expect that everybody should like them, or they should never say something off beam, or they should never upset others.
With these kinds of expectations, you’re bound to be shy in social situations. Because almost anything you could say risks not meeting one or more of them. This is why an important step in learning how to be more talkative is to manage your expectations.
Managing your expectations means to identify what you, consciously or subconsciously, demand of yourself and others in social interactions. And then, to correct these demands: to make them less perfectionist and more down to earth.
This will allow you to feel more at ease in social settings, open up more and enjoy conversation more.
For a step by step explanation of how to manage your expectations and take the pressure off yourself, watch this exclusive presentation I created.
Step 2: Practice Being More Spontaneous
Another pattern in the behavior of quiet people is that they think too much before they say something.
They wanna be sure they always say the smart, funny or right thing and they never say the silly, weird or wrong thing, which is also related to the unreasonable expectations they have.
Consequently, they tend to over-think every sentence they could utter. And when you think too much about something, you always find fault in it and you often end up not saying it.
An excellent exercise for overcoming this is to practice being more impulsive during conversations. What you do is you say what pops into your head before getting a change to evaluate it thoroughly. You think less and you talk more.
As a result, not only that you’re more involved in conversations, but in the long run, you also build confidence in yourself and become comfortable with being more talkative. This is what makes the exercise cool.
Step 3: Remove Your Limiting Beliefs
Having unreasonable expectations, thinking too much and being quiet in social settings are ultimately mere symptoms of certain beliefs you posses.
Most shy or socially anxious people I’ve met or coached don’t hold themselves in high regard, they think they must be perfect or they think others are better than they are. This is the root of their problem.
If you want to permanently eliminate your nervousness in social settings and become more talkative, you need to get to the root of the problem and fix it from there. You need to change a precise cluster of beliefs you hold.
This is not only a helpful insight regarding how to become more talkative, but also a helpful insight to transform your relationships with others completely. And from there, your whole life.
I have a special free guide for you in which I’ll show you how to remove your limiting beliefs and blast away your anxiety in social settings. Go here to check it out.
Step 4: Treat This as a Process
Today you can become a bit more talkative than yesterday. And tomorrow you can become a bit more talkative than today. And in a few weeks, you’ll have accomplished one mind-blowing transformation.
However, you won’t turn from shy to talkative overnight. Don’t expect this, because you’re just adding to those unrealistic expectations that work against you.
The truth is that human psychology doesn’t work that way. It takes some time and practice to change. Not a lot if you do it the right way, but it does take some.
Treat this as a process, not as a quick fix. Work on becoming more talkative day by day, optimize the process, persist, and focus on making steady progress. This is the attitude that individuals who win at this game have.
I can vouch from experience that learning how to be more talkative and effectively applying this knowledge will open a lot of doors for you. You’ll be able to meet more people, make more friends, get more dates and get ahead in your career.
When you’re comfortable with expressing yourself and letting the world know you as you are, you can do great things with your life.
Image courtesy of bicycleimages
[adrotate group=”5″]
Hi! im really loving your articles! they are all well-said easy to understand. I really appreciate it and i cant wait to try them. Rock on!!
It’s never what you say. It’s how you say it.
The words you say are the content of your communication. Your tone is the process. Observe your tone. What if your tone mattered more than what you said. What if how the other person felt had more to do with how you spoke than what you spoke?
I saw the title of this article and was sceptical. Should you really try and LEARN to be more talkative if you are a naturally quiet, contemplative person? Should being talkative be considered better? Eastern philosophy, for example, teaches the exact opposite of saying whatever comes into your head. But when I read the article, it did give some very clear, good advice. And I realised that being quiet ISN’T necessarily ‘who I am’, because when I’m with my boyfriend, or having a discussion with a friend or my family, I can be quite chatty. It’s only when I’m around people I don’t know so well that I’m quiet, and I guess it IS because I’m afraid of offending them, or being judged, although I hardly realise it consciously. Maybe I’ll try and experiment a bit;)
It might have been fate or merely my cognitive interests that led me to this site but I have always felt that I “distanced” myself exactly for the reasons as stated by yourself. In fact it’s been a huge drawback as far back as my early teens. I can be extremely talkative if I don’t expect anything in the long run from an individual. For example I’m in IT retail and find it extremely easy on a professional platform to communicate with people. Problem is when it’s with someone I truly like. Guess it’s time to start experimenting as well.
almost all shy people hate who they are and wish they could just make more frineds and stop feeling awkward while talking to others. these articles are excellent because they help shy people gain confidence and be able to have a better life.
Yep, I totally agree with you, I mean I’m naturally quiet why should become something that I am not of. Its as if us quiet people are very negative. Its society that forces the way that how we live :/ . I agree about the Eastern philosophy too.
yes it is really what i feel …
i am comfortable of being quiet but people are making fun of me because of this,
i’ll take your advice. tnx.
I’m shy but not really if you get what I mean. I want to talk. I want to participate in more conversations but half the time I don’t know what to say and that’s really my big problem.. Cause normally they talk about the things they did if they hung out or something so people consider me qieut for this but they don’t really try talking to me.. But I’ve tried talking to other people.
I think I talk to much. Today this guy I met at a public library and heard me talking to this neighbor guy who on the other hand talked back a lot too as I was moving from one topic to the next. Then the guy I was chatting with left and I asked for his name for the first time (the guy close to me was surprised and asked whether I knew that guy I was chatting with prior) I said no its first time meeting him. He became astounded to how easily we were conversating and how we pondered so many subjects in a very short time. He commented on me saying ‘you might seem crazy by others I was really surprised to why anyone would think such thing. Just because I talk and carry a conversation easy it doesn’t make me any less sane. Just saying.
I am very very talkative with close friends, but not with people I’ve just met. I am also talkative in one to one chats but I loath and detest group chats. I guess I feel if I offend or they disagree with me, they could gang up against me, and that would mortify me, I wouldn’t know how to deal with that.
Also, so many people talk about banal things, things that have been talked about 100s of times and so I don’t get involved because it just doesn’t interest me. I suppose small talk does matter for friendship making but the same old discussions just bore me, so I stay quiet, or just give a simple short answer like ‘me too’, or ‘I agree’, or ‘I know what you mean’. I rarely expand on a topic if it seems banal,but maybe I should idk.
Also, I avoid personal anecdotes, as I am a very private person, I guess I worry about giving people the power to hurt me in the future, so the less I divulge about my personal life, the more detached I become which results in getting more respect. Whereas if I chatted all the time, told all and sundry everything, i.e my income, family background, children, it could cause jealousy and other problems. I guess being quiet is a protective mechanism.
I almost entirely agree with you and I really recognize myself into the shy description you have done but I think you have forgotten some really important points.
I’m a shy and very reserved person but in the same time I have no difficulties to be talkative and interesting once I have chosen to talk to someone or when someone come at me. But, the great problem I think, is not about the fear but the in the fact that I have nothing to say to them. I think that most of the conversation are banal and I don’t want to have banal conversations with people just in order to be social. I’m not saying that people are stupids or not interesting, I’m just saying that they don’t try to be interested in something. They are just most of the time here to spend time and try to have fun (even if it’s simulated fun, forced fun). It’s a nice hypocrite world where you have to enjoy all that happens even if all that circus is boring as hell.
I’m an active man, I don’t like very much loosing my time slumped in a couch drinking beers, I prefer practice entertaining activities with people like playing or learning/teaching/make discover. I think in fact as you said in the article that my expectations are to high but they are not so high in my opinion. I’m not asking to meet people incredibly interesting, I would just meet people that can be interested in something. Most of people are for example drinking beers at bar without other conversation that do gossip on their absents friends… When you try to talk about something more constructive or trying to make them doing something you will be seen like a lost sheep (this is the group effect I think). We are in a time where jerks are messiahs… so it’s normal if it’s more and more difficult to have cool conversations (and no. Saying fuck or insulting at the end of all your sentences is not that I call cool, it just shows that you are stupid and childish. If your nephews are laugh out loud when you talk about pooh, why-not, but not among adults).
Hopefully sometimes you find some exceptions to this fact…
The solution that you gave is obvious but since I really known I was shy I wasn’t and I’m still today not decided to change for people, particularly on this way.
The truth is that i’m not better than the others (the confident), I don’t want to become an “impulsive” jerk polluting all conversations I could in order to be the attraction of the party. I don’t want to be friend with all people I meet…
Yes, I’m a pragmatic guy. I think while in this world people prefer to loose their time (and are not so happy about it… drinking to forget… talk for saying nothing…).
I have not to change to meet the standards, the standards should make effort to be more civilized in their relationships (but this society is not going in this way indeed, it’s more interesting to have stupid people…).
PS: In everyday life I’m a funny guy making my friends laugh when “I want”. I’m not following the dictatorship of “fun at all costs” or “make idiots things to entertain”.
I think that these jerks attitudes that are common today are just a very EASY way to seem fun even if you are not. It’s clearly not difficult to show his ass for example (even more if you need so liquid courage (alcohol)). That’s all.
Never have been accepted. Only my husband loves me. No one else talks to me or is nice to me ever. I am 53, and have no choice but to give up
Great article and very helpful advice. To sum things up, in order to become more talkative, I also have to be more confident and have a better perception of yourself.
I am so shy and I don’t understand why. When I’m at my boyfriends house his family talks so much, and I can’t seem to think of anything to say. I talk when i have something important to say. I don’t like talking about trivial things. Most of the time people just talk for the sake of talking. I am tired of being called shy just because I don’t want to talk about pointless things.