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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   1840 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 6, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Are you literally in college, or just out of it, or does it just sound that way? Asking before getting into any kind of recommendations.

It just sounds that way. 26 years old and well into professional life.

Improving my ability to talk to everyone, regardless of the topic. I mostly enjoy deep, intellectual convos and don't keep up with pop culture, sports, etc. I find surface-level convos boring and tend to detach myself if we move down that path. Maybe there's a minimum amount of "normie" (I hate that word, but you get the idea) topics I should keep up with?

I think what you're failing at is approaching sports/pop culture/etc. at a deep intellectual level. You can have both!

My wife wanted to have her friends over to watch The Bachelor every week. At first I moaned and groaned. Then I decided to watch it like an autistic sports fan, and I discovered the Game of Roses podcast for people who watch The Bachelor like an autistic sports fan. I found a way to enjoy the show: what's the Rose Quotient? Is she going to play her Personal Trauma Card on this group date, or save the PTC for her 1on1 later? What does it mean when a contestant a high RQ and a solid 3rd audience game gets a 2on1 this early in the season?

This is a good idea if you're regularly interacting with (or married to) someone into somethign you're not. But it's overkill if OP just wants more general conversational grease.

Moreover, unless he's willing to become a sportsfan all the way, keeping up on the latest talking points will be a tedius waste of time. And he'll still end up bored and anxious of being discovered a fraud in sports talk. Honestly if you want to make good sports small talk with someone, it's probably better to know nothing about sports than to pretend you care. Consider this opener.

"You know I haven't really kept up with college basketball in a few years. Which schools are doing well these days?"

You'll get the sportsfan talking! and you don't have to pretend you know or follow anything. Plus, a little understood phenomenon - you now have the conversation's steering wheel, while the other one gets to talk and like you for getting to talk. Once you start trying to demonstrate your own knowledge or insert your own talk tracks, you actually lose control.

Instead, you can take the converstaion where you want it to by asking questions. Like history? Interject with historical questions. Like strategy and theory, ask a question about that. "So how does a good team get good..." Like the culture war, ask about that. "You think ratings have changed since ESPN has gotten woke?"

Want to get off sports? Let them give you a little schpeel, they'll like you for letting them talk. Then play a game with yourself to see how many questions takes you to X. Say, X is crypto. Sports... Sports Betting... Gambling... Crypto.

Unless, like in your scenario, the topic is regularly the center of the activity, there's no reason to pretend to like it or to learn about it just to make small talk. It will actually backfire (without a genuine interest) because you'll be bored AND worried about demonstrating your boring knowledge.

I don't normally do this, but it's spelled "tedious".

I appreciate your demonstration of how to not make good conversation.

Like I said, I don't usually do this, but you misspelled it twice and I couldn't resist.

This is fantastic, compelling conversation. Not tedius at all. Tell me more.

This is a good idea if you're regularly interacting with (or married to) someone into something you're not. But it's overkill if OP just wants more general conversational grease.

Moreover, unless he's willing to become a sports fan all the way, keeping up on the latest talking points will be a tedious waste of time. And he'll still end up bored and anxious of being discovered a fraud in sports talk. Honestly, if you want to make good sports small talk with someone, it's probably better to know nothing about sports than to pretend you care. Consider this opener.

You know, I haven't really kept up with college basketball in a few years. Which schools are doing well these days?

You'll get the sports fan talking! And you don't have to pretend you know or follow anything. Plus, a little understood phenomenon—you now have the conversation's steering wheel, while the other one gets to talk and like you for getting to talk. Once you start trying to demonstrate your own knowledge or insert your own talk tracks, you actually lose control.

Instead, you can take the converstaion where you want it to by asking questions. Like history? Interject with historical questions. Like strategy and theory? Ask a question about that. "So, how does a good team get good?..." Like the culture war? Ask about that. "You think ratings have changed since ESPN has gotten woke?"

Want to get off sports? Let him give you a little spiel, he'll like you for letting him talk. Then play a game with yourself to see how many questions takes you to X. Say, X is crypto. Sports... Sports Betting... Gambling... Crypto.

Unless, like in your scenario, the topic is regularly the center of the activity, there's no reason to pretend to like it or to learn about it just to make small talk. It will actually backfire (without a genuine interest) because you'll be bored AND worried about demonstrating your boring knowledge.

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