So thankful that people do this and chronicle this...our society is getting more and more isolated, it feels. This (I FEEL LIKE, could be wrong, I'm kinda a boomer now haha) was more common 'back in the day' and now some people do it as a social experiment.
Talking to strangers at the gym
271–280 of 810 posts
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#272One of the things I like about this is that OP is giving people genuine compliments without any particular agenda. It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, where he tells a story about complimenting someone, and a student asks what he was hoping to gain from offering the compliment. Carnegie is incensed: > I was waiting in line to register a letter in the…
I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people. I know it's very shallow on my side, but I somehow crystallized this opinion based on a few acquaintances that claimed to read it and instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more. Your commen…
If Books Could Kill did an episode on How to Win Friends and Influence People, it's an interesting listen. iirc the book was written by someone documenting what they learned while breaking into high society or some other class they were not a part of. So it's not so much about manipulating people but more about stroking egos and being as agreeable as possible to avoid any conflict. The podcasters make the point that it was written in the 30s when confrontation, being an individual, and sticking up for one's beliefs wasn't really possible while climbing the social ladder.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-win-friends-and...
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#273This was a delightful read. I have a few relationships with people on the autism spectrum who struggle with socializing, despite recognizing the desire to be more social. I can point them to this blog.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, your instinct is right from the title. “influence” is a euphemism for “manipulate.” Affecting influence is subtle manipulation. A compliment about someone’s hair is great if you genuinely admire their hair. But if you read a book about influencing people and suddenly start complimenting people’s hair, time for some introspection.
> "influence is a euphemism for manipulate" Strongly disagree with this sentiment. Influence can have a lot of sources, from institutional authority to simply being persuasive, which is distinct from manipulation. In this context influence and persuasion are being used interchangeably, but persuasion is the act of winning someone over to your point of view, so they understand the topic as you do. It respects their au…
I'd argue that {someone who is good at getting desired outcomes} is going to have a toolbox of carrots, sticks, and other things and I think sometimes you are going to be 100% ethically happy with how a situation went and sometimes you are going to feel some conflict between your values. [1]
I'm not sure where the line between "manipulation" and "persuasion" is exactly but certainly a person's intent and how they think about themselves and other people has something to do with it. There are many feats that I can do today with ease that my evil twin coveted a few years ago and just couldn't do because he had a bad attitude.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people. I know it's very shallow on my side, but I somehow crystallized this opinion based on a few acquaintances that claimed to read it and instead that they include the name of a person they just met in every sentence because it made that person like them more. Your commen…
Oh, I'm glad! Yeah, I don't think you'll find it a red-pill kind of book at all. I know what you mean about books like The 48 Laws of Power feeling like the world is 100% zero sum, so everything is about dominating or outplaying people. How to Win Friends and Influence People is very much focused on win-win. There is an agenda to make friends and influence people, as you'd guess from the title, but the strategies are…
I think it's quite clearly the second part of the title. If it was just "How to Win Friends" it might be something more people don't dismiss just based on the title.
"... and Influence People" makes it sound like that's the purpose of befriending someone, i.e. getting them to do what you want, or to do something for you.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manipulation is about trickery. Influence does not have to be manipulation. Persuasion through reason is influence.
I think that’s exactly what they’re saying. Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative, but it sure can be. Here’s the difference: Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated. Doing something charitable garners influence. Influence is a side-effect and not the intended goal—unless it is, and then it’s manipulation. The fact is correct that the word influence is a euphemism for manipulation. The very fact that…
> Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative
> influence is a euphemism for manipulation
Surely you can see that your statements contradict each other.
> Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated.
Hard disagree. It certainly can be, but doesn’t have to be. A person can be a positive influence for no other reason than they feel like it’s a good thing to do. You could influence your coworkers to be better engineers and not gain anything from it.
I mean, we could retreat to the “oh you feel good about it, so it’s still selfish” stance, but that’s uninteresting.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#277> “do your hobby with other people, frequently”. I think it's decent advice, but from my experience, it can take years to make friends that way. I practiced various sports my whole life in the context of sport clubs (martial arts, climbing, snowboarding, swimming...). The way it worked for me is that after months, sometimes years of chitchatting with same people over and over, I barely made any good friends from that…
The unstated bit is that you have an incidental excuse to talk to them (compared to cold approaching in other contexts) but you still need to talk to them. Everything depends on you making the effort.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#278Around 15 years ago I took on the challenge to start a conversation with random people to break through this barrier and train this muscle. What I started with was to chit chat with those I had already established an interaction. For example at the Starbucks I would say something to barista. Those interactions were short but broke the ice. Later I went for random people in the street and that was quite awkward. There…
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Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#279Good for you, OP! Climbing gyms are especially good for making friends because you are working on problems with people. My gym has a weekly meet up for people looking for belay partners as well as classes where folks talk. Crossfit might also do the trick, as might a running club. Good luck!
I used to rock climb in gyms a lot. I stopped going because I found the people there incredibly irritating (didn't matter on the gym). The things that irritated me: 1) People would immediately jump on the route I was on after seeing I struggled. Cool flex. 2) Unsolicited advice. Thanks, but I'm here minding my own business I generally have a hard time connecting with people like OP but found that I was able to find g…
You know the old adage about if you meet one jerk in a day, it's them, but if everyone you meet is a jerk...anyway I'm glad you like CrossFit, if climbing weren't my thing, I'd probably do something in that category instead :)
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#280This is great! Good on you for putting together a plan and taking action.
One thing I noticed when I was doing salsa dancing is that there's a normal distribution for how you "click" with people. With salsa dancing, you change partners frequently so I may have interacted with dozens of people in one night of dancing. I noticed how most people fall in the middle of being fine to dance with and then you get a few outliers where they are either terrible to dance with or are amazing.
It looks like OP found something similar. Out of 35 encounters, he had 5-6 advance to the "prioritization" stage (~14%) and 2 (5%) ended up moving into building a relationship outside of the normal environment you usually interact at. I think that is very relatable. Most people you interact with will be fine to chat with but only a small percentage will be people that you really gel with.