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Talking to strangers at the gym

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Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#621

Post by jimbokun »

xp84 wrote: post #311
drivers99 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or…

You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting c…

Like the Michael Bolton character in Office Space.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#622

Post by bitwize »

xp84 wrote: post #311
drivers99 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or…

You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting c…

"Well, you could go by Mike instead of Michael."

"Why should I have to change? He's the one who sucks!"

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#623

Post by petesergeant »

alexmuresan wrote: post #98
mtlynch wrote: post #80

One 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 you enjoy it, I would recommend picking through a lot of the classic Self Help books. They were popular for a reason! Wayne Dyer is a good read, Tony Robbins books are usually great (whatever you think of the author), even the much maligned Seven Habits is a really great book. There's even some pretty decent male-oriented stuff out there, like Iron John, Fire in the Belly, and "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover". Pyscho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz even inspired a Dali painting.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#624

Post by askos »

For those for whom the gym seems too intimidating to start convos with strangers, another option is to try spotting and signing up to the hobbies where social interaction comes naturally, if not even unavoidably. Things like amateur choir singing (which I do), amateur folk dancing groups, sports clubs where people train in interactive groups (a cross-country ski club in my case), etc. -- these give regularity and allow the persisting social interactions with the same people over longer periods of time to form into true friendships.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#625

Post by JohnBooty »

hlynurd wrote: post #290
windowshopping wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the same boat as you before I heard enough good things about it that I checked it out. After all, if it was really bad, I would be able to tell as much and stop reading it, nothing lost. I can confirm it's really good. It's not manipulative at all. The book can large be summed up as "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is…

> "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how." Isn't this highly manipulative?

Don't be silly.

Influencing somebody is only wrong if you fail to care about their needs in a reciprocal way... the line you quoted specifically addresses that.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#627

Post by JohnBooty »

djeastm wrote: post #496
shwaj wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s manipulative if you don’t care and pretend you do, especially to achieve a goal of your own. It’s not manipulative if you cultivate the tendency to actually care about others, and not treat them like NPCs who are only important for your goals.

>if you cultivate the tendency to actually care about others I suppose this is the question: can caring about others be "cultivated" or is it something we do without being able to affect how much we do it?

Like other skills it can absolutely be cultivated.

Even if one doesn't "naturally" care about others, it's also true that even from a totally selfish perspective it still kind of pays dividends to be a good person, be concerned with the welfare of the people around you, and build interpersonal connections.

There's limits to that, for sure. There are a number of biological bases for empathy. And being biological, it stands to reason that different people will have different capacities. But, it also certainly feels like a skill.

Here's another angle. A lot of people, perhaps maybe a lot of engineer types, struggle with empathy because the needs and wants of others just feel like a confusing sea of infinite possibilities. But here's a trick. At any given moment, any given human being is probably just trying to fill one of the needs on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#628

Post by JohnBooty »

dpark wrote: post #309
hlynurd wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "if you want other people to care about you and your desires, you need to care about them and theirs and SHOW them that this is the case: here's how." Isn't this highly manipulative?

It’s basically “If you want to be liked, you should try to be likable.” Is the only way to not be manipulative to be a curmudgeonly jerk? If being pleasant means being manipulative, then indeed everyone should try to be a bit more manipulative.

Yeah. It's only wrong if there's deception involved, or a failure to care about the needs of the other.

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#629

Post by hellojimbo »

mindstorms6 wrote: post #547
talkingtab wrote: post #506

I have found three strange and unexpected avenues for interacting with people. 1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest. I was trying to buy an old metal key as a gift for a friend. I wanted to find someone who sold sheep's milk (for making cheese). If you are on a quest it gives a context for an interaction. You both have something to talk about and it you both have an out: the answer. People almost always help you with a ques…

> 1. Be on a quest. Yes a quest. This is unbelievably true. I did a scavenger hunt (challenge hunt?) in Seattle (hosted by a friend of a friend). Many of the challenges involved interacting with other humans (dance with a stranger, buy someone you don't know a shot, give someone you don't know a rose, etc) It was so fun. I've never met so many people before. But it struck me how excited everyone was to help out on my…

in the past, you genuinely needed other people all the time which made this so much easier

Re: Talking to strangers at the gym

#630

Post by JohnBooty »

SoftTalker wrote: post #275
mtlynch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Influence" is a perfectly neutral term.

Martin Luther King Jr. influenced people. Gandhi influenced people. Mozart influenced people. Your favorite teacher influenced you.

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