"Her barbell is a special women's barbell."
FYI, it was probably just a regular women's weightlifting barbell. They are somewhat lighter, and have a thinner grip. Maybe she's serious about her weightlifting training.
Talking to strangers at the gym
671–680 of 810 posts
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#672One 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…
Interesting when I read the book I wanted to rename it to "How to win fake friends and manipulate people." Maybe I missed the humble passages.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
My read on the book was "humans are really good at telling if you genuinely care about them or not and will respond well to that, so you should genuinely care about the people around you, and good things will result from that overall, especially if you're not super mercenary about it." Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.
How can you make yourself genuinely care about something you don't care about? It sounds as plausible as changing your own sexual orientation.
Maybe just me, but two things -
1. You don't care about X until you do. Like, you can go for years without worrying cholesterol. And then you can have a reason to care about it and all of a sudden you do. The reason can come from something that forces your hand or just because you take an interest in a subject.
2. Altruism. Think less about care and more just doing without expecting anything back. People notice, especially with selfless conversation.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#674"According to Reddit” - so many lives have been ruined listening to what gremlins on social media have to say. It’s simple. If you want, approach. It’s not dangerous, you won’t get cancer. If they don’t want to talk, you will stop talking with them and talk with someone else. "I am deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations." - anyone who thinks like this is suffering from abused dog syndrome…
My life quality increased immensely when I realized most of Reddit is bots and the parts written by real humans are usually written by the type of person that you really shouldn’t take any advice from
What kind of reddit do you browse? The /r/funny one or the /r/composting one?
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#675One 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 always try to compliment people if I see they're taking a lot of pride in their work or something they're doing. I was at a conference where the staff each had a coffee/tea/sweets station to maintain. I noticed one woman cleaning and polishing and being super fastidious. I wanted to compliment her, but then I debated with myself if that would be patronizing somehow. Finally, I decided to tell her she had a very nice station, and she just beamed ear-to-ear in response.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#676Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen this a lot with travel youtubers where they want to show genuine interaction with the population rather than generic tourist stuff. So they set arbitrary restrictions like not using maps, or avoiding PT and trying to hitchhike to destinations. Pretty much everyone everywhere is willing to help how they can and have a conversation in the meantime. Having some obvious goal like "I'm a tourist and I'm lost" im…
This reminded me of Ludwig and Michael's recent travels in China where they weren't using any maps or translators. It was a very fun watch.
There's a video on YT that basically proposes the idea that Ewan McGregor's & Charlie Boorman's "Long Way Round" series has been the last "true" travel documentary made for TV. I thought that was a bit silly initially, but after watching it(the YT video) I can't shake the feeling that I agree with the premise.
Basically - in "Long Way Round" Ewan and Charlie take two motorcycles and they ride them from the UK east, going through Russia and finishing in the States. But even though they have support crew of two cars following them with extra equipment, it doesn't change the fact that back when it was filmed, they didn't have internet connected phones with them. The maps of Syberia were innacurate, they didn't speak any Russian, they were driving through really difficult terrain and you could "feel" that they were far from civilization - contact with family was infrequent,they relied on kindness of strangers a lot because there was no other way to continue. There was a lot of communicating with hand signs and pointing.
Compare that to their later "Long way up" where they rode up through South America - at that point they both had mobile phones with maps and instant translators - they were never lost, and even in the middle of absolute nowhere they would walk up to a local and just use their phone to translate. They had video calls with their families practically every night. Even though they were in some places no less remote than Syberian roads, it didn't feel remote in the same way.
And yes, I know there are YT travellers who try to artificially follow the same kind of philosophy - no translators, no maps, just going in raw so to speak. But the world has changed. Even if they don't use phones, the locals do even in the middle of the amazonian jungle. And it is amazing how connected humanity is, but there is certainly an era that has ended for all of us.
I really recommend this video, whether you have seen Charlie's and Ewan's adventures or not:
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds frightening to someone with social anxiety...
Yeah, that would be the last time I show up to that gym. I'd feel it was my fault. and that I was bothering them.
You bother people every day with your existence. You are one more car in their traffic, 5 minutes more of waiting in their line, you got the last bagel they were craving. Being a bother to people is part of living in a society, it would be impossible to live without ever being a burden or a nuisance to anyone. I wished I had accepted this earlier in life.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds frightening to someone with social anxiety...
Yeah, that would be the last time I show up to that gym. I'd feel it was my fault. and that I was bothering them.
The important thing is to realize that this feeling is irrational. People aren't strongly bothered that easily. Quite the contrary, extroverted people tend to be much more popular than average.
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#679really love this post!
it inspired me to talk to someone today and that person was happy about it!
Re: Talking to strangers at the gym
#680"According to Reddit” - so many lives have been ruined listening to what gremlins on social media have to say. It’s simple. If you want, approach. It’s not dangerous, you won’t get cancer. If they don’t want to talk, you will stop talking with them and talk with someone else. "I am deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations." - anyone who thinks like this is suffering from abused dog syndrome…
> Also, why is he talking about “friends” and “strangers”? We all know he means “women".
Does he? It seems like he socialised mainly with men in the documented interactions. Perhaps he really was just lonely in the general sense.