Deep conversation is conversation that builds personal connection
You should be sharing first
Key here is to avoid facts and to seek emotion
Facts are the surface conversation
Emotion are the deep level conversation
You want to seek emotions, emotions like how you felt when you fail in something, how you felt when you had your first success, how you felt when you moved for the first time, and something that you regret, something that you love, something that you hate, and your dream, your fears and your stories, your feelings, your aspirations, your regrets, an embarrassing moment, a happy moment, a sad moment, your opinions about things, how you feel about things, these are the things that you want to talk about because they elicit an emotional response.
Sharing something deep makes you extremely vulnerable, it gives the opportunity for other people to laugh at you and this is what prevents most people from sharing in the first place. They are scared that they’re gonna be mocked and laughed.
The key is the more you share, the more this feeling will dissipate over time, you will not only learn how to share but you’ll also be learning how to love yourself warts and all.
Here’ some practice question that you can think about that will help you share more about yourself. What is the moment that you regret something that you wish you could go back and redo why do you want to go back, what is something you dream about accomplishing but you’re too shy to tell the rest of the world, are you scared of not being able to accomplish it? why? What is the best and the worst moment you experience with your family, how you do feel when these things happen, how have they shaped you as a person.
Many times after sharing, the other person who is listening will be prompted to share something deep about themselves as well.
Next Step which is listening, the large of majority of people are not good listeners, when someone shares something deep in meaningful with you, they’re giving you an opportunity to dive into the depths of their world, they’re trusting you enough to share something deep about themselves that they rarely ever share so you better make sure you’re listening correctly.
The key to be a good listener is to be as present as possible, listen to them as you would watch a movie. You want to hold strong eye contact for at least 80% of the time while they are talking, you want to ask question that will allow them to elaborate more points that you’re interested. Most of all, you want to let them do 90% of all the talking.
If you find yourself dozing off (打瞌睡) and thinking about other things, you need to work on your ability to stay present to the moment, and the easiest way to fix this is by practicing meditation.
There aren’t many good listeners out there so people really appreciate a good one.
The last step is to relate, we may come from different places with different backgrounds yet we are all very similar inside, there things that each and every person experiences, these things that we all have in common that we all go through are our: emotions, fear, bliss, love, regret, anger, embarrassment, and many other emotions.
the first thing you want to do is identify which emotion the other person is conveying through their story or whatever it is that they’re sharing and you want to be able to relate to them by bringing up something that is similar so you can tell them hey what you went through I felt the same thing before.
The best way to go about starting a deep conversation is first build some rapport, you want to talk about surface level things at first, because this is what socially acceptable, you can also throw in humour in order to build rapport quickly.
After building some rapport, you want to start off by sharing some positive emotions first you don’t want to talk about your greatest fear and regret immediately at the get-go with someone you just met talk about something like your ambitions, like what made you happy or a funny moment that happened to you.
Having a deep conversation is going uncomfortable at first especially if you are not used to having them, but over time you’ll start enjoying it more as more people open up to you and you open up to more people, more people will compliment you, and more people will compliment you and you’ll also learn above all to face your past to be proud of what you’ve been through and to share proudly with the rest of the world.
Learning how to have a deep conversations is one of the most useful social skills that you could have in your arsenal, it will open up so many doors and build so many relationship that you will cherish for the rest of your life.