You don't have to go to jail to build your confidence
A couple of years ago, a getaway driver in Portsmouth was jailed for 9 months. Nothing unusual about that. Except he was 81 and as part of his defence, Ian Hemmens, testified that the only reason he became a getaway driver was to overcome his isolation. His lawyer told Portsmouth Crown Court: ‘Ian wanted to be a driver because it gave him the chance to have a chat with someone…The defendant admits that he likes talking to people and that is why it has come about.’
Luckily, you don’t have to turn to a life of crime to have more conversations in your life. I've had probably three hundred conversations with strangers, usually while I’m traveling on trains. Often, I start just with a two words: ‘I'm curious...’
Here is my opening gambit for a man sitting opposite whose tattoos I was really curious about:
Me: ‘Wow that is a fantastic tattoo on your arm. I'm curious, what it's about?’
Stranger: ‘It's celebrating the birth of my daughter. I'm in the Navy, we have lots of tattoos!’
Me: ‘What do you do in the Navy?’
Stranger: ‘I fight pirates.’
Result!
I'm fascinated about how courage and anxiety and adrenaline work in we humans, so we have a conversation about managing stress under fire. He doesn't feel any stress apparently!
Notice that I got from tattoos to fighting pirates in just two simple questions.
What I love about talking to strangers is that it takes you into new worlds.
Here is another world on another train:
Me: ‘How far are you travelling today?’
Stranger: ‘I'm off to York University for a job interview, I'm a scientist’
Me: ‘What do you science?’
Stranger: ‘I study the surfaces of carnivorous plants. They are either really sticky or really slippy, and the big tech companies are interested in their slippiness.’
Being curious helps me practice not knowing, allowing myself to have a beginner's mind, so I can connect with other people's lives. I didn't know anything about carnivorous plants, or about fighting pirates, and I loved finding out what makes people passionate about their work.
Sometimes it means I must be willing to suspend judgment. Once I had a 40-minute discussion with an evangelical Christian who told me how God made the earth in seven days and evolution is wrong. I didn't agree with him, but I put my beliefs to one side (mostly) to try and understand his world more.
The interesting thing about curiosity is that seems we don't need a reason to be curious, we can be curious for its own sake. No one has ever asked me: ‘Why are you curious?’
So, are you curious about why this public speaking trainer is talking about starting conversations with just one person? The short answer is that public speaking is actually all about conversations — and practicing with one person at a time really helps build confidence. Starting conversations with strangers means you step out of your comfort zone regularly and you practice accepting that those twinges of fear are just part of the deal. Of course, there is a risk of someone being rude or ignoring you or laughing at you. But in 300 conversations, I have had only two people who closed the conversation down very quickly — but they weren't rude, they just didn’t want to engage so I respected that and got on with reading my book.
James, a course participant, made the purpose of his confidence practice very clear when he wrote to me in October 2021:‘I now understand that these little steps are so important to be able to build myself up one small interaction at a time. They all go into making the ‘bigger’ events less ‘big’ and it all becomes non-threatening and even enjoyable’
We need to practice confidence. It is a skill like learning to play the guitar or speaking Spanish. And practicing confidence means doing the actions of confidence and THEN the feelings of confidence come later. If you wait for those confident feelings to arrive without practising, you will stay stuck in whatever fear is holding you back. Too often we see fear as a signal to stop and avoid, but in doing so we fall into the confidence trap. So feeling a bit nervous when I start a conversation is part of being alive.
My final curiosity shot took me straight into a real-life thriller plot.
Another train, just two of us at a table seat.
Me: ‘Is that a good book? I've been thinking about reading it.’
Stranger: ‘It’s been helping me think about my work.’
Me: ‘What is your work?’
Stranger: ‘I’ve been a criminal defence barrister for the last 25 years in London and my Northern accent helps juries trust me more.’
We both laugh about being northerners living in the south.
Me: ‘Wow, so what are the big lessons for you over 25 years of doing that hard work with criminals?’
Stranger: ’People I represent are either mad, sad, or bad — but they are mostly mad and sad. Very few of them are bad.’
Me: ‘Who was the baddest of them all?’ (couldn't refrain from asking that).
Stranger: ‘I had to defend a Liverpool gangster who was infamous for cutting people's ears off. When I walked into his cell that gangster stared at me and said, ‘87 Acacia Avenue, Croydon* is a nice place to live isn't it?’ My heart leapt as that’s my home address and there is NO way he should have known it. Needless to say, I worked really hard to get that man a good defence. I spent two months being very scared. We moved very quickly after that and became far more anonymous.’
(*address changed for obvious reasons).
So, my curiosity helps me pass hours away on the train. It leads me into new worlds. It helps me gather new stories for my trainings and blog writing. But the biggest rewards are realising that people are fascinating, that you never ever know what kind of lives people are living, and what great stories people have.
I'd really love to know where your curiosity takes you in 2022.
Will you let me know? I'm curious...
My Curiosity starter kit for practicing curious conversations:
Start with a simple phrase like: ‘I'm really curious.... about’ or use questions based on curiosity
Be brave enough to ask questions that might sound too simple or show your lack of knowledge like ‘What would happen if you did that...?’ or ‘I don't understand...why is that wrong?’
Questions like: ‘Tell me more about...’ help you explore further
Practice suspending your judgment. See your aim as gathering more information rather than being right.
Cultivate beginner's mind (letting go of having to be an expert)
Trust that for every boring conversation, there will be two really interesting ones.
Book a table seat on a train, it's far easier to start a conversation when people are sitting opposite you.
Be enthusiastic about their work or life or story.
Be open and kind.
Make the conversation more about them than you!
The question ‘Tell me about yourself’. I've never used that on a train, but it works as a starter question at parties…
