How to Improve Your Conversation Skills and Make Friends

If you are a shy or nervous person by nature, than simple conversations can often be arduous, excruciating affairs, with all of your fears and anxieties plaguing your thoughts and actions. But never fear, there is a simple remedy for you to defeat these fears and anxieties - building for yourself a basic foundation of good conversation skills. Once you improve your conversation skills, you will gain confidence and watch the shyness and nervousness melt away. RELAX The easiest way to keep from stumbling all over yourself in a conversation is to try to relax, stay calm, and quiet your racing mind. Become confident by breathing deliberately and slowly to establish a rhythm and you'll soon be able to focus clearly on what you wish to say in conversation. ASK MEANINGFUL OR CLARIFYING QUESTIONS This is an important conversation skill. The ability to expand the discussion through insightful and engaged inquiries reveals to your counterpart that, not only are you paying attention and invested in the conversation, you are taking the time and effort to thoroughly think it through, and that you are willing to cover a particular thing from every possible angle. GO WITH THE FLOW Don't try to force the conversation to places where it doesn't want to go. Every conversation as its own particular flow and pace, and it is important to ascertain its rhythm early on to make sure you are in sync with your conversation partner. Don't push it faster than it wants to go, but don't be so slow that you hold it up either. A good conversation should feel natural, spontaneous (even when its scripted or outlined) and fluid. THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK, BUT NOT TOO MUCH Effective conversation skills involves consideration and sensitivity. Always try to be thoughtful in conversation, and be considerate of what and how you say things, but do not become paralyzed by thought. This will take practice to get the hang of, but it will come with time. The ideal here is to take a couple of seconds to consider what you want to say and exactly how you want to say it before doing so. Never take more tha 20 or 30 seconds to respond, though, as such long pauses tend to absolutely kill conversations in their tracks. KEEP IT SIMPLE Don't get ahead of yourself, and don't try to get cute when in a conversation. Don't over-complicate the subject you are discussing and be as clear and direct and SIMPLE as possible, for your benefit and the benefit of your conversation partner.