
Ask HN: How does a 24-year-old guy work on his interpersonal skills? - aryamaan
I am generally out of the topics when I am talking with some person and when we two are the only people conversating. It doesn&#x27;t happen much when more people are there in the group.<p>This is more observant when I trying to have a conversation (both- face to face and on text) with some girl and&#x2F;or not conversating in my native language.<p>I can point it to my social awkwardness, not-knowing-how-to-talk-to-other-gender among other things.<p>So, how do I make things better?
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noir_lord
Practice.

Engage people in conversation you might not otherwise, if you are in a coffee
shop and it's not busy make a comment about something in the news to the
person behind the counter etc.

Striking up a conversation with a stranger has the advantage of there is
little pressure (if it goes badly you probably won't see them again) and
allows you to talk to lots of people with diverse interests.

Rather than worry about what you are going to say really listen to what _they_
say and then ask questions, people love to talk about themselves and generally
like answering questions about something they are interested in, a large part
of conversation is been a really good listener which doesn't just mean not
saying anything but really listening and then saying something pertinent.

As for conversation topics, follow the news (and read news sources that you
might not read by default) as that gives you a varied base of reference plus
as I'm English you always have the universal fallback of talking about the
weather.

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clishem
Read the classic book by Dale Carnegie:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influ...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)

Also, it's up to you but I wouldn't take social advice from random people on
HN. ;-)

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aryamaan
Why not? and what else are good places to take social advice from?

