Julie here. Thank you to Maggie for being last week's guest blogger. Next month I'm taking care of a household that consists of seven cats and one dog - ought to be at least one blogger amongst them.
It's interesting walking the dog. Cassie and I walked around Green Lake with Maggie. After stopping a couple of times to visit other dogs, Cassie made the comment that I had been thinking all week. She said it must be good practice for me to help get over my shyness of talking to strangers. We would run into another human & dog and I would talk to the owner while our dogs sniffed each others butts. But I also quickly learned the code of what you talk about and what kind of questions you ask.
Last summer I created a task for myself for overcoming shyness. What you first have to understand about me is that I have no problem speaking (or even singing) in public. Small groups or hundreds, I'm fine. It's one on one that I struggle. So the task I created is while walking around downtown at lunchtime - which I did every day - if I saw someone looking at the little red brochure map of the city (it only consists of downtown), I would go up to them and asked if they needed help finding something.
Now I need to figure out a new task.
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3 comments:
Funny. I had a conversation similar to this about a month ago where someone told me the homework they had been doing in this area and where they were going next. She didn't mention yours but that's cool.
She started with a diary to note the number of instances she wanted to talk to someone but didn't, had an opportunity but let it pass, etc.
Then she practiced compliments to strangers. 1 woman a day, two, then three, then branched out to men...stuff like telling a lady in her elevator that she had a pretty scarf on. Etc.
I'm trying to remember what she was moving on to. Something about listening to other people's plans and then going back to ask them later. Like if a cowoker said they were going to a movie after work, make a point the next day to say. "Hey, you mentioned that movie yesterday...how did you like it?" or something like that. dunno. sounds kinda creepy when I write it but it didn't when she described it.
Hmm. The compliment thing might be what I need to practice. That is my hardest task, trying to think of an opening line.
Just try to stick with general compliments (clothing and the like) vs personal because telling someone they have pretty eyes could go wrong if they were, say, the President of Burundi. Hopefully everyone should have something that you could find to compliment and mean it. If not, move on to the next person who does.
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