There’s nothing I like more than sitting down, cup of tea in hand, to have a meaningful chat with someone. When I was teaching, having even a moment in the week to sit down with someone was almost unheard of. Life was too busy, too rushed, for conversations. Now, there is time for meeting at a cafe or scheduling a Zoom chat. These times bring depth to my day, and I’m pretty sure they do the same for the other person. How do we add more of this richness and depth to our lives?
Psychologist Matthias Mehl “…thinks substantive conversations are linked to happiness. For one, humans are driven to create meaning in their lives, and substantive conversations help us do that, he said. Also, human beings—both introvert and extrovert—are social animals who have a real need to connect with others. Substantive conversation connects, while small talk doesn’t.**
Small Talk vs Deep Conversation
Who wants to talk about mundane stuff like how cold its been lately? And yet, we are reluctant to start deeper chats with folks we know, let alone strangers!
Connecting with others in meaningful ways tends to make people happier, and yet people also seem reluctant to engage in deeper and more meaningful conversation,”
– Nicholas Epley, PhD, a professor, behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, coauthor of a study published in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.*
We anticipate that the deeper conversations will be more awkward than small talk, but in his study Epley found that when comparing both types of interactions, people preferred the deeper chats.*
Re-Programme Your Small Talk
It can be difficult to re-programme our casual conversations and up-grade them to more meaningful chats, because we’re just not used to it.
Here are some conversation starters to replace the small talk:
- “How was your weekend?” becomes “What was your favourite part of the weekend?”**
- “What do you do?” becomes “What drew you to your line of work?”**
- “How were your holidays?” becomes “What’s the most challenging thing about this time of year for you?”
- “How was your vacation?” becomes “What surprised you the most about the place you visited?”
Deeper conversation starters are open-ended. They usually ask the other person to share a feeling, or an opinion, rather than just a one- or two- word answer.
Up Your “Chatting Game”
If we rely solely on close friends for deeper conversation, we are likely to have only a couple of chances per week for deeper connections. If we include a wider range of people from the person in line with us at the post office, to our neighbour out shovelling snow, the opportunities increase significantly. According to Epley, “…Most people underestimate the degree to which other people are interested in hearing about their personal and deeper thoughts.” Let’s be brave and give it a try with the folks we see in our daily life. It doesn’t need to be a long conversation to be meaningful to both of us.
Happy chatting!
What conversation starters do you use to get to a more meaningful chat going? Comment below.
*https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/09/deep-conversations-strangers
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