When I was getting this session together, I only had to recall my own uncomfortable social experiences as a young adult. I just couldn’t ‘do’ small talk. I would murmur, mumble, and bluster away, and if I did talk, it was likely to be inappropriate ‘shock value’ conversation about something ghastly on the news as I fished round for something – anything – to say. Because I was no good at small talk, I decided small talk was trivial anyway. We often decide that stuff we can’t do ourselves isn’t really of any value – quite a neat trick for bolstering self-esteem! Although, of course, once we have become good at something, it suddenly has a whole new value. Objective lot, aren’t we?
It’s a funny thing about small talk. In fact, because so much of human communication is unconscious, we actually communicate a great deal through the so-called ‘small talk’ – sometimes even more than when we are supposedly talking about big or ‘deep’ stuff.
Actually, learning about hypnotic communication (which was what eventually led to the setting up of hypnosisdownloads.com) showed me that we all communicate metaphorically and ‘in parallel’ to a far greater extent than we realise. It seems that we all talk about what we really want to be discussing in our small talk at times – it’s just that we don’t know we are doing it. This means that really mastering small talk enables us to ‘seed’ ideas which can be developed later when the conversation turns to ostensibly more serious matters – you’ve already prepared the ground, so to speak.
Chat about the weather or ‘Will you please keep it down!’
For example, suppose I want to bring up the subject of how good it would be if the person I’m chatting with (I’m naming no names here…) would keep things quiet at night when I’m trying to sleep. I might be chatting lightly about the weather, say, and casually comment on how the weather seems to have ‘quietened down’ and how it was so annoying when the rain and wind were lashing and I was trying to get some… sleep…ing cats were even woken up at the vets….and so on…
This rather ridiculous seeming example could then ‘echo’ later when I finally get around to talking about the importance of them please shutting it at night – the small talk subconsciously echoes in their mind, which has been prepared… by the (seemingly) unrelated chit chat about the weather.
Fancy a sniff?
Small talk is also a form of ‘social grooming’. I talk about this in the hypnosis download. We humans don’t tend to sniff one another’s rear ends on first meeting. Instead we have neutral chit chat to pave the way to perhaps more obviously important stuff later on. Idle banter – chatting, ‘shooting the breeze’ – allows us to put others and ourselves at ease and means that ‘bigger’ conversations are appropriately timed and not rushed into before people are ready for it.
I got over my own problems, thank goodness. Hypnosis from others and self-hypnosis got me confident and relaxed with pretty well all social situations and nowadays I am always alert to the power – and potential profundity – of small talk.
Right, I’m off for a multi-level chat with the fishmonger…
Over and out
Mark
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