Build better connections with my Powerful Honesty course

Do you struggle to connect with people because you rarely find them interesting? Or perhaps you struggle to pay attention while speaking when you’re nervous or unsure of yourself? People may not be as boring as you think they are, in this video we explore the real reason behind this problem.

Dan’s Top Resources

Books

Dan has 3 bestselling non-fiction books available in both written and audio form:

• The Naked Truth, his latest release, shows you how radical honesty builds self-confidence and relationships
• Nothing to Lose explores how to build confidence from the inside by correcting the programming in your brain
• The Legendary Life is a very practical, action-focused guide on how to plan and execute a life plan that brings you your ideal lifestyle

Online courses

Dan continues to put out high quality online self-paced courses through the Udemy platform

• Nice Guy Recovery: how to transform from a people pleaser into a confident beast.
• Shamelessness: how to relieve yourself of the “not good enough” story
• Powerful Honesty: takes you through step-by-step development of your communication skills to be more charismatic and powerful in your honesty
• The 3X Confidence and Authenticity Masterclass program: use the famous 3X Model to build confidence in all areas of life
• Financial Freedom for Beginners: includes everything from budgeting, to getting a raise, to investing in the stock market, to starting a side-business and more
• Overcoming Your Fear of Rejection… Permanently!: covers the psychology of “rejection” and what actions to take to make yourself immune to the fear of it

Full transcript (unedited)

Hey, what’s up? Welcome back to Ask Dan anything with brooder. And today we’ve got a question for those of you who struggle with socializing, because you find that a lot of other people just aren’t very interesting. And you have to kind of force yourself to be interested. Here’s what one of one of my clients said through. I can’t tell if I find someone boring, or if I’m not being curious enough and genuinely listening, or I’m not expressing myself. And that’s why I’m bored. Maybe I’m just over complicating things with socializing, in my head conversations or to people reflectively responding to each other and try and understand each other. I feel like what is happening with me is that I’m concentrating so hard on making statements that I’m not listening properly, then my statements can be judgmental, especially when expressing opinions rather than curious. However, sometimes when I’m curious about people, I still find them boring talk to you. This one actually come up quite a lot. People who have struggled with socializing, making friends dating, even when they overcome some of their social anxieties, they still find other people just generally uninteresting, and I want to give some insights into that. First off, I got ignored, some people just won’t be of interest to you, no matter who you are, there’s gonna be some people out there you’re just not interested in. I mean, I am hugely fascinated by human psychology. And I find all brains interesting. But there’s still some people I’m bored talking to, okay. Usually, it’s not because of who they are. But because of how limited they are in their expression of before you decide someone’s definitely boring, you’ve got to figure out your own ship. First, you need to be sure that they were given the best possible chance to express themselves and that you were being as honest as possible before you can come to the conclusion that they are actually boring, or that you are bored. It’s not the job to be interesting. Alright, it’s your job to be interested. That’s what will make them interesting. It goes in that order you interested them interesting. Okay, you can’t wait for someone to stimulate you. You need to provoke them into stimulation. With the guy who’s thinking this through what’s coming through clearly as he’s inside his head too much and at the wrong times. So when they’re speaking and having their turn, he’s inside his head. Instead of listening to them and paying attention to them and letting go of whatever comes up. It’s one of the biggest things that I struggled with when I developed my own social abilities, was when someone else is speaking all these ideas and thoughts and worries and assumptions and planned things jump into my head, and to just let them go. So they’ll be speaking, and I’ll be like, Oh, I’ve got a good thing to say. And he’s still speaking, I had to let go of their good things. And I might forget it forever. It’s really important to let this stuff go so that you keep paying attention to them. How can you possibly find someone interesting? If you’re not paying attention to them? If you how can you not? How can they be interesting if you’re not interested in the first place if you’re not there to observe? Right? So those things will pop into your head. And you can’t stop that from happening. But rather than going oh my god, hold on to that thing to let go and go, Okay, what are they saying? Just keep bringing your attention back to the person watching their body language, you know, what are they really saying underneath what they’re saying, trying to dig in and explore with your mind. Rather than staying in here and trying to plan what you’re going to say next. Another thing to keep in mind is data and to be as open as you are interested. Okay. So if you’re holding back and you’re not paying attention to them, they’re going to block off. So if you’re seeing a lot of people, they seem to stay superficial with you and boring and talk about mundane shit with you, there’s a really good chance that because the way you present yourself makes them feel unsafe. They don’t feel like they can open up. It’s amazing to me is when I started really paying attention to people Spacely this little trick that I’m sharing this video, which is to try and figure out what they’re not saying. So be really paying attention like what are they really trying to say they could feel that and people just open up to me. And these days, most people have really deep conversations with me. Now some people still stay superficial even though I try my best blink them open up. I can’t do anything about that I just move on to somebody else. Now, one of the points he makes is when I do try to be honest, come across as judgmental when it’s been my opinions. There’s a difference between being truthful and being judgmental. Okay. Honesty is not about being judgmental. judgments are lazy. It’s where you assume a truth. And you speak it as though it’s facts rather than opinion. One of the things you can do is start expressing yourself more creatively and make it more interesting to have a conversation instead of just saying the judgment, talk about the thinking process that lead to the judgment. So for example, rather than saying, Oh, you’re too slow, or you’re stupid or that dumb idea. You can say something like, you know, when you said that I immediately had this assumption about you, and about your intelligence. And it just led me to that really judgmental place. And that’s much more fascinating than just saying that judgment talks about being judgmental, rather than expressing the judgment itself. Okay, that’s a much deeper, more vulnerable sense of honesty. Let them see how you think, rather than just telling them what you think, right? You want to be really honest with someone, let them see the process. Explain your inner experience. So when you are expressing yourself, talk about what happened to you while they were talking. You can even say start a sentence with while you were saying that I and you can tell them about the experience you have. And so rather than like, oh my god, I can’t think of something good to say you can say them, you know, while you’re talking. I couldn’t even bear dinging because I was so nervous. I was trying to think of something good to say. That’s going to lead to a deeper conversation, then you just coming up with something good to say. Right? Tell them about the process if you’re struggling to pay attention to them. If you’re finding them boring, make the assumptions because you’re struggling to stay interested. Then being interesting isn’t the problem. It’s your ability to pay attention, this problem to tell them about their struggle. Tell them about how it’s hard for you to pay attention. Tell them about how you stuck in your head. Tell him about how you’re overthinking things that will create a deep conversation. Or they won’t like you either way, you’re off the hook. from boredom. Take your time to respond. A lot of people just like things don’t look good. Say Come on. Come on. Stop talking funny. Stop talking. Here’s something good to say. He’s trying to like throw stuff out as quickly as possible, so urgently like keep them interested. Try and pay attention while they talk. And then when they’re finished, leave it for a couple of seconds and let your brain just naturally catch up and come up with something to say, as they’re trying to come up with something while they’re talking your landlord for silence to happen. silences aren’t boring. Okay. automatic pilot conversations are boring, boring. And they happen when someone’s trying to avoid a silence. So let’s silence have a little drag out the history. And if someone really is being boring, if you’re applying all the stuff, you’re saying the most vulnerable things you can about yourself, you’re paying attention to them as much as possible. You’re trying to see behind what they’re saying and what they’re really saying. And showing them you know what you think you’ve seen and that’s still not creating an interesting conversation. Then call them out on being boring. Okay. You can say stuff like come on, man. Tell me what you’re really thinking. Tell me what you’re really feeling. Don’t pretend you care about the weather Come on, man. What’s really going on for you? Open up you can tell them to go deeper. You don’t have to be hope that they will say go deeper so it’s boring. You can even say the words that’s boring to me. You know? You don’t have to be rude with us just honest. So I do I get that you love being an accountant. But this is like totally not my field as boring to me. Tell me something else big something real. Tell me about your family. Tell me about the real you if you’ve got certain things you are interested in, then guide them towards those things. So you know what I’d love to know about your tasting music. Rather than I hope they stop talking about their work and they start talking about music guide you want them to be interesting. Take them to the place that’s interesting for you. Go give that a go. All right. Try and be more reflective with your listening I really listen to them and then try to reflect what you heard back use reflective listening techniques which I’ve talked about in some of my members only stuff if you guys want that stuff. just message me dan@brojo.org there’s a private videos I can talk about how you can get access to those. Hopefully this helps leave your comments below. If you’re somebody finds a you get easily bored and you want some help with that. Subscribe to the channel. I’ll see you guys next time.