What a difference a year makes!

A few nights ago I celebrated my 26th birthday. I must say it was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had and I’m not just saying it. This wasn’t because there was a crazy party or hundreds of people or whatever you would picture an awesome party to be. Though I did have my first ever birthday makeout! I had only invited a small group of friends. I think it was more because it had shown how much I have grown as a person in the year that has past.

In the past I wasn't always big on celebrating birthdays. To me, I just saw it as another day or a lame excuse to get attention from people. At that point I didn’t have many friends (or I wasn’t sure who my real friends were) and I was very insecure of who I was. I had little direction of where I was headed and my future didn’t seem certain.

This year was a little different. In the year that had past I had become really close to 2 of my best friends, James and Nass. In the past, I saw friendship as just a bunch of guys meeting up and having a good time. When you have friends who don’t share the same interests as you, it would sometimes be a tedious task. I wasn’t very open with them and sometimes I would question why I was friends with them. So what changed?

I wasn’t always an open person. I felt that if I opened up people would use my openness as a way to take advantage of me. It had happened to me many times in the past. I would place trust in someone only to find that they had their own interests at heart. For a while I had curled up into a shell and wasn’t willing to let anybody in. A few years had past and I felt lonely and depressed. I can’t say exactly when I decided to be more open with my friends. I think I may have thrown out a few things about who I really was in small chunks overtime.

As the year past I think I built so much momentum that I started seeing my friends open up to me. I started talking about my fears, about my thoughts, my dreams, things that make me tick… and they would open up just as much as I have. James and Nass appear to be very confident guys. It was a great feeling to realize that not only did I have flaws within myself, they had same flaws as I did. Only that they had a different way from showing it to how I did. When we would open up to each other there wasn’t any desire to take from each other, we were sharing each others presence. Everytime I was with these guys I would feel like a better person just for being around them and I know they felt the same.

On the surface you could easily say that this was just an ordinary party. To me it was a reminder of how far I’ve come as a person and I’m looking forward to seeing who I become on my 27th birthday. In being a more open person I have also created new friendships and become closer to those who I wasn’t so close to. I believe the quality of life comes down to the people you influence and I feel more and more each day I am becoming an influential person.

I’ve always got something to say

Weekend Conversation Workshop

As I am writing this, I am currently in Noosa relaxing and enjoying the sun. Later on I’m going to take up surfing. Something I’ve always wanted to do but never got around to. Especially after seeing the movie Point Break. It’s feels great to escape having had an intense weekend. Over the weekend, I underwent a conversation workshop with 7 other guys ran by my coach Matt and his awesome sidekick Nicola. Going into this I was a bit nervous but excited at the same time because holding a conversation has always been a problem for me and here was an opportunity to get this handled. Was this workshop going to fix my problems give me the answers or was it a waste of my money? My biggest sticking points as far as conversation goes were:

- Running out of things to say

- Making conversations fun and playful

- Establishing a connection

- Turning things sexual

- Relying on repetitive routines

The workshop involved drilling different conversation techniques. I must say after the first few exercises, I felt my conversation skills improved ten-fold and with practice I could be really good at this. The best thing about it was I wasn’t relying on routines. I was drawing upon my life experiences and also using what is given to me from the person I’m talking to.

Fieldwork

We went to Spice Market to practice our skills. As I was driving up I was a bit nervous as I wasn’t sure if I would put the skills we practice during the day to use or would I’ve revert back to routines. I approached a few groups (some with assistance of a wing) and at first I was using routines and reverting back to what I knew but once I got comfortable with my surroundings, I began using the skills that we had practiced during the day. Conversations were very easy to get into and I was having fun with lots of girls and girls were having fun with me. It was a great feeling knowing that for some of the groups, I left them on my terms and not because I had run out of things to say and felt I could come back at any time. I also felt that there was no pressure to pick up and that I was practicing a new skill which took away the dependency on the outcome.

Day 2

The next day we did a debrief of last night. Personally, I was really happy with how I went and was happy to see others doing well also. Day 2 was geared more towards the sexual side of conversation. For me I’ve struggled to turn conversations sexual and have always steered towards nice guy conversation. Though I’ve struggled with this I feel that with a lot of practice I can get good at this.

I really value having done this workshop. I feel it has allowed me to smash some barriers that were holding me back. As long as I put myself out there and put the skills to use I can’t see why I can’t be a conversational master.