The time my introversion interrupted folks and made me the centre of attention

Story time, pendos:

A few years back, I was with a group of friends at our local pub. We were all happily talking about whatever, but I started to withdraw from the conversation.

Yeah, it might not have been the most polite thing.

Or the most charismatic.

But while everyone else lost themselves in the conversation, I stared out the window, deep in thought. See, I’d been studying hard lately. Body language. Charisma. Influence. Right then, my mind decided it was time to reflect on everything.

Clearly I’m an introvert – an extravert would rather process all this by talking it through. Keep that in mind as I get back to the story.

Everyone else is deep in conversation.

I’m not – I’m simply sitting at the same table.

And then, because I was thinking about it, I did a simple gesture. I didn’t mean to – my body fired it off on its own.

The conversation stopped .

Everyone stopped and stared at me.

A few looked out the window to see what I was looking at. Then they focused on me again, as if expecting me to say something.

So I did.

This simple gesture, which you can learn with a few minutes of practice, is powerful.

It can pull all the attention onto you.

It can defuse tension and turn strangers into friends.

Apart from one or two cultures, it works in every group of people on the planet.

And it takes less than half a second to do. It’s so subtle, they probably won’t notice it. Even so, they’ll respond as if you pushed the friendship button in their brain.

What is this humble game-changer of a gesture?

I cover that in Exercise 1 of Conversation Hacker.

You can pick it up at this link here:

https://guided-thought.com/hacker

P.S. I’m running a flash sale on Conversation Hacker… and it’s half over. For the next day or so, you can download it for 55% off. Use the code SMALLTALK at the checkout.