5 Habits of Great Conversationalists

Every philosopher knows that conversation is an art, but it's also a science. How to have great conversations. Let's talk about it. Welcome back to SoulGum, the Self-Development podcast with philosophical, psychological, and spiritual flair. I'm your host, Victoria Hutchins. My goal is to give your soul something to chew on and today we are talking about talking. I'm so glad you clicked this episode because no matter who you are, everyone can benefit from becoming a more intentional conversationalist. Maybe you want to build stronger friendships. Maybe you want to feel more comfortable on dates. Maybe you want to stand out at work. Maybe you want to start a podcast, or you want to start making social media content and you want to feel more comfortable expressing yourself. Maybe you just want to feel like when you talk, people really hear you, and they understand what you mean. But no matter what, how you talk shapes how you are perceived. Good conversations can open doors. They can build trust. They can heal wounds. And sometimes, they can even change your life. And if you're looking to improve your conversation skills, I think philosophy is a great place to look. Philosophy gets dismissed as the airy, fairy, lunar love, good discipline of academia. And it is that, to an extent, but it is also an exercise in exacting precise use of language. So today I'm going to talk through five things that great conversationalists do differently. And what we can learn about the art of talking from the philosophical grades, but also from psychology and spirituality. If you're new here, hi, it's so nice to meet you. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. I'm Victoria. And if you're not new here, hey, I'm so glad you're here too. If you enjoyed this episode as you're listening, consider sharing it. Share it with your friend who's thinking of starting a podcast. Share it with your friend who is a budding philosopher who you like to have deep existential conversations with. Share it with the world. If you think it has valuable information, pop it on your Instagram story, put it in your next dump, put it in a TikTok carousel post. Another way to support is to subscribe. It's great for you because then you'll never miss an episode. You can also rate the podcast wherever you're listening to it. Also, this is an episode about conversation. So let's have a conversation. You know my ass loves a comment or maybe you don't know, but I do. I love to talk to y'all. I make this podcast for you. I love to feel like I'm not talking into a void. I like to understand how these episodes relate to your lives. I like to know what you like. And comments are a big way. I gauge which topics you are resonating with. So if you enjoy this episode, let me know in a comment if this reminds you of conversations that you're having right now or things you want to work on and your conversation skills. Let me know. I'd love to hear what this episode brings up for you. If you share online about this episode, make sure to tag me. I'm at the daily Victorian on TikTok and Instagram. And if you want to connect with me outside of the internet, my debut poetry collection make believe poems for hoping again is out everywhere. Now it is all about the messy work of being human, which is a lot of what we'll talk about today. So if you enjoyed this episode, I think you might like it. It's available pretty much everywhere. Books are sold Amazon target Barnes and Noble all the usual suspects. I love it when you shop independent. And I am partnering with a local independent bookstore in Houston where I live. Blue Willow to offer signed copies. So if you want to sign a copy, I will put a link in the show notes to where you can get one. Okay, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Five things great conversationalists do differently. The first thing great conversationalists do differently is they view conversation as an art, but also as a science. There's this myth that good conversationalists are just born that way. Like it's some kind of charisma lottery. You have it or you don't. For example, if you meet someone and you have a great conversation with them, you are way more likely to say they were so cool or I loved them. Then you are to say they had great social skills or they had great conversation skills. But if someone plays the piano beautifully, we don't say, oh, you're so musical. We assume they practiced. If someone is an incredible chef, we don't chalk that up to luck or natural inclination. We know they learn techniques. They developed taste. They tried and failed. They got better. If someone runs a marathon, you might say, oh, you're so athletic. But you also know that even if they are intrinsically athletic, that athleticism was cultivated and improved by training. But when it comes to conversation, we tend to assume that if you have good conversation skills, they came naturally. And if you have bad conversation skills, there's nothing you can do about it. This you have it or you don't attitude towards conversation is actually fairly new. As recently as three centuries ago, conversation was widely thought of as a skill that needs to be practiced, just like dancing or playing the piano. Take a manual con. The famously rigid German 18th century enlightenment philosopher, he hosted some of the most coveted dinner parties in Konigsberg, the town in Prussia, where he lived, and there were strict rules. It was not just to talk about whatever you want to talk about free for all. There was an agenda. So the conversation started with light fair, like the weather. And then with dinner, they would talk about serious topics, which meant art, politics, etc. And after dinner, it was time for gesting. So there were rules about when to talk and what to talk about. There were also rules about how to talk. No monologuing was allowed. For example, you could not go on and on and on and on without giving anyone else a chance to talk. You were not allowed to interrupt. There was a strict confidentiality rule because can't believe that without trust, there couldn't be a free exchange of ideas. And to some extent, this was just can't be in can't. But this was largely very in line with how conversation was characterized in 18th century Europe. You might have heard of 18th century European salons, not like hair salons. Salons here means intellectual gatherings. These were often hosted in private homes. Poets, philosophers, artists, aristocrats would all come together to talk. That's it. That was the whole point. It was less like a party and more like a podcast, but without the mics. Most of these salons happened in France with Paris as the epicenter. And what's wild is many of them were run by women. They would curate the guest list at the tone. They would guide the flow of conversation. And the goal of a salon was not to lecture or debate to the death. It was a verbal dance. And again, there were unspoken rules. Do not interrupt. Don't dominate the conversation. Don't show off your knowledge just to win points. Keep things elevated, but accessible. Humor and charm were encouraged. But only to the extent they serve the conversation. Not just your ego. One of the most prized qualities in salon culture was a spree. So this is a French word that roughly means wit sparkle nimbleness. To have a spree was to be mentally adept, but also socially graceful. Like you weren't just smart. You made others feel smarter in your presence. And that's what made you magnetic. So it's the opposite of what conversation often turns into today. A lot of the time we talk to impress to dunk on people to perform. And I'm sure low key that was still happening in these salons, but it was frowned upon in the salons. A truly great comment wasn't the one that shut people up. It was the one that gave people ideas. Now obviously things have loosened up since then. Conversations are not as formal as they used to be. And that's probably a good thing. And you're probably listening, being like Victoria, what does this have to do with me? Respectfully, I am not wearing a powdered wig trying to impress Voltaire. I just want to feel as awkward when I run into my coworkers in the hallway or I want to put a better foot forward on dates. And I hear you, but my point is that there's something to be said for the idea that good conversation skills don't just happen. Conversation is a craft. And once you let go of the idea that it's all based on natural charm or some mysterious X factor, you free yourself to practice it like you practice everything else. You get to be intentional, you get to experiment. And I find it's easier to have grace for yourself when you don't nail it, when you think of having good conversations as a skill and not a trait. Like I am a completely different conversationalist than I was 10 years ago. In college, when I would have a less than optimal social interaction, I would walk away from it like, God, Victoria, you're so fucking awkward, I would berate myself. And now I still have less than optimal social interactions, of course, we all do, but I digest them way differently. One of the things I say to myself when I feel like I flopped in a conversation is not my best work socially. That's what I say. I call it what it is, but also don't equate it to a moral failing. Like every handstand isn't my best handstand, every poem isn't my best poem, every conversation isn't my best conversation. When we think of having great conversations as a skill, a science, a practice rather than an intrinsic trait that we either have or don't have, it's easier to understand that every attempt isn't going to be our best. And it's also easier to see that we don't improve by crawling in a hole like we want to when we put our foot in our mouth. We improve by continuing to try. So number one, great conversationalists understand that conversation is not just an art, it's a science, it's a skill, it's a practice. This brings me to number two. The second thing great conversationalists are doing differently, they are initiating lots of conversations. And if there ever was a philosopher who initiated lots of conversations who really leaned into this to just keep talking to people, use your conversation skills or to lose them strategy or to lose them strategy, it was the OG Socrates. Have you ever met someone and you can just tell that as a child they were never told to shut up? That was Socrates. Socrates's mom was telling him, they don't like you because they're just jealous because you're pretty Socrates. RIP Socrates, you would have loved podcasting. Socrates did not write anything down himself. Everything we know about him comes from his student Plato who turned Socrates's life into a series of philosophical fanfakes basically called dialogues. And in these dialogues, roughly the same thing happens every time. Socrates bumps into someone and he asks them a question. Something like, hey, what's justice? And the other person responds to something like, hmm, I think justice is when you follow the rules. And then Socrates says something like, interesting. So would it still be justice if the rules were bad? And then like pages later, the other person is spiraling their questioning, their every thought. And Socrates is like skipping away. Like, thanks for the chat. That's the psychotic method. Asking open-ended questions, poking holes in assumptions, gently or not so gently challenging people to clarify what they actually mean. And listen, Socrates sounds like he was so annoying. I bet the people of Athens were sick of him. And you imagine getting off a long shift as a potter. You're just trying to get some olives from the market. And this barefoot man in a robe comes up to you and says something like, my friend, what is courage? That would send me into orbit. Like, what is this? But Socrates was clearly onto something because this credit method is alive and well today. Just ask any law student. If you didn't know before I was a content creator, I was an attorney and law schools used the psychotic method today across the country. In each class, the professor picks a student at random and they make them their victim for the day. And they ask them questions about the case law that was assigned throughout the whole class. And it feels like the point is to break your spirit. But really the point is to get you to think out loud to explore the gaps in your reasoning. You are not just reciting the information. You are practicing the art of thinking and responding in real time. And while it's nerve-wracking, it does work. It trains you to listen to respond to stay present, which is kind of the whole point of conversation. You don't get good at conversations by thinking about them. You get good at them by having them. And this doesn't just apply to deep philosophical conversations about what justices or nerve-wracking law school lecture conversations. It applies to messy, small real life conversations, like saying hi to the person next to you in yoga or asking your breeze to how their week is going or compelming someone's earrings in line at Trader Joe's. The more of any type of conversation you initiate and have, the more comfortable you're going to feel with it. Because trying is how you get feedback. It's how you learn your rhythms. It's how you notice. So when I asked that question, their eyes lit up and that joke didn't land. So maybe I interrupted there. I will spoke so much on coming off well that I forgot to actually listen to what they're saying. It's where you notice the things that trip you up. Initiating a lot of low stakes conversations helps train your intuition. It's like conversational push ups, small reps that build strength. And just like going to the gym, you don't walk away from every conversation feeling like it was a peak experience. But having high reps, initiating a lot of conversations also helps you learn which conversation flaps are not your fault. Because if you're anything like me, your natural tendency is to think that every time a conversation flaps or an attempt at making conversation fails, the problem is you. But often it's not. And when you have a lot of conversations, it's way easier to see that. Like I tried to talk to this girl at the gym the other day and she just shut me down. We were outside of the yoga studio and it just gotten out of a yoga class. And she made a comment about like how hot the room was. And it seems like she was sort of talking to everybody in the waiting area. And I didn't know her. But I was just, I chipped in, being like, yeah, I don't even remember exactly what I said. It was basically agreeing with her. And she looked at me, gave me the most dead pan stare and then kind of turned her shoulder away from me. And repeated what she said to, I guess the person that she knew who she was intending to talk to. I was like, oh, my bad. Let me shut the hell up. But nowadays I do initiate a lot of conversation with strangers. So when something like that happens, I have the sample size of past experiences to know that that was an anomalous response on her end. And that it's not about me. Like if you fry and eat a rotten egg and it's the first egg you've ever had, you're going to be like, wow, I really hate eggs. And I'm really bad at making them. But if you make fried eggs every day and you get a rotten one at some point, you're going to be like, oh, that was a rotten egg. And that's not me calling this random girl a rotten egg. Not at all. There's many valid reasons to not want to talk to me. And I can, I could afford to shut the hell up sometimes. I love to yap. But just the experience of having a bad conversation or making a failed attempt at conversation. The more conversations you have, the more you're able to see when a conversation going poorly is not about you. I was someone for a long time who thought that I didn't like to talk to strangers. But at some point I realized what was actually going on is I was struggling to be present in conversations with strangers because my focus was on how that stranger was perceiving me because I'm not as hell. And most of us are. We love learning stuff about other people. Humans are fascinated by other humans. If you're someone who feels like, I'm just not good at talking or I'm not good at small talk or I don't like talking to strangers, maybe try putting in some reps. Ask the person behind you in line about their groceries. Ask them, is this good? Tell your Uber driver that their playlist is great. Say, I love your dog's little bandana to someone that passes by walking their dog. Every conversation doesn't have to be a dialogue about what justice is. And to be clear, my point here is not that you cannot be introverted and be a great conversationalist. I do not think that at all. Many of the greatest conversationalists I know, people who social skills I deeply admire, are very introverted. But I think with anything, putting in reps helps. So if you are looking to improve your conversation skills, initiating lots of low stakes conversations is a great way to practice. So number two, great conversationalists initiate lots of conversations, which brings me to number three. The third thing great conversationalists do differently is they ask a lot of questions and they ask intentional questions. One of my favorite books I've read this year is Talk, The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves by Allison Wood Brooks, who is behavioral scientist and a leading expert in researcher on the topic of conversation and a Harvard Business School Professor who teaches classes on conversation and negotiation. She has done a lot of fascinating research on the power of asking questions and on conversation in general. I really recommend reading that book if you're interested in this topic. In one study, she and other researchers brought together strangers and asked them to get to know each other. And they found that in a 15 minute conversation, people tended to ask 6.5 questions on average. Then they got a separate group of strangers together. And before those strangers started their conversations, they secretly instructed one person in each conversation pair to ask a lot of questions, more than 9 questions in the 15 minute conversation and they instructed the other person in the pair to ask very few questions, fewer than 4 questions in 15 minutes. And they found that people who asked a lot of questions were liked significantly more than those who asked for you. Getting more questions caused an increase in likeability. And interestingly, asking questions makes us liked more than we know. So in the same study, the researchers said a follow-up survey asking people to estimate how much they thought their conversation partner liked them. And the people who asked lots of questions didn't think they were liked any more than those who asked few questions, but they were as humans, we like it when people are curious about us. It feels good for someone to want to know more about you. So we like when people ask us questions. But importantly, not all questions are made equal. When talk, Allison Woodbrook divides questions into four categories. Introductory questions, mirror questions, topic switching questions, and follow-up questions. Introductory questions are exactly what they sound like. What's your name? Where do you live? Where are you from? Mirror questions reciprocate the question someone just asked you. I'm good, how are you? I live in this neighborhood, what about you? Talk switching questions, start a new topic, and in doing so, into the previous one. So if you're talking with a friend about the secret lives of Mormon wives, and then you say, by the way, how was your interview? That's a topic switching question. Follow-up questions are the opposite of topic switching questions. So they stay on the current subject, and they press deeper into whatever your conversation partner is talking about. So if your friend is telling you about something that her mom did, and you ask her, how did it make you feel when she did that, that's a follow-up question. So we know that we like people who ask us more questions more, right? However, this does not apply to all questions. Interestingly, the boost in likeability is not triggered by mirror questions or introductory questions. And when it comes to introductory questions, kind of neither here nor there, because you have to ask those questions to figure out who someone is. But would Brooks suggest that mirror questions should be used sparingly? And even just rephrasing a question helps. If someone asks you, "How's your day?" Instead of saying, "It was good how was yours?" You could say, "How your day was," and then say, "Are you having a good day?" When someone only asks mirror questions, it kind of makes you wonder whether they are just being polite or reciprocating the question because they feel like they should, or whether they have an actual interest in the answer. Like have you ever been on a date where you're asking your date a lot of questions? And the only question they're asking you is, "What about you?" They reciprocate your questions. They're asking mirror questions, but they're not coming up with any questions of their own. And that's better than when someone asks you zero questions, which also happens, but it's not that much better. We all ask some mirror questions, but when someone asks only mirror questions, when someone is only reciprocating the questions you are asking them and it's not asking you any questions of their own, it makes you feel like, "Is there anything you actually care to know about me?" Or, "Are we just going to play this game of ping pong where I serve every time?" Woodbrook's research shows that when it comes to boosting likeability, follow-up questions are the heavy hitter. And that makes sense too, right? It feels really good when you're sharing. And someone asks questions about what you're sharing about. It makes you feel like they want to understand, like you're interesting, like they care. Research switching questions are also helpful because they help keep the conversation from lagging. And in our brain rot day and age, we all have eight second goldfish attention spans. You might be wondering, "Is there such thing as too many questions?" Research suggests the answer is no. Talk talks about a study on speed daters that found that people who asked ever more questions were ever more likely to get more invitations for second dates. The limit did not exist. And the same was true in studies where the conversation partners were getting to know each other plotonically. However, her research suggests that there are types of questions to avoid. One type is what she calls boomerang questions. This is when someone asks you a question only for you to ask them that question. Like if your friend texts you, "How's your dating going? Are you seeing anyone?" And you're like, "No, binge is empty. Phone is dry. What about you?" And it's like, "Yes, I just met the love of my life. He's amazing. He's perfect. He's six, five. He's in love with me." And it becomes clear right away that she only asked if you were dating anyone because she wanted you to ask her if she was dating anyone because she wanted to talk about that. Kind of like mirror questions. The issue here is the lack of genuine curiosity. Another type of question that would Brooks recommends avoiding is "Got your questions." Which is exactly what it sounds like. The classic example is, "Oh, you like this band? Name three of their songs. Name three of their albums." So great conversationalists ask a lot of questions, but they ask questions intentionally. They ask topics, switching questions to keep the conversation from lacking. They ask follow-up questions to give their conversation partner space to dive in deeper. They use mirror questions sparingly, and they avoid boomerang questions and "Got your questions." This brings me to number four. The fourth thing great conversationalists do differently is they leave room for the unexpected. One of the best things about conversation is that it's unpredictable. And one of the worst things about conversation is that it's unpredictable. You might start a conversation talking about your weekend and end up talking about a movie that you haven't seen in 10 years. Or crying about a heartbreak you thought you were over or laughing so hard you can't breathe. You really never know where it's going to go. Great conversationalists don't resist that. They welcome it. In certain settings, it can be really tempting to try to control the conversation in order to get your talking points in. Like the biggest example of this in my opinion is a job interview. I remember I had a job interview for a law firm when I was in law school where we spent the whole interview talking about the energy crisis in South Africa. The attorney that was interviewing me had done some work related to that. I started a broad in South Africa so I had experienced the rolling blackouts and the load shedding and we ended up talking about that our whole interview. There was an interview for a different law firm where the attorney interviewing me asked me my biggest regret. And I remember panicking in the moment because I couldn't think of a response that felt appropriate for the context of a job interview. And I ended up responding by telling about missing my high school best friend's last golf tournament and even worse, I started crying talking about it because I hadn't thought about that in a while and I was also nervous. And I remember walking out of both of those interviews being like, "Did I fuck that up? I feel like I should have been talking about why I am right for this job and not South Africa." But in both those cases, I was offered the job. And I remember an interview for a different law firm before those two interviews where I was so much more nervous in interviews and I was stiff as a board and glued to my talking points and I didn't get that job offer. Regidity is a vibe killer and it's almost never worth it to get your points across at the expense of being adaptive. If you go into a conversation trying to control the flow, prove a point, get your talking points in, you're not really conversing. We're performing a monologue and using the other person as your prop and it's not coming from a bad place most of the time but it doesn't create a good conversation. Great conversationalists approach conversation with a yes and energy. They build on what the other person has to say even if it's not what they expected. There's this Zen Buddhist parable where a highly educated professor visits a Zen master to ask about enlightenment and the Zen master welcomes him in and he starts to pour him a cup of tea and he's pouring and pouring and pouring until the tea overflows the cup and it fills all over the table. And the professor starts shouting it's full, no more will go in, the cup's full and the Zen master replies exactly, you are so full of your own opinions and plans and expectations, how can I teach you unless you first empty your cup. I don't think it's bad to show up to conversations with some tea in your cup with some plans. You have to be willing to empty the cup if the situation calls for it. When you show up to a conversation with a script or an agenda or points that you are unable to let go, you're like a tea cup that's already full. And there has to be room in the cup for things to go differently than you thought. You say something I didn't expect and it changes what I thought I was going to say. I say something I didn't plan on talking about and suddenly we're in a whole different territory. I think the best conversations are like that. They're the ones where you veer off course. You thought you were going to talk about your day and somehow you end up talking about God or your dad or some weird memory from third grade you haven't thought about in years. So number four, great conversationalists leave room for the unexpected. This brings me to number five. The last trait of great conversationalists we'll talk about today, a great conversationalist knows how to show up in reality. We are living in a world where we scroll through countless pre-thought-out pieces of content a day. In that world, it's easy to lose touch with how people actually speak in real life. Every day we scroll through simulated conversations, podcasts clips where people sound perfectly articulate, never stumble. TikToks where the creator is hitting a punchline every five seconds. Even genuinely improvised conversations that are edited down to cherry-picked funny moments and remove every pause or um or awkward silence. On social media, you can watch creators reach their hand down towards the screen again and again because they're hitting pause. to collect their thoughts. In real life conversations, there is no pause button. And I think how much online content we consume is leading us to forget how ideas sound when they are actively being ideated as they're being communicated. Social media trains us to expect organized thoughts, clear narrative arcs, and this fast focus pace that is only achievable through editing and pre-planning and scripting. We're also living in a day and age where people on the internet go to amazing lengths to keep your attention. I'm not shitting on that. I do that. If you've ever seen my social media content, you know, I often give advice at a rapid clip while standing on my head. Even right now, even this podcast is not an accurate representation of what it would be like to talk to me in real life. At all, I come to these podcasts with a plan. I have notes, I research, I edit. This is not how I sound speaking off the cuff. In real life, I ramble. I use way more verbal fillers. I'm much less organized in my thoughts. When we consume content online, even when it feels like a conversation, it's a production. But because we're seeing this content constantly, that starts to feel like the baseline. In his 1981 book, "Simulacrum and Simulation," French philosopher Jean-Baudrillard called this hyper reality. Hyper reality is when the simulations of reality become more compelling than reality itself. And we start to prefer imitations over the real thing. As we increasingly choose hyper reality over reality, we start to compare our real life self to these hyper real standards. You feel like something is wrong with you if you stumble over your words, or you start to tell a story, and then you realize halfway through, it doesn't really have a point, or you use filler words, or you ramble. When really, nothing's wrong with you. What's wrong is the standard you're comparing yourself to, or it's not wrong, but it's not real. This also impacts how we perceive and connect with others. If you're used to watching Nora Smith make bubblegum from scratch in Couture, all while narrating a flawless organized voiceover, and then you clock into the real world, and you're in your friend's kitchen, and she's making a PV&J in mismatch socks. She's talking about a weird dream she had. She forgets the middle of it. It doesn't make any sense. Then she's talking about her ex. That might feel unenjoyable. If you've acclimated your brain to the hyper real, Bodriar warned that when the hyper real replaces the real, we lose touch with what matters. And in conversation, that means we start to create stimulation over connection. Great conversationalists know better. They know that real conversation includes awkward pauses, detours, half-baked thoughts, moments where you're saying, "Wait, what was I saying?" They know it's messy and alive, and they welcome that, because they know that's what makes it human and real. So if conversation is feeling harder lately, less satisfying, less sparkly, less doable, more stressful, consider that maybe you're stuck in the simulation, and maybe the way out isn't to get better at performing. The aim is not to try to deliver podcast level clarity while you are in the car with your friends. The aim shouldn't be to bring reality closer to the hyper real. We have to aim to bring ourselves back to reality. Okay, lightning round recap. Are you ready? Today, we talked about five things great conversationalists do differently. We talked about number one, how great conversationalists view conversation as not just an art, but also as a science. We talked about a manual Kant and his famously organized rule-driven dinner parties. We talked about the French salons where intellectuals and artists gathered to have verbal dances. All in order to explore the idea that being a conversationalist is not a tree you have or don't have, it's a skill that you can cultivate with attention and care. We talked about number two, how great conversationalists initiate a lot of conversations. We talked about Socrates, who was roaming around Athens, bugging everybody, asking them questions about justice, and how conversation skills are built, not by thinking, not by researching, but by talking. Number three, we talked about how great conversationalists ask a lot of questions and they ask intentional questions. We talked about Alison Woodbrook's research on question asking and how it shows that asking more questions makes you more likeable. Number four, great conversationalists embrace the unexpected. We talked about the Zen Master pouring tea and this idea that in order to have a great conversation, you have to be willing to let go of your mental script. You have to be willing to empty your cup to make space for something surprising. And number five, we talked about how great conversationalists know how to show up in reality. As Jean-Vaudrier warned in Simulet Transmulation, we are living in a world where the imitation of life often feels more compelling than life itself. But conversations aren't meant to sound like podcast clips. They are meant to be messy, spontaneous, and human. That's the good stuff, that's the real stuff. And I'll tell you this, if you have ever walked away from a conversation feeling awkward, overanalyzing something you said, or thinking, why am I like this? You are not broken. You're just in the ring. And that's a brave thing. You're learning how to show up. You're learning how to listen. You're learning how to express yourself. And we all sometimes trip over our thoughts. We're all overthinking in our own heads. And I think it's awesome that you want to improve your conversation skills. And I hope this episode helped. But I hope you're also thinking about, how can I maximize my joy? How can I enjoy conversation more? Because I bet you're already good at it. And maybe the harder part is realizing that you're good at it. The people like talking to you so you can exhale and enjoy being with people. Because I bet people already really enjoy being with you. So your challenge for this week, obviously, is to go have some weird, sparkly, imperfect, messy human conversations. Compliment someone's outfit and ask them where they got it. Rumble about something that you're passionate about to a friend. Talk to someone in a waiting room or a line instead of looking at your phone. Or one way you can do this challenge right now is by talking to me in the comments. I want to talk to you. I want to hear your thoughts. I would love to hear what parts of this episode resonated with you, what navigating conversation looks like for you right now, what type of conversation is the hardest for you? Is it dating or friendship or professional conversations? When's you've had in the realm of expressing yourself? Ways you've noticed you've grown and your communication skills have improved. I want to know. I also always want to know if you enjoy an episode. That's really helpful for me engaging what topics you like to hear about. I make SoulGum for you. I want it to be what you like. So if you enjoyed this episode, leave a comment and let me know. If you enjoyed this, also consider sharing it. Share it with a friend. Pop it on your Instagram story. Pop it in a carousel, in a little dump on your feed. That would thrill me, honestly. And make sure you tag me if you do. I am at the daily Victorian on TikTok and Instagram and I love to try to think you because I really appreciate you if you've ever shared about SoulGum. Also consider subscribing to the podcast. And if you like SoulGum and you haven't rated it yet wherever you listen, it takes just a few seconds and it means the world to me. What even if you don't do any of that? Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. You made it all the way to the end. We're best friends in my head and I love talking to you. Okay. That's all I've got. I love you. I'll see you next Sunday.