to help you Skip the Small Talk in your everyday life
Okay, fine, if you’ve ended up on this page, maybe you do already think that good communication is the fastest route to great sex. In case you don’t, though, you can check out this article, or this one, or this one, all of which point to good sexual communication as a big factor in sexual satisfaction. So, we’ve come up with three concrete tools you can use to get the most out of your next roll in the hay.
Read MoreWe’ve gotten a lot of requests for this one.
They often sound something like: “I’m a good communicator, but it’s just that my coworker/ roommate/ mom/ boyfriend’s second cousin is awful at communication.”
But no matter how horrible of a communicator they are, you can use this trick to work within their limited communication skills and get your point across.
At Skip the Small Talks, we ask attendees to have compassion for others and for themselves as they try out new ways to hold conversations. It’s probably obvious why we care about people having compassion for each other at an event where strangers are getting to know each other for the first time, but equally if not more important in that context is self-compassion. That’s because any attempt at change or improvement generally goes much more smoothly if you’re not beating yourself up after every setback. Connecting genuinely often requires taking some risks (like sharing things that feel a little vulnerable), and having compassion for yourself when those risks don’t pan out the way you hope can help you continue taking some risks in the long-term, and can help make the learning process easier for you in the short-term.
Read MoreAh, the holidays: A time when we hope our lives will look like those wholesome cartoon specials we watched as children, but also a time when anxieties about getting stuck in conversation with people who hold different political and moral ideologies might keep you from doing that happy dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas.
This Thanksgiving, we encourage you to take some time to connect with others in ways that feel authentic without feeling emotionally exhausting. To help the conversation flow, we offer you some ice-breakers that will get others to share about themselves while subtly nudging everyone’s mood in a positive direction. So if you do end up having the “here’s why racism is bad” conversation with Uncle Joe, you’ll have a buffer of positive experience--and perhaps some common ground--that’ll make it easier for you to communicate with one another.
Five to one: According to one of the most prominent social scientists in the field of romantic relationships, John Gottman, that’s the ratio of positive to negative interactions in stable relationships. Couples were significantly less likely to get a divorce when they had about five positive interactions for every negative interaction they had.
Read MoreWhat do the following have in common?
