Making it count on one-on-one conversations
When traveling, you meet people and you are pretty sure that you will never meet them again (most of the time).
Being aware of this, you have no incentives for telling BS, you just want to get real because there is no time for anything else.
You soon realize authenticity and outgrowing the feeling of "impressing anybody" is the way to go. With these ephemeral interactions if you connect with ulterior motives, you will soon realize that you are just fooling yourself.
You can compress time when talking to somebody. For instance, feeling like you have been talking for an hour from a 20 minutes conversation.
When your mind starts drifting, asking these will get it back to focus mode:
- How can I help?
- What can I learn from this person?
Because how complex our education, upbringing and experiences are. You can do this with anybody you meet. It doesn't have to be impressive. It could be as big as a donation or as small as telling them your perspective on something or even calling someone on their BS.
You can maximize the effect though only if you really care and pay attention. Absorb everything, from the person's body language, accent and all possible signals. That's being real.
Image credit to Felix Russell-Saw.
I dislike shallow, empty small-talk. Conversations should be intelligent and genuine.
Same here. I get the same feeling as eating junk foods after one of those. Though I get most "empty small-talk" from group conversations. Most conversations where I had a "waouh" moment afterwards were one-on-ones.