How to Start and Keep a Conversation Going with a Guy
It can be tough enough starting a conversation with someone you don’t know, yet alone trying to start a conversation with someone you think is attractive! You are confused with what to say. You wonder if he likes you. You want to know how to make him like you. You are anxious! All this is only the first challenge!
If you are woman wanting to start a conversation with an interesting guy, whether it is online through things like MSN, Facebook, and Myspace or face-to-face or text, you must work through two primary challenges or steps. The first step is to overcome your fears, anxiety, and other “inner game” problems. Even if you think you are confident – because you are reading this article wanting to know how to start a conversation with a guy – that tells me you need to solve inner game problems rather than have me write you a few magical lines to use on a guy you like. The second step defines what you say and how you say it. Let’s look into these two steps throughout the article.
Why Friends are Easy to Talk With
Why do you find it easy to talk with friends, but you do not know what to say to a guy you like? The answer is: you know your friends. This makes it easy to talk about a lot of things, which proves the point I want to make: you are able to talk to your friends because you do not feel vulnerable to them. You can talk to your friends because you are unconcerned about their judgments of you. This opens a floodgate of conversational topics that are suppressed when you try to start a conversation with a guy.
Contrast talking with your friends to talking with a guy you like. When you try to start a conversation with a guy, you can talk about a million subjects, but you say nothing because you worry about him liking you, saying the wrong thing, or making a fool of yourself. Your negative thinking chokes your ability to converse until the conversation dies. You don’t think like this around friends. It is important to sort out these inner game issues that prevent you from starting a conversation so you can become a confident woman that naturally attracts men.
Let’s say a girl comes across a guy at a shopping center she wants to get to know. She tries her best to think of something to start the conversation, but her mind is blank. She has inner voices telling her negative things such as, “You can’t do this”, “He won’t even like you”, and “You’ll just make yourself look bad and embarrass yourself”. The lady has already lost her inner game. She is not going to start a conversation with destructive thinking.
Her mind isn’t really blank, however; her destructive pattern of thinking gives her the mind blank. When you suffocate your mind with destructive thinking, you cannot start a good conversation. Winning on the outside starts with winning on the inside. Before you win in the conversation by starting a good conversation, get your inner game into shape. Do not worry what to say when you cannot even speak.
I am going to hone in on how girls can start a conversation with a guy by firstly looking more into your inner game, then we will look into techniques that you can use to start a conversation with a guy. Moreover, these are fundamental conversational rules that can be used for anyone in various situations – they are not limited to girls starting conversations with guys.
Reframing Your Mind
The first path you need to hop on to improve your inner game is boosting self-awareness. Be self-aware of your inner dialog, the language in your mind. I know it is easier said than done so I’m going to teach you one of the most powerful personal development techniques to fight limiting thoughts.
Motivational speaker Wayne Dyer uses the phrase “no limit thinking” to release people from self-limiting beliefs. These beliefs empower or disempower us from anything we do. William James, a 19th century psychologist that pioneered American psychology, said:
“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”
You must release yourself from these beliefs to confidently start and maintain a conversation. Be a no limit thinker. Remove the limits you have placed on yourself by using a technique called “reframing”.
Reframing is not a difficult technique. It has you change your interpretation of a situation. Your aim with reframing is to create thoughts congruent with your goals and repeatedly affirm these thoughts to yourself. The better you get at adopting a “no limit thinking” approach, your confidence improves as does your ability to talk with people.
The girl at the shopping center would use the reframing technique by repositioning her current negative thoughts to positive ones about having a great conversation with the guy. Below are some negative thoughts the girl in our example is trying to overcome and to the right of each limiting thought is a good reframe the girl could use:
| Negative Thought | Positive Thought Using the Reframing Technique |
| “I’m nervous.” | “I’m nervous because I care about the situation.” |
| “I won’t start the conversation well.” | “I will start the conversation well as I can do with my other friends and other people.” |
| “I’m afraid.” | “I wasn’t afraid last week when talking to a new guy so I don’t have to be afraid now.” |
| “He is so amazing and too good for me.” | “He farts, burps, and itches himself like any other human.”  |
| “He won’t like me.” | “I don’t care if he won’t like me because I’m the prize. He is the one losing.” |
| “I don’t have anything to talk about.” | “I have thousands of thoughts that can be used to start a conversation.” |
Can you see how easy and powerful it is to overcome the limits you place on yourself? Reframing is an amazing technique. It may take a minute or two to come up with a positive interpretation of the situation, but with practice you’ll become faster and better at it. It can be used in almost any situation to boost your confidence, improve your happiness, and help you succeed.
Now that you have fought off your doubts, fears, anxieties, and uncertainties about having a conversation with the guy, you can approach him and start a conversation. I’ve found that once people improve their inner game with the reframing technique, the second part of this article that provides conversation starters naturally happen. People can start a conversation easily because they reframe the situation, which makes them feel confident and able to talk about anything. Nonetheless, I will share effective techniques and conversation starters below. The reframing technique frees your mind to start conversations, but it is reassuring to have techniques you can rely on to start a conversation.
Situational Starter
To use the situational starter technique, all you do is notice your surroundings. Preferably make it something the other person is aware of or would be aware of once you use it.
In the shopping scenario, the girl could talk about things like the hastiness of shoppers or the weather… Wait. I hear you say this technique sucks. Talking about the weather is the simplest and worst use of the situational technique. It is boring and too common. Both examples would probably be ineffective in the shopping situation, but they can work when delivered by powerful nonverbal communication.
I encourage you to be more creative with situational starters. To make better use of this technique, use more in-depth situational influences for effective conversational starters. These rely on your creativity and involve discussions on unusual things about the situation. Your conversations will be more fun once you follow this advice.
I will give you some examples of good situational starters the girl in our shopping example could use to start a conversation with a guy she likes. The girl could ask the guy how to locate a specific store or item; she could ask him where he got his hat because she would like to buy one for her brother; given the guy looks about 20 years-old, she could ask him for his opinion on whether her 20 year-old guy friend would like an item she thinks this guy has an interest in. This last conversation starter is more of an opinion opener, another good technique to start conversations, yet it still involves reading the situation. Use the situational starter or an opinion opener with creativity, and you have all you need to start a conversation.
What to Talk About
Once you have started the conversation, the biggest difficulty is overcome. The conversation gets easier with time, but you still need to keep the conversation going. Starting a conversation means nothing if it stops dead. You have overcome your inner game issues, you have approached and started a conversation with him, but if you do not keep the conversation going you are in trouble. I will list some techniques and tips you can use to keep a conversation flowing nicely with a guy, but browse the conversation skills section for more great tips.
What should you talk about? One thing you must not talk about is a boring topic. Do not, and I repeat, do not bore your conversational partner to death. You can avoid boredom by avoiding normal conversational topics such as the weather. Talk about passions, interests, conspiracies, and relationships. It is pretty simple to avoid boredom by talking about topics that have emotion! Talk about topics each of you are emotionally involved in to create an emotional link the two of you will remember.
If you don’t know an interesting topic, let the person be the topic. Myself and other guys love to talk about themselves. It’s only natural to talk about yourself because it’s the easiest topic to talk about. You can harness and leverage this with the guy by asking good open-ended questions.
An open-ended question is a type of question that takes more than a few words to answer. Examples of open-ended questions include: “What do you think about…?” “What’s something interesting you got up to last week?” and “Why do you enjoy…?”
In the shopping scenario, let’s say the girl started the conversation by asking the guy, “Excuse me. I’m after a basketball for my brother. I thought you’d know a bit about it and was wondering what advice you could give me?” The girl would listen attentively using positive body language and show other forms of interest in the guy’s answer. If he doesn’t know much about basketballs, it does not matter. She could then keep the conversation going by asking him, “What things are you interested in then?” What matters is she has broken the ice and started a conversation.
She can increase her chances of keeping the conversation going by asking for his advice on an item she thinks interests him. Again, this uses the opinion technique and is valuable to make someone talk to you. She can guess what he is interested in by looking at his clothes, his friends, what he is currently doing, or anything else that is noticeable. The girl can ask him for his advice on buying a basketball because he is wearing a basketball jersey. She can keep a conversation going by observing the guy, listening carefully, and being a good “detective” snooping around for information.
How to Keep a Conversation Going with “Branches”
Bonus Tips to Make Great Conversation
Follow these extra tips to have great conversations, which makes guys and women like you more:
- Ask more questions
- Look people in the eye
- Smile
- Talk about mutual interests
- Compliments boost a person’s self-esteem and the conversation
Once she asks for his advice and listens attentively, she can keep the conversation going by building onto what I call “branches” that grow from a conversation. Branches are more in-depth discussions about the topic, or even another topic, by listening carefully to what is discussed. There are literally thousands of branches to a statement like, “I enjoy shopping with my friends.” Branches from this could be shopping experiences, stories related to shopping, and why you’re currently shopping.
The girl’s question of, “What things are you interested in then?” is one example of a branch. Another example of branching the girl in our shopping example could use, which continues from the guy’s reply to her question about basketballs, is: “Thanks. You do know a lot about basketball. How did you get all this knowledge?” She can build a conversation about the item and branch out into related topics she thinks the guy is interested in depending on his energy when speaking on the topic.
What If You Fail and Get Rejected?
If you do make a mistake and stuff up the conversation with a guy you like, do not worry. Use the reframing technique by saying things to yourself like, “I stuffed up and am now smarter for next time” or “I don’t care. I’m the prize.” Failure is just another step towards your success of effortlessly starting and continuing conversations. With enough practice, you will achieve conversation mastery.
From this article you have improved your inner game, you know how to start a good conversation, and you know how to keep an exciting conversation going. All that is left for you to do is put the techniques to use when you find yourself wanting to start a conversation with a guy you want to meet. Let me know how it goes for you!
Lastly, if you want to learn more about how you can become a more confident, mature, attractive lady that naturally attracts men, there is one online resource I recommend you learn more about: Catch Him and Keep Him. Catch Him and Keep Him is an ebook by Christian Carter to help you become a better woman so you can find and keep Mr Right. Click here to learn more about it.
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Update: 60 Minutes TV crew is interviewing in my home. I'm hungrily learning about their lighting and background setup! 
Joshua, This is brilliant. What i liked most is the part of winning the inside.
It sure creates confidence in me and i strongly believe it works. Thnxs.
I’m reading this because I REALLY need to work on my interpersonal skills. I am so bad at them. I usually keep things to myself, and I don’t know why.
What I’m interested in is making friends…and close ones. I’ll look into attraction, when I happen to be curious. Which I previously was, but I only did that because society signaled me to.