You might not realize, but conversing with others actually helps you learn more about yourself. When you have a discussion with others, you begin to think about things they said. If they share a story about themselves overcoming adversity, you’ll begin to reflect about your own life and if you had a situation where you overcame adversity. This is why being able to engage in social encounters actually builds your own character and allows you to better understand yourself.
I know we’ve all learned in our childhood to not speak to strangers, but honestly, if we never spoke with strangers, we wouldn’t have any friends. Sometimes, it’s important to take a leap of faith and just go for it. Introduce yourself to someone. Ask them a question to start a conversation. Give it a try. The worse that can happen is that they don’t respond and give you the cold shoulder. But, you never know if you don’t take this first step.
I’ve met a lot of people throughout my years that I haven’t grew up with. I find that these are the people with the most interesting stories and we can learn so much by interacting with different people. Since you didn’t grow up together, you naturally would be interested in their background and you might not find too many similarities, so there’s a sense of curiosity in your conversations. If you do have many similarities, you’ll start to wonder how you can relate to each other so easily despite growing up in different areas. This goes to show that no matter how different we think we are to one another, we are actually all connected in some way. We just need to find that link to get the conversation going and you’ll be surprised how many new people you’ll meet.