How to Avoid Awkward Silence

How do I stop awkward silences? It's this nasty painful feeling when you're in a situation where there's complete silence. You don't know what to say. You're just looking at other individuals. You're looking away and and it just feels very painful. We have all been in that situation before whether it was because we simply didn't know what to say or whether the other individual wasn't giving us anything back. We were putting in the effort trying to have some sort of conversation but it wasn't working and thus in this video I want to talk about how you can avoid awkward silences because if you are someone that wants to prevent that and wants to avoid awkward silences this is the perfect video for you and with that said let's get started. Number one ask open-ended questions so if you are in a conversation with someone it's very important that you don't ask close-end questions because what will happen is that most likely if the other individual doesn't really know you they don't want to put too much effort into the conversation so most likely they'll either say yes or no when it comes to the closed-ended questions but if you ask open-ended questions you're giving them more room and you're kind of almost forcing them to speak a little bit more and this will prevent those awkward silences so instead of saying do you like this party they'll either say yes or no say why do you like this party and in a lot of instances all you have to say is why do you like this why do you feel this way and this is instantly an open question that will allow the other individual to really think about the question and give you a longer response and this will prevent those awkward silences. Number two stop seeing silences as your own fault so when it comes to me personally when there is an awkward silence I don't really feel the awkward part anymore because what I've done is that I've trained myself to not think that it's my fault I try to just look at the situation and try to make the best of it because I know that usually everyone finds it awkward and thus you're not the only one that finds it awkward and instead of trying to feel awkward yourself I prefer to look at other individuals and try to make the best of the situation and even when it is an awkward silence I usually tend to laugh a little bit obviously not out loud but more as an inside joke for myself and that's something that's very important even if you're in those painful awkward silence moments try to make the best of it try to have fun with it's only painful if you think it's painful if you're someone that tries to make the best of it and try to have more fun with it obviously you won't find it painful and thus those awkward silences won't be awkward anymore but just normal silences. Number three give thoughtful answers so a lot of times you might not realize it yourself but you might be the individual that is making it more awkward so sometimes other individuals are not the ones that are participating in the conversation but other times it can be you perhaps you are the individual that isn't given a response so think about it are you an individual that puts in the effort when someone asks you a question or are you someone that doesn't really care or tries to minimize the answers you give because this has a huge impact on whether you're going to have those awkward silences or not because if both individuals are actually having a conversation awkward silences are less likely however if one of the two parties isn't putting a lot of effort if one of the two parties is asking more of those closed-ended questions and the other individual even though you're receiving those closed-ended questions is only responding with yes or no besides giving other additional information obviously it will be more likely to have those awkward silences and thus sometimes it's also important to look at yourself assess your own social skills and see whether you are the issue see whether you are the individual that doesn't put enough effort isn't communicating enough because this way if you are the individual by simply talking more or putting more effort you can prevent those awkward silences number four talk about feelings over facts so this is one of those things that a lot of individuals do when they are in a conversation they're always talking about facts so they're saying how old are you what do you do what year are you in what's your job what are your hobbies and these are all just factual questions and if someone responds to that it doesn't really do anything for them these are boring interview questions that no one really cares about the thing that connects most individuals is feelings ask other individuals instead of asking these factual questions ask them why they do certain things why they feel certain ways and this is a lot more fun and automatically makes it more interesting for the other individual because now they have to think about why they do things and this will obviously make it a lot easier to have a conversation and will also allow you to connect with the other individual so those were the four ways on how you can avoid awkward silences at the end of the day awkward silences are only awkward if you think they're awkward try to make the best of it have fun with your conversations be a little bit more social assess yourself whether you might be the issue whether you are the individual that doesn't put enough effort and sometimes it might be the other individual too and although we can't always change other individuals you might be able to change your own behavior which will automatically have an impact on their behavior such as instead of asking closed-ended questions try to ask open-ended questions and sometimes the conversation is very boring and thus it's time for you to level it up and that's the end of this video so i hope you found informative and useful if you did please let me know in the comment section down below and if you'd like to see more videos like this in the future please consider to the subscribe button and leave a thumbs up for the youtube algorithm anyways thank you so much for watching i genuinely appreciate your time and hope to see you on my next video bye bye