It's a party! Let's celebrate and have fun!
At every party there are two kinds of people - those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.
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Ann Landers
Why did you come to the party?
You invested the time and effort, and maybe some money, in getting ready for this event. Whether you decided to come on your own, or whether a friend, partner or spouse wanted you to come, it’s something you agreed to do, planned for and now you’re here! You must have thought there would be something good or you wouldn’t have decided to come.
Let’s face it, you came to have fun!
But sometimes it’s hard to have fun. Maybe you feel that you won’t know what to say to people, or there will be people there you don’t like. Maybe you’re afraid you’ll overindulge in food and drink, or that nobody will talk to you. At one party or another, I have had each of those feelings, and any one of them interferes with having fun.
So, on this page, let me be your social life developer and help you remove any barriers to an evening of fun!
Conversation
I was painfully shy at parties. It wasn’t like I was shy everywhere. I could carry on a conversation at home, at work, at church – but not at a party. I was afraid. I wasn’t smart enough, or pretty enough or interesting enough for anyone to want to talk to me. And that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy! If you’re sitting in a corner, looking at your shoes, you don’t exactly look interesting, at least not in a positive way.
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So how did I change that?
First, I decided I wanted to change. I decided I didn’t want to be the one that was always ready to leave. In my job, I am an agent of change. I talk to people about how it’s time to change some aspect of their business, that they don’t want to wake up a year from now wishing they had made the change a year ago. And I knew that people resisted change. So I told myself it was time to change.
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Second, I decided I needed to come to each party planning to have fun. Since I do a lot of planning at work, that was easy – I just developed a plan for what I would do at the party, which did not include sitting in the corner looking at my shoes. I made a plan to introduce myself to people, things to talk about, topics to stay away from. I also made a food and drink plan, no overindulgence.
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The first time was hard.
It’s so easy to fall into the old pattern, and part of me believed that I was having fun just sitting in the corner watching other people. But then I decided I had to try out one of the conversation starters on my list and honestly, the party was over before I knew it.
Even introducing yourself can be hard. Here’s an article that mentions some of the techniques I learned in business networking that I also learned to use at parties: Five Ways Introverts Can Make a Great First Impression from Inc. Geoffrey James explores five strategies and the one I particularly like is “find common ground” which is about asking open-ended questions. Another recent piece that expands on the idea of open-ended questions is by David Brooks in the New York Times, called “Nine Non-Obvious ways to have Deeper Conversations.”
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On this page, and in my blog I'll explore what it means to have fun, and how to dig deeper. Be sure to sign up for my email list, so you'll be the first to know when new insights are available.