Have Better Conversations: The S.E.A. Small Talk Method

Hey, look. E on the sea. He's a seaman. He's got

a little boat. I think he's in the American

Navy. He's got his little cap on. Why is he on the sea? Well, today is a specific method

working on small talk. You might be thinking,

"What is small talk? Why is it important?

I need to do big conversations and big presentations,

and I need to make friends, and I want to

get a partner. All of these involve big talk

or a lot of talk, serious talk." I got to

tell you a little secret, and the secret is

this. Anything that goes big starts out from

something small. Small talk is the talk that

you have with someone that gets them interested

in you to want to have more conversations. Now, if you're an introvert and you speak

English, this is something we need to work on as native speakers, but if you're also

a language learner learning English, small talk is your way to get into these larger

conversations because someone who's really good at small talk invites bigger, better

conversations because the people think you're capable of them. Okay?

Now, E, we got the SEA method, right? S-E-A

method, and there's three steps for this which

leads to an easy conversation for you, good conversation starter, or how to go from one

conversation, small one, to a larger one.

Excuse me. What I want to address is how we're

going to use our small talk. There's many

different ways of getting to small talk, asking

questions about something someone's wearing

and other things. Today I want to really focus

in on stories. Why stories? Because stories,

humankind, mankind, people have for thousands

of years sat around fires, you know, you can

imagine there's a fire, the cold's going up

and the people sitting there, it's dark at night, and they hear "Woo-hoo", the wolves,

so they're in a circle, huddled, you know,

holding together, and then someone would tell

a story. "A long time ago when the great moon

came down, and our fathers", and it brought

the people together. So, stories create

connection, bringing different people together.

The other thing about stories, when we tell

stories, we can take the everyday, and I meant

it this way, the everyday means regular day, not

every day, Monday, Tuesday, but your regular day,

and we can make it extraordinary. Because in a

story, you take an everyday event, and we take

a regular person and we make them special. Now,

when you do that in small talk, you make the

person you're speaking to feel special. Now, how are we going to do that? Well,

we have three steps, and as you can see, we're

missing them, but I'm going to fill them in and

explain them to you so you will be able to start

making your own stories and making the everyday

extraordinary with small talk. You ready? Let's

begin. The first one you see here is "S", right?

It's an acronym... "SEA" is an acronym for three

words. The first one is "S", and after it says

simple one-sentence story. Well, if you have

a simple one-sentence story, it's going to be

short. And how short is it? One sentence. We

don't want to make it too long. Why? You're

learning about language. You're already having

a hard time, you're nervous using this language,

talking to people, so if you have a big story

in your head and you make mistakes and you're

getting it wrong, what's going to happen is you

get more nervous and you might forget parts of

the story and you're going to lose the person's

interest. So, why don't we make a story very,

very short? In marketing and advertising, they

call this type of thing a "elevator pitch",

and if you're wondering what an elevator pitch

is, you know when an elevator moves at a certain

speed going up or going down, and they would

say you should be able to tell your story

between the floors. So, if you're going from the first floor to the second floor,

if you are trying to sell something to someone,

you should give them all the information they

need within that movement. And if you can do that, that's called an "elevator pitch".

It will be concise, which means short, it

will be informative, it'll have information,

and it will get them interested. All of these things in a short period of time.

That's what a TV commercial does, and that's

what you're going to do. We're going to make

a short story that's one sentence. Simple so you can remember it.

Next, we have "e". Well, what is "e"?

Emotion. A story without emotion is like a house without colour,

or food without seasoning. It's there, but you're not going to get much joy from it.

So we want emotion to bring that colour. In fact, what I've written here is

emotion creates a picture that gets them

involved. Who? The person you're speaking to.

Were you angry? Were you happy? Were you

surprised? Were you scared? Okay. English lesson

aside for a second. In our brains, we have

something called "mirror neurons". What's that?

They're little cells in our head that helps us to

understand other people. And when we put emotion

in the story, the other person's mirror neurons,

it's like looking in a mirror, you can see

yourself, they can see themselves in your story.

And because they can see themselves in your story,

they think it's not them, but it's you are them.

And they're, oh, I'm interested because this is

happening to me. Am I afraid? Why am I afraid?

Why am I excited? Why am I happy? See, I told you.

Great method. We're using a bit of psychology

here to get them involved in your story,

and emotion creates that. Emotion creates a picture for them to get involved in,

because when you're scared, they want to know

why, because they're feeling scared, too.

Now, how we make this even stronger is we want

to add something that's going to create energy.

Have you ever been at home lying down on your

chair? I know you have. Five, six, seven,

eight hours, and then you think, "I should get up and exercise." And then you think,

"No, I'm not going to." Or you've ever slept in

bed for too long. Instead of getting out of bed,

you stay there, hit the alarm, hit the alarm,

hit the alarm. You want to go back to sleep.

That's because you're missing an important ingredient, because once you have this,

this thing creates more and more energy and gets you more and more

excited, and will help with the emotion, and that is

action. Once you move, you keep moving. We are

humans. We... That's all we do. We're in action

at all times. I'm in action moving my hands,

speaking, looking, all these "g", "ing" words

we're using. Eating, sleeping, walking, playing,

running. Right? That action creates energy.

Every time we do a little bit of it, we get a bit more energy to keep doing it.

You add action-right?-the energy with the emotion being involved. In a short story,

you have an unbelievably powerful way to connect and communicate with people,

making the everyday extraordinary. All right? So,

I'm going to give you some examples of how you

could use what I've just shown you, because you're

like, "James, you talk about... I've got to get

action in this story, I've got to get energy,

I've got to... And then it's got to be short.

How am I going to do all of this? I barely speak

English." But that's the point. Because you don't

have great English skills, we're going to keep

it simple. Right? We're going to keep it simple,

one sentence story. Right? We're going to use

action and emotion. How? By using words with

action and emotion. And by doing that in one

sentence, you can convey... Convey, give a lot

of information to someone so that when you're

done, they're going to say, "Why did this happen?

When did it happen? Who was there? What happened

after?" without you having to add extra.

So, let's go to the board and check it out. So, the first sentence we have,

"My heart was racing in anticipation of her soft

kiss." Now, think about this. Your heart is racing.

Okay? You can go, "Oh my god, I've been nervous

like that. Why is his heart racing?" So,

what is racing? Well, racing is action. We got our first part of our story done.

My heart is racing. I don't have to move, my heart

was moving. What's the next thing? Anticipation.

It's when you're waiting for something to happen

and you don't know what's going to happen. Isn't

that scary? Yeah? The killer is in the kitchen,

he's got a knife. You turn the corner. Does he

stab? Doesn't he stab? What's going to happen?

The anticipation is killing me. That's the motion,

right? So, we put this with this, and you can imagine my heart was racing.

Oh, that's not racing. I'm going to die, it's

racing so hard. In anticipation, because here

she's coming. She's coming closer, closer.

Is she going to kiss you? No. She goes, "Oh,

I want to go to the washroom." Oh, what a

letdown. Oh my god, energy. And everyone's going,

"What happened? You were waiting. Did she kiss

you or not?" That is one sentence, my friend,

and you've created a story with action and emotion.

But you know, this is engVid and this is me.

I'm not going to give you that. I'm going

to give you another example. Right? Give you

something concrete. "I almost peed my pants because I was so afraid of the dog."

As soon as I read that... Let me read it differently. Let me read it again.

"I almost peed my pants. I was just... Because I was so afraid of the dog."

The first thing you're going is, "What kind of

dog was it? Where were you? When did this happen?

Where was the owner?" All these questions are

going on in your head. I don't have to say all

of them. I could. I could make a big story about,

"There was this big dog, and it was winter, and it

was icy outside, and it was cold, and I was

walking..." No, I might make too many mistakes.

I just say this, and you start asking questions

to your head that I didn't give you, like,

"What happened?" Hence, we've created a conversation.

Especially if I was afraid, and those mirror

neurons are firing, you're like, "Wow, man,

that would have been scary." You might go,

"I... In my life, that happened to me, too."

We created a bond. I used one sentence. That's

all you need. All right? So we're going to look

here. Where are the elements I'm talking about?

First, it's short. It's one sentence. We've got

that. This is a bit embarrassing, but peeing

your pants, you know, almost like my... You can't

see it, but my legs are shaking. They're shaking.

I'm almost going to pee. I'm trying to hold it

back because I'm so afraid. And that's the other

thing. "Afraid" is an emotion we've all experienced.

Mirror neurons, again, you can imagine being

afraid of heights, of a snake, of anything,

and being so afraid that you almost go to the washroom in your pants. That's scary.

You've got to have questions. Right? And that's

that connection I was talking to you about.

Now, I'm going to give you one more example because, you know, it's just the way I am,

and you paid so much... Oh, yeah, it's free. I

shouldn't be doing this, but I will because I

like you. You know, you keep coming back. So, the last one we have is this. "I felt

so much love in my heart when they let me hold the baby for the first time."

Now, imagine it's a baby. It's eight pounds.

It's so soft. Its eyes aren't even open. It's

warm to the touch. How would your heart feel if

it was, like, your grandchild, or your daughter,

or your brother's child, your niece, and you're

holding it. It's looking you in the eyes,

and you're just like, "Oh my god, this is life."

I've expressed all of that here. "I felt so much

love in my heart when I held the baby, when

they let me hold the baby for the first time."

All of that I said in this one sentence, and anybody with you, be it male or female,

woman or man, would be like, "What was it

like?" They're asking you questions. Once again,

creating connection, creating an extended

conversation. I know there's lots of videos,

and I've done them myself, saying, "You need

to do these things for conversation to get..."

And it's true. It is. But let's start one step

at a time with a simple one-sentence story

that's short, that involves emotions, creates

action, and creates relationships. And before

I end it, I'm going to give you a second or

two to figure out what word gives us the action

for the energy, and what word gives us the emotion to create the picture.

Yeah, yeah, you know. Everybody knows this word. Come on.

Love boats. Do-do-do-do. Yeah, you're too young to know about the love boat.

Don't worry, Captain Steuben. Or is it Meryl

Steuben? Lovely guy. Do-do-do. And what's the

action? What's the action? There we go. They let

you hold that baby. They let you hold it. Right?

So, you hold that baby, you feel that love,

you tell this story. Trust me. You just put in

"niece", "granddaughter", "grandson", whatever,

and people are going to go, "Whose baby? When did

this happen? Congratulations", and then start

asking you all sorts of questions. Right?

And I will give you another video later on to give you the answers. But for right now,

take your small step, take your small story, use

the "see" method. Right? With our semen, here.

Semen-y. All right? Use it today. And here's what

I'm going to ask you to do or challenge you to do,

and there's a reason for it. I gave you three

examples for a reason, to give you the structure

of how to do it. What I want you to do is do five

sentences on your own. You go, "Oh, homework. It's

more than homework." If you notice when I did one

of these sentences, this one here, let's say I do

this one. I can read it like this. "My heart was

racing in anticipation of her soft kiss." I'm sure

you were like, "Oh, is she still speaking?" Now, if

I said this, "My heart was racing in anticipation

of her soft kiss." Suddenly you're like, "Okay,

tell me more. Tell me more." I want you to come

up with five of your own stories of things that

have happened to you. Okay? And practice them,

because in practicing them you're going to practice putting emotion into your speech.

That will draw people even more into your story.

Like, "I was just so afraid because the dog was

so big. I almost peed my pants." You need

to practice that. Not to make it artificial,

but to practice putting life into what you say to bring life to your conversations.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the lesson. I did. I

hope it benefits you. Don't forget the SEA method.

Right? For easy conversation. Anyway, have a great day. Oh, but before I go,

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