Hey Jordan Harbinger here from the Art of Charm welcome to many so money you're weekly shot of personal development espresso every Monday we give you something quick we give you something practical actionable that you can implement right away that'll make you more magnetic more effective and frankly look it'll help get you through Monday today I've got a drill for people who think small talk might be a little tricky or hard is an improv drill it's called the tennis ball drill and this is written to us by an aoc fan whose name escapes me of course and

I talked about this with my improv teacher a while ago as well this drill teaches you to think on your feet and also to return the focus of conversation to the other person instead of just talking about yourself so if you seem to have that problem you're always talking about yourself or you're bad it's small talk and thinking on your feet this is a great drill for you it also simulates the pressure of awkward silence when the metaphorical or actually not so metaphorical tennis ball is tossed in your direction in a conversation so you can play this

with a roommate you can play this with your significant other you can play this with a friend you can play with your kids you can grab a shy colleague at work and play in the office just close the door or you'll go crazy and you can play with three people if you think it's easier just make sure you can eventually get down to two people playing at a time as well and you play this for 10 rounds and the way that it works is like this you bounce the ball to the other person and they have to say something and they bounce the ball back to you so it's a conversation where you're literally hold on to your hands and you can play with a

holding the ball like hot potato so you might say hi what do you do what do you do here for work something like say I already failed the test ball drill you might grab the ball and bounce it to somebody and say hey what brings you here today you're maybe you're pretending you're at a networking event and they got the ball and they go I'm here for work and then you go what kind of work do you do and your bounce in the ball back and forth back and forth

eventually you're gonna run out of the fluffy easy stuff and you're gonna get to real stuff and you might even get to nonsense but that's okay you can always redo it again that's what you play for at least 10 rounds otherwise it's just fluff the comments don't have to be short they don't have to be quick it's just you're trying to minimize the time that you are holding the tennis ball and they have to come without massively long pauses that's really the idea here this drill is really really helpful I'm looking forward to hearing about how this goes for you really try it really give it a shot it's a really good time to be done so you're gonna play the ball and you're gonna go with the ball and you're gonna do it again.

great way to make sure that you don't have awkward pauses, you practice, you're going

to get a lot of ammo to use in conversation. You're going to get good at listening because

it can't be a non-sequitur, right? You're following through in a flowing conversation. They

can't say, what do you do here for work? And then you go, I like cheese. That doesn't

work, right? You got to, you might end up doing that in the beginning, but really we're

going for fluid conversation. And it can be very tricky. I mean, it's hard for me to even

practice this on the show right now alone here. And I talk for a living. So give it a

shot. It will be extremely helpful. And I want to hear how it goes for you over the next

few weeks and months as you integrate this into your life and you try it with your family

and you try it with your significant other. Tweet at me. I'm at the art of charm. Let

me know how this is working out for you. And don't forget, we've got the art of charm

challenge. It's loaded with drills and exercises like this. It's unisex. It's free. It's all

about getting the ball rolling, getting some forward momentum, shaking off some of the

rust. There's a Facebook group with thousands of other people doing these challenges as well.

Go to the artofcharm.com slash challenge. Or if you are in a safe place, not driving

on the highway, you can text AOC to 38470. That's AOC to 38470 or go to the artofcharm.com

slash challenge and get a lot of stuff like this to get rockin' and rollin'. All right,

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