Okay y'all. I have a confession.
I really, really, REALLY hate small talk.
Maybe it's because I'm an introvert. Maybe its because I never seem to know exactly what to say. Whatever the reason, small talk is the thorn in my side that I can never escape from. In most social settings, I sit off to the side, and I am never the one to start a conversation with someone I don't know. Especially because all the small talk I do these days involves me listing my major, minors, and how I happen to be feeling this day; which is usually "fine" for the sake of brevity.
I may be wrong, but I highly suspect that I am not the only person who feels this way. But I know I'm right when I say that if you suffer from a desire to avoid small talk, it is much easier said than done. People who enjoy small talk will find you, and they will talk to you.
But fear not! I have a solution! Keep in mind that this will probably not help awkwardness in general, but in cases of escaping small talk it will be.
Big Talk began as a social experiment by Kalina Silverman. In an effort to avoid the pitfalls of meaningless small talk, she came up with a set of universal questions designed to spark meaningful conversations with everyone you come across.
The first question she experimented with was: "What do you want to do before you die?" Just think about all the meaningful conversations you could have by asking people that question. If you are more interested in Kalina and her Big Talk journey, you can find more about her as well as a link to her TedxTalk, here.
The best things about these topics is that they are so universal. They could be used to achieve higher self-awareness. These topics could also be used as prompts for writing or journaling. You could use them to start conversations with strangers, or you could use it as an ice breaker and team building exercise in a professional setting.
The thing is, you can have all the small talk in the world and never really know anything about the person you are talking with. Big Talk is the perfect way to bridge that gap.
