What's going on my friends welcome back to the Ryan League podcast where we love to keep things short and sweet for you. Eat in every week. We always want to just give you something that we believe is going to have value to your life. I believe that this week's episode is going to do just that. Today's episode is entitled Small Talk for Holiday Introvert. That's right. Small Talk for Holiday Introvert. The jury is still out on whether I'm actually an extrovert or an introvert. Some people have told me I'm actually an amber vert which I guess means I can turn it on when I need to and then I'm going to need to spend the next 48 hours after that recovering in silence with snacks and Netflix. It's what I've been told. I don't know if that's true but I do know this. I absolutely love people. There's no way that I could do what I do without having a deep love for people. While I love people, I hate Small Talk. Oh my goodness. I hate Small Talk but this is what I know. It's a part of all of our lives, especially at the end of the year. You got holiday gatherings with your family and your friends. You're going to have people asking you about your job and neighbors telling you about their new diet and coworkers giving play-by-play to their fantasy football teams and you're just trying to get to the mashed potatoes and please leave me alone. Where did you come from? Like all of a sudden you're annoyed with somebody you're like, but I genuinely like this person, love this person, care about this person, but how did I get trapped here? Today's episode is going to speak to that tension because I want you to be able to walk into these rooms where there's family or friends. The key of today's episode is that you walk in with a plan. I don't want you to be caught off guard. I don't want you to feel like you're in a hostage situation going into these gatherings. I want you to walk in with a plan, with the strategy. You know this gathering is coming. You might as well equip yourself with some tools to say, all right, I'm going to get a W at this gathering one way or another. You're going to walk into these gatherings and you're not there to impress people. We can all feel that pressure, right? I have to make an impression. If you walk into that room and go, I'm not here to make an impression. I'm here to actually add value to other people's lives. I think it gives you a different posture immediately just walking into the room because now if you're walking into the room and you're going, wait, if I'm here to just add value to people's lives, well, what if I prepared for that? What if I showed up ready to add value to people's lives? Because the reality is, is while we might load small talk, we all crave connection. And the reality is, for a lot of us, it's actually hard to get to deep talk without small talk. It's harder to deepen a relationship if we don't actually get the conversation off the ground to be able to deepen the relationship in the first place. And so I'm going to give you a couple of things today. A couple of questions that you can keep in your backpack. You can come up with some on your own. But I want you to prepare for these holiday gatherings in a way that makes you the most intentional person in the room. That's the goal. So, give you a couple of things to think about and then I'm going to let you get back to the holiday shopping. Okay. So, the first thing that I try to do, this is very, very new for me, is at holiday gatherings, instead of trying to connect with everybody, I pick two people. Yeah, I make it a goal to say, hey, instead of trying to say hi to 100 people, I actually want to really connect with two people. I recently was just at a holiday gathering for our church and there was about 100 people there. And I definitely felt the temptation. I wouldn't even say I felt the pressure, but I definitely felt the temptation to like, I guess what we would call like work the room. It's like you're not a politician. What are you doing? Why do you feel like you need to work the room? You feel like you need to have said, hey, to everyone. And there's plenty of people in that room that I love that I love to hang out with and love to, you know, talk more and all the things. I don't want to do small talk with them. My actually want to do is I actually want to have a real conversation with people. And so I've just decided that hey, at these holiday gatherings, I don't actually have to get to every single person. We are not shaking hands and kissing babies. That's sort of the mantra that we all feel like we're all holding each other to. But I think this idea of going like, can I really connect with two people before the night's over? Like you're giving yourself a goal and you're making it just way, way more intentional. And then once you've pictured your two people that you could try some questions like, hey, what's been the highlight of your year so far? Hey, what's been your biggest challenge? Does far this year, you can take it even further. Hey, man, what could I be praying for? I did this at this church gathering and I would sit next to a guy and he started talking about his kids. And when you have multiple kids, what's interesting is most people know your first kids name, but like your second and third, and Messerana have like seven kids like we don't know who these people are. They're just related to you at this point. We don't have that kind of capacity to be remembering all those names. And in my friend, who I was talking to, he had three kids. And I just thought, he's my soul focus for the night. Like I'm not trying to get somewhere else. I'm not looking past him. I'm looking at him. And so what I did is I just I just pulled on my phone and I said, hey, what are your kids names? Like, how can I like how can I spell? I want to make sure that I've I've spelled your kids names, right? Which seems like what's the big deal that? Well, my son's name is Jackson. And when people text me about Jackson, his name is actually spelled J-A-X-S-O-N. And whenever someone's like, man, how does Jackson do it? And they spell it like the normal way. Like that's bad on me. And in my wife for complicating his spelling of his name for the rest of his life. But nevertheless, when somebody texts us about him and they have his name spelled correctly, I don't know why, but it like matters because it's her son. And so I was just like, man, I want to I want to get their names right. And I said, hey, man, that's one of those. You know, like, when I think about your family, when I pray for your family, I'm going to call out your kids name. And all of a sudden, somebody that hates small talk actually isn't having small talk anymore. Now we've moved into a completely different area of intentional talk. And again, we didn't have some massive, deep conversation about his children. And you know, it's one struggling with anxiety or is one trying to make a decision about God. Like, we didn't even take it that far. But we took it far enough to say, we're not trying to be normal. Now we're trying to be intentional. And that's what I want you to do this holiday season. I don't know you guys with family coming over and if you didn't listen to the last episode on, on navigating holiday drama before it starts, I highly recommend it. I got a lot of feedback on that one that they're like, hey, I need that. And we did that one before Thanksgiving. And so you might want to re-listen to that one, share with the family before Christmas. But this is not navigating drama before it happens. You are, you're being a person who is incredibly intentional about the relationships in their world. One of my mentors is a guy by the name of John Maxwell. What he is masterful at is intentional conversations. Everything in his life is intentional. He does not leave space for shooting the breeze. He is being incredibly intentional in everything he does. And it challenges me. Somebody that doesn't like small talk. I just, I've just decided like, man, I want to have more intentional conversations. I don't want to survive the holidays anymore. I want to be intentional with the holidays as we're preparing for our family gathering. We're going, hey, what questions could we print out? What games could we play that are actually like we've decided what we're going to do at the time. We're not just going to let time happen to us. We're actually walking in with some sort of plan to actually engage one another in a way that is intentional. It matters. Like relationships matter. Connection matters. Our coworkers like, I know you may not even love your job. Again, the relationships, they still matter. And so I just want to give you that idea, that thought. Walking with the plan. Chat GPT some questions if you need to. But walking in with a plan that says, you know what? I'm going to be equipped to navigate this, this holiday gathering. And lastly, I want you to give yourself permission. Are you ready for this? I want you to give yourself permission to leave early. Yeah, roll out. Yes, give yourself permission to leave early. Yeah, like this guilt trip that you might have to just stay to the lights cut off. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now, be intentional while you're there. And when it's time to roll, it's time to roll. I think you can totally be an adult that says, you know, when my tank runs out, it's time to call it a good night. And you're not a bad human being for doing that. No, you're just you. And that is a okay. I think the more you plan, the lighter it's going to feel. I think the less you overthink the more natural you're going to walk around these gatherings. You don't have to fake extroversion, okay? I think you just have to show up as a thoughtful, present version of who you actually are. Because the goal is not to survive small talk. It's to find connection inside of it. And when you walk into a room this holiday season, I want you to remember that you do not have to be the loudest person to be the most memorable. You just need to be real. Memorable is the person who listens more than they speak. Memorable is the person who asks questions that makes someone pause and think beyond the status quo. Memorable is the person who brings peace into a room instead of noise. One of the greatest gifts you can give another human being. That's kind of working the room and just, man, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Is being able to slow a person down gently and ask them a real question. Hey, how's it going? Hey, man, how is it? How's your year? What's really going on with you? Oh, when you can pause, when you can slow someone down, you actually can bring some peace to them where there might be some chaos on the inside. Yeah, I want you to want you to show up to these holiday gatherings, show up with curiosity. Ask some questions, be intentional. Know your exits, protect your peace, be fully present for the few moments that matter. Hey, man, maybe lock in on just one or two people that you say, hey, I really want to make some really intentional conversations with them. And my friend, when you do that, you're going to walk out of that room and I actually think you're going to really be proud of yourself. But you say, you know, I actually truly connected with those two people tonight and you didn't just survive. I think you actually get to win the holidays in that moment. My friends, thank you so much for listening to the Rionic podcast. 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