9 Tips for Socialising on an Adventure Break
For a lot of people, socialising can be an exciting, but daunting endeavour, which is completely understandable. This can be for a number of reasons, such as anxiety, or uncertainty about oneself, the facilities or others.
Adventure breaks are a wonderful way to step out of your comfort zone and make real, memorable connections with others while in a safe and supportive environment. They facilitate both growing and habitual interests of people to share together.
Here at Calvert Trust Exmoor, we offer a great range of outdoor activities for disabled adults. These activities will instantly break the ice, so you can enjoy a fun and exciting day filled with adventurous activities and social interaction!
In this article we will be exploring different tips and tricks to remember for your next social encounter, this way you can feel more confident and excited about your adventure break, so you can make the most of the experience!
Make Small Talk
Small talk is a very useful tool to use when first meeting someone. It allows you to take the first step in understanding who they are and what they’re about. You can gain insights such as if they’re chatty, funny, quiet or nice.
When first meeting someone, you generally want to keep things light and conversational. You can think of it more as a warm-up that might lead to a long-lasting friendship.
When sharing small talk, the topic isn’t necessarily important, as long as it builds some sort of familiarity and signals to them that you’re approachable and friendly.
On an adventure break, you can start up some small talk by asking them what their favourite activity is, or how they found one of the activities. Make sure you ask them something inclusive and general.
Have Approachable Body Language
Some people might find socialising daunting or difficult because they are not giving off approachable signals. Simple but effective signals include:
Keeping casual but consistent eye contact
Smiling when you greet people
Relax your face muscles when you feel yourself tensing – this may need a little practice in the mirror
Some people feel like they need to smile all the time, but there’s no need to force a smile! You only need to when greeting others or something funny or thoughtful has been said.
Make Lots of Small Interactions
If socialising makes you a bit nervous, you can use brief interactions to build your way up to a social activity or event.
Opening yourself up to saying simple and small things such as a passing ‘Hi’ or inviting others into a brief conversation is helpful if you’re unsure or nervous when it comes to socialising.
These pleasant but brief moments help to create social situations that are more comfortable and easier to manage, as opposed to something like a party or large social event.
Try Not to Overthink
Sometimes we can find ourselves overthinking minor details or being overwhelmed by unhelpful thoughts. These thoughts can then be internalised and enforced as a false reality.
Although it is easier said than done, try not to get caught up in overthinking. You will often find that the circulating thought hasn’t even crossed anyone else’s mind.
By letting yourself become distracted by these thoughts and ideas, you are preventing yourself from being present in the social situation. Instead of positively being involved and allowing the newly made connections to develop, you might actually prevent the positive experiences from unfolding.
Understand They Probably Feel The Same as You
The chances are that whatever emotions you are feeling, everyone else is probably feeling the same way. Instead of pushing your focus on internalising your worries, fears or anxieties, try and focus on what’s going on around you.
Adventure breaks are fantastic for the simple fact that they allow you to accomplish something in a supportive and safe environment. This will allow you to shift your focus away from your doubts and onto more productive tasks such as the shared activity.
Don’t Expect Things to Be Flawless
A factor that can often hold people up in social situations and steer them away from interacting with others is the fear of making a mistake or being laughed at.
As humans, it’s perfectly natural to make mistakes – often light-hearted mistakes make for entertaining antics that create memorable moments, break the ice and often make you more likeable.
Mistakes make you more relatable, and if they’re not positively noted, they are often very quickly forgotten.
Find a Common Interest
If you’re on an adventure break, or at any event for that matter, you have something in common with the people you are around, for example, if you’re on an adventure break, you and your group are all interested in either outdoor activities, conquering a new fear or challenging yourselves!
These hobbies provide a great foundation to find common ground, start some small talk and maybe even find a new friend!
Ask Questions and Share Information
Asking questions is a great way to show the other person in the conversation that you’re interested in what they have to say, but you should try to remember that it can be uncomfortable to keep sharing information about yourself when you know nothing about the other person.
When talking, mention bits here and there about yourself. It’s best not to offer too much information and overload the conversation to revolve around yourself but to find some sort of balance.
Don’t Try to Be Interesting
A lot of people worry about being boring. Being interesting doesn’t come from having a stash of stories and memories to share, it stems from being able to participate and hold an interesting conversation.
Interesting conversations are based on topics that interest the listeners, so there’s no need to talk too much if you don’t feel like you have much to share. All that matters is that you listen to the topic and try to share in bits of the conversation.
If you don’t have any interest in the conversation, then why not try and find something somewhat relevant to bring into the mix?
Here, we’ve suggested only a few tips you can use on your adventure break. If you use any others that we haven’t mentioned, why not share some on our social media channels? Visit our website to discover more about our safe and supportive activity centres.
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