How to Get People to Open Up: The Two Essential Techniques for Building Deeper Relationships

Pierre Dubois here! Welcome to the Beefriend course. Just a couple of months ago, I met up with an acquaintance I had only known online. Even though it was our first in-person meeting, we ended up talking about relationships. He opened up about his dating life and his relationship with his fiancée. Within just ten minutes, he disclosed that he was having second thoughts about his recent engagement. He confessed, "Man, I haven't told anyone this—not my friends, not my co-workers, definitely not my fiancée. I don't know why, but I felt like I wanted to tell you." Stuff like this happens to me all the time. People share things they don't usually share with others—secrets, radical opinions, past traumas. Because I'm able to get people to open up to me like this, these relationships thrive, and we usually become good friends. Today, I'm going to show you exactly how you can get people to open up to you, so you can create deeper and more fulfilling relationships in your own life. There are really only two things you have to do.

First, you have to learn to reduce your filter. If you think about it, the reason we are scared to say certain things or act in certain ways is because we fear how others will react. We're scared of being made fun of, looking like a fool, or being branded as an outcast. So, we keep a lot of our thoughts, ideas, and feelings bottled up inside. Instead of talking about things we really want to talk about, we engage in small talk—discussing the weather, our classes, last night's sports game—because these are all safe topics. But secretly, deep down inside, we're all looking for that special someone with whom we can share our strange thoughts and ideas.

If you show people from the start that you don't care about being a perfect snowflake, that you don't filter yourself, and that you're willing to talk about things deemed socially unacceptable or strange, people will want to open up to you. They'll think, "Wow, this guy doesn't care too much about what society thinks, so it should be safe for me to talk to him about things I've been bottling up inside." You want to be that person. Show them you don't really have a filter, and it's pretty easy to do this. All you have to do is share something that's considered sort of weird or slightly out of the norm. For example, sometimes I tell people that I don't sit on toilets. Fun fact: I squat on top of them when I do my business. Why? Well, as a kid, I didn't like the cold feeling of my butt touching the seat. It turns out that humans are meant to use the toilet in the squatting position—there are tons of benefits, but let's not get into that here. The point is, when you share something strange like this, people instinctively react by thinking, "Huh, that's weird." But deep down, they're also thinking, "Huh, this guy doesn't care too much about what others think, so it should be okay if I talk about some of the stuff I've been bottling up inside as well. I can relax and filter my words and thoughts less."

It's very important to note there's a fine line between being seen as someone with a reduced filter and being seen as someone who's just plain crazy. It all depends on your perceived value, which is a concept we talked about in a previous video. There's a difference between an unemployed guy next door talking about seeing aliens and someone like Bob Lazar, a well-known scientist, talking about seeing an alien spaceship. If your value is too low, people will think you're crazy and try to get away from you. So, you should only reduce your filter and say weird things if your value is high enough. This means having proper hygiene, a decent amount of social proof (people know you have friends), dressing well, being in decent shape, being able to hold eye contact, etc. The higher your value, the easier it is to get away with saying weird and strange things.

Before we dive into the second thing you have to do to get people to open up to you, I want to quickly tell you about a new program of ours: the Habit Builder Challenge. As we all know, the only way you'll see progress in your life—whether it's your health, wealth, overall happiness, or even your relationships—is if you build the right habits. You won't suddenly become a social butterfly just by watching the Beefriend course. I wish it were that easy, but you actually have to go out there and build a habit of talking to people. If you're interested in receiving news about this habit-building program, sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the description box below.

Alright, let's get back to the topic at hand. After you've shown someone that you don't have a filter by saying something out of the norm, it's still up to you to guide the conversation in a way that will get them to open up. Most of the time, people won't talk about things they've been bottling up for months or years unless you prompt them. That's why the second thing you have to do is ask the right questions—and not just any questions. There's a special type of question I like to use a lot in conversations. They're what I call assumption questions. This involves making an assumption about someone based on an observation and seeing if it's true.

Going back to the example from the beginning of the video, when I was talking with my acquaintance, I noticed he had a very monotone expression when discussing his recent engagement. So, I said, "I'm just going to be honest with you, man. You don't really sound that excited about the engagement. Is something bothering you?" Assumption questions do two things. First, they show you're really listening, because you can only make an assumption like this if you're paying close attention to what they're saying, how they're saying it, and their body language. The fact that you're paying this much attention shows you genuinely care about what's being said, and people really like that. It makes them feel good.

Second, assumption questions cause a reaction. If your assumption is wrong, they will instinctively want to correct you. They might say, "Oh no, it's not that I'm not excited; I'm just tired from my long flight here." In this case, you can take that information and branch off into another topic, like talking about how you recover from jet lag. But if you're really paying attention, you'll often make a correct assumption. When that happens, they will almost always start opening up, using this cue to let out all the emotions and thoughts they've been holding in. By making a correct assumption, you essentially tell them, "Hey, I'm the perfect person to talk to about this subject. I don't have a filter, so I probably won't judge you. To top it off, I care about you and this conversation. I am the perfect candidate for you to talk to."

That's how you get someone to open up—by reducing your filter and asking assumption questions. The information you learned in this video is helpful and will work, but it doesn't mean anything unless you take action and turn it into a habit. You've got to build a habit of talking to people if you want to get people to open up to you. So, if you want to learn more about the Habit Builder Challenge and other future programs and services we'll be releasing, make sure you click on the link in the description box below to sign up for our mailing list. Stay tuned!