Starting conversations with people I have never met is like my superpower.

Despite my fairly intense introversion, I consistently find myself vaulting into the deep end with people I have just met. I’m not really sure how it happens. I think I am just short enough to not be threatening, just polite enough to not turn people away, just handsome enough to look approachable, and just bearded enough to look wise.

In the past few years, I have met:

• A Roller Derby team from Minnesota whose captain is married to a heavy metal singer
• A doctoral candidate from Kansas who also freelances in how-to training videos because “teachers get paid shit and that other stuff is really easy.”
• An older couple who have written two books together and whose “retirement” plan is this product, a badge which measures if you are getting enough vitamin D during the day. (That website looks a lot better than it did when they first told me about it four years ago, so things must be going well)
• An Irish heroin addict turned motivational speaker. The last time we spoke, he’d just finished his book manuscript, and was rewarding himself with a Swedish massage.
• A French woman who once told an American executive “Don’t bother talking to me until you know what you want to say.”

As an introvert, it helps me to think of each person as not as a person, but as a living story, decades in the making. My only job is to extract the story.

Other than “looking completely average,” here are the tangible actions I take to start conversations with aliens. I mean strangers …

1) Actually Talk to Strangers

I used to make a big mistake: I would never talk to strangers.

This probably came from a fear instilled by my parents at a young age, but over the years, I excused myself for a different reason. Why bother talking to this person at an airport? I’ll never see them again. A conversation won’t matter.

My mindset on this didn’t change until one day I found myself handing a tissue to a woman in the window seat. 30 minutes into our chat, she was crying over a relationship that ended abruptly. I had been the comforting shoulder to friends before, but never strangers. I thought: “why would she tell me this? I don’t even know her.”

Then it hit me: She’s telling me this because I don’t even know her.

Conversations with strangers have the potential to go much deeper than they should. Why? Because your relationship has a ticking clock right from the start. The second those wheels touch down in Omaha, the two of you will never see each other again. I now recognize brief encounters for what they are: a chance to give free, anonymous therapy for a person in need.

2) Let them go second

Silence is awful. It’s so weird. Like the two of you are sitting in the same spot for an extended period of time. What if you miss the grace period to say hello and then you’re stuck on a bus side by side for hours?

With every second that ticks by, the pressure builds to say something. After a while, it’s far too late, and you are trapped in an endless cycle of avoiding eye contact, coughing uncomfortably, and suddenly becoming very interested in perusing the Skymall catalog.

“Oh look,” you’ll think to yourself, determined to not shift your gaze away from the page. “I didn’t know they made remote controls shaped like Harry Potter’s wand.”

There is absolutely NO chance I will be the second one to speak. Even if it’s just “Hello!” that takes the pressure off the other person.

Quick note: If you’re looking for more than “hello,” one of my friends wrote an absurdly thorough guideto breaking the ice.

3) Embrace small talk

I have a friend who hates small talk. She can’t stand how meaningless it is. Not surprisingly, she also has trouble meeting new people.

Here’s the thing, though — Small talk is a necessary entry level play for making people feel comfortable. It’s the basis for everything, even if it seems banal. Best of all, it is very, very, very easy to do. I realized most of my small talk (when traveling) is pretty much a variant of this script:

Me: “Woo, man, I can’t believe this [STATEMENT ABOUT THE WEATHER].”

Stranger: “Yeah, it’s crazy how [CONFIRMS STATEMENT ABOUT WEATHER].”

Me: “For sure. Is [PLACE WE ARE GOING] home for you?”

Stranger: “Nope, I’m from…”

Small talk really is obnoxious. Actually, there are several co-workers who have only ever conversed with me about the weather or the day of the week and it’s proximity to Friday. The goal, then, for me is to build an easy springboard from small talk to revealing a simple personal detail.

Once someone opens up even the slightest crack into their personal life, you can move on to:

4) Ask Questions

Okay, so now I know the person is from Boston or wherever. I ask if they like it there. Then I’ll ask about their kids. Then I’ll ask about something else.

Every time someone trusts you with a detail about themselves, nod and smile and ask for more. Each sentence is going to be a wealth of new information. Ask about the new stuff. It’s a game, really.

“But Todd! What will I say next? What if we run out of things to talk about?”

You won’t if you keep asking questions. I have noticed people always have plenty of problems or passions or both.

What they don’t have is a person who wants to listen.