There are hundreds of thousand people who face difficult in starting a conversation with a stranger and keep it going. Few years back I was one of them. Whenever I came across a stranger I always use to get confused where and how to start a conversation. My mind always used to get filled with lot of questions. How should I approach? What should I ask first? What if that person gives me a cold shoulder? What if they avoid talking to me? What will they think of me if I will take the initiative of going and talking to them? These are few of the questions that use to bother me a lot back then. For this reason I was not able to talk to people and I don’t have many friends due to this. Then I started to recognize my problems and decided to find out the solution for it. Now I don’t give a second thought before starting a conversation with a complete stranger, now I have lot of friends which I never thought I will have. So now I am giving away the steps I followed to overcome my shyness, start a healthy conversation and make lot friends.

• Introduce yourself and simply tell your name to the new person. Offer your hand to shake, upon his/her responding to you.
• Look around. See if there is anything worth pointing out. Sure, talking about the weather is a cliché, but if there’s something unusual about it, you’ve got a great topic of conversation. You need to have some idea of what is going on in the world. Also remember and plan to share anything you like, think is funny, or find intriguing. This is building up your own library of things that might be helpful to another person during a conversation someday. It will be amazing how you thread these interesting things when you least expect it, and make conversation an adventure instead of a dreadful task. If you take it to the next step and say things that you want the person to think of as adding value, and keep to yourself things that the person might not, you are actually honing your own personality to be appealing to the other person, and what is a greater act of kindness than that?
• Offer a compliment. Don’t lie and say you love someone’s hair when you think it’s revolting, but if you like his or her shoes, or a handbag, say so. A sincere compliment is a wonderful way to get someone to warm up to you. But be careful not to say something so personal that you scare the person off or make him or her feel uncomfortable. It is best not to compliment a person’s looks or body.
• Ask questions! Most people love to talk about themselves — get them going. “What classes are you taking this year?” but don’t talk about yourself too much that makes you seem full of yourself. “Have you seen (Insert-Something-Here)? What did you think of it?” Ask open ended questions that will get them talking. For example, a good question would be, “That’s a nice handbag, where did you get it?” and then they can talk about the day that they went shopping and all this funny stuff happened, as opposed to, “I like your handbag.” “Thank you.” and then it’s over. Again, keep the questions light and not invasive. Do not ask too many questions if he or she is not responsive to them.
• Jump on any conversation-starters he or she might offer; take something he or she has said and run with it. Agree, disagree, ask a question about it, or offer an opinion, just don’t let it go by without notice.
• Keep eye-contact, it engenders trust (but don’t stare). Also, use the person’s name a time or two during the conversation; it will help you remember the name, and will draw the person’s attention to what you are talking about. Smile a lot, and laugh when any quip is made by the other person.
• Smile and have fun with your conversation!
• Be yourself and ask the question that you would think be the right thing to say but, give yourself some time to think about what you say before you say it.
• Follow the lead that your listener is expressing. If he or she appears interested, then continue. If he or she is looking at a clock or watch, or worse, looking for an escape strategy, then you have been going on for too long.

Don’ts

• Don’t be overly invasive with questions.
• Don’t desperately ask personal questions.
• Don’t ever comment negatively on the person or someone else’s looks… you never know if they have a personal attachment to it or if they are friends with the person you are criticizing
• Never act arrogantly and pretend to be a Know It All when dealing with people
• Do not speak, behave or dress immaturely
• Never swear, insult, disrespect, use racial, religious, sexual orientation, and gender slurs in front of others (Unless you know who they are and if they have the same views on things as you.)
• Never ever interrupt a conversation between one or more people. Wait for the conversation to stop and then say something. Common courtesy goes a long way.
• Always say please, may I, thank you, could you when someone is nice to you and when you want something. Being polite shows maturity and intelligence
• Respect those around you
• Be neat, well dressed and groomed. Sloppiness, bad breath and body odor will get you nowhere.
• Sometimes when you start a conversation, the person you’re talking with might think you’re boring. But, it’s okay! Head onto someone else, because sometimes you can pick the wrong person.
• If you are talking to someone you have a “crush” on do not talk about their girlfriend/boyfriend or anything related to you liking them. Stick to what you know about them: if they are into sports talk about the most recent big game.

One last thing, it is important to practice getting conversations started. You may feel a little clumsy at first, but with practice it can become easy to start good conversations.

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