A few weeks back I watched this TED talk; 10 ways to have a better conversation , and after watching it, I decided to try it out on the people in my life and anyone I meet. As humans, we constantly look for attention in just about anything we do and in our everyday life. It’s not something that we consciously know we are doing, we just love talking about ourselves.
A pretty important thing that Celeste Headlee pointed out is that we don’t listen to people anymore in a conversation, and I’m not talking about in texts because when you get a text you only doing two actions; reading and replying… but when we are in front of someone we just don’t listen to someone because we are already thinking about what we want to say. The minute that we start thinking about what we want to say, we automatically stop listening. So how are you getting to know the person if you are not paying attention to them?
Personally I’m a pretty private person, I don’t socialize with anyone just out of the blue. I don’t usually start a conversation because I like to say I’m antisocial. Yet one thing I find myself really good at is listening, observing and I think I can understand someone better that way. Yet like everyone, most times all I want to respond back is a 5-minute story that had little to do with what we were just talking about because that's all I heard.
But one thing that I got from this TED Talk was this; don’t state your own personal experience when someone is telling you their story. “All experiences are individual”,
After this, that’s exactly what I did. I listened and I replied without having to boast my personal experience. Because people don’t want to tell you a sad story about themselves so that you can tell them a story about you. They tell you a story about them because they want someone to understand them and only listen to their experience without feeling like someone else has had the same event happen to them. It makes someone feel good knowing they are the center of attention.
Communication is key to any relationship, to have a connection with someone that is clear and concise is something we all struggle with. Unfortunately, we aren't super humans that can read our partner's mind, so that's why being able to conversation and communicate would help create peace, and build relationships. It helps grow you as a person because listening is learning.
When I’m in a conversation with my friends, I’m listening, I’m understanding and I’m trying to get to know them. If they asked me if I went through something similar, then I would tell them my story. You don't get to know someone by talking about yourself. And I'm not saying that every conversation you have has to be life this, but go with the flow. I started changing the way I converse with people and let me tell you, I actually enjoy socializing now.
