We humans love to talk. So much to share of our own experiences and our own achievements. We wait eagerly for the other person can finish talking so that we can share our own experience. I notice sometimes myself doing that. As the other person is talking some thought comes into my mind which I think should now be shared. But the other person is still talking. From then on I am just planning how I will narrate my own experience on that topic so I stopped listening anymore to what the other person is saying and instead am self absorbed in my own thoughts.
I see it happen again and again with me on both sides of speech. I can notice how just when I have stopped talking the other person immediately relates their own experience or advise to one up the conversation. That is the thing. We normally want to come out smart to the person we are talking to and it’s better if we can come our smarter. If we relate how we have solved their problem already and better we can go a bit higher on the social ladder to which we humans are always making one. Even among friends. The problem is without paying full attention we think we know the problem but we have not yet spend time to really understand. Infact if we really understood we would realize how unique problems everyone has and we don’t neet to and cannot apply our own experience to their problems.
I read a book on the subject Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone and which has increased my knowledge on the subject but only if we could become better by just reading on the subhect. Learning comes from reflection which is what I am doing and the more I reflect I can see how I am nowehere near being a good listener.
Good listening creates a deficit in dynamics. If you let someone speak they will be eventually compelled to listen to you. A good salesperson knows this. If you can make your potential customer talk and relate their problems they are so much more likely to listen to your own pitch. If you listen well, they will listen well. And isn’t life about selling something every moment? Getting a job, getting a date or actually selling a product all turn out to be selling. Despite that we talk more than we listen. We know what we should do but we don’t do anyways. Similarly to everyone knows how to get abs but no one does it.
We find our own experiences good and other people boring. Everyone has interesting experiences though and if we could just listen we will realize that is true. Talking and narrating our own experiences inflates our ego and atleast cursorily we becomes the center which we as humans love. Inflation of ego is the central problem of human existence. As one book says Ego is the enemy.
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