Active Listening

So whether it is a blessing or a curse at this point, I'm not sure yet, but I would like to share a lesson that has stuck with me especially so from my time in College. In one of my Senior seminars, we were discussing the topic of active listening. For those of you unfamiliar with the nomenclature, it basically means REALLY listening to someone, making sure you understood them, and providing the feedback that is useful to the conversation. Easy in practice, suprisingly more difficult in implementation (without practice).

The thing that stuck with me, as is often the case with any topic, was a simple gem of an exercise that has colored almost every social interaction I have had since then. The exercise was given as simply this: Have a five minute conversation with another person, and don't use the words "I", "we", "me", or another version of the same pronoun.

Give it a shot if you think it will be easy; it really isn't. The obvious point of this exercise is that in some sense, we are all very egotistical (don't read too much into that word, I'm not using it derogatoraly, just in the sense that when you think about it, ultimately we are concerned with out own state of being).

The double edged sword that is this revelation is that I now am very aware of both my own use of personal pronouns, but also that of other peoples. It's certainly a great thing to be aware of, but it can be somewhat frustrating realizing how much people want to talk about themselves, but don't want to talk about anything else, or even care about what another person says. How often have you heard someone tell a story and the person they are telling it to response "Oh, I know. Here is my spinoff of that".

Obviously at some points, it is necessary, unavoidable and useful to use those words, but thats not the point. Just try to be aware of how much you talk about yourselves, and you will really become aware of so much more content of conversations (plus you will come off a lot less self-centered).