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Stop making every conversation about yourself

thoguhts.substack.com

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Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#41

Post by lynx23 »

scrapheap wrote: post #23

I'm more than happy to hear people talking about themselves - I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before. The third time you hear about someone's school days when they did X, Y and Z can get a bit boring :D

Oh yeah. I have good conversational memory. Hearing the same story three times is usually when I start to doubt the other persons memory. However, they have a different task to solve. I only have to concentrate on what they are telling me, and that makes repetition detection easier. However, they likely told the same story to numberous people, so they are used to repetitions, but they have no (good) mechanism to detect when they tell the same story to the same person.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#42

Post by Aromasin »

andirk wrote: post #27
rockbruno wrote: post #22

There is a balance to this. If you always only listen to others and never speak about yourself, you fail to build connections with them (because they know nothing about you). I had the opposite problem, I made every conversation about them and had to learn to change that in order to be able to make friends.

I know your type and it's great! But yes, a connection is a dance, so if I'm getting pelted with these seemingly reasonable questions (read: "and how did that make you feel?"), they start feeling insincere.

I can't tell you how many people I know who must have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" once and became parrots whose only contribution to the conversation was to ask me questions and say my name repeatedly. That does not make a good conversationalist.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#43

Post by boerseth »

I often look back at a comment I've written or email I've sent, and am annoyed at the number of paragraphs that start with "I ...". This one included! I think it looks odd when it's every single paragraph, so in extreme cases I will try to rewrite some of those sentences.

With this metric in mind and considering the topic of the article, I think this comment section makes for an ironic and amusing skim. Although I guess it's totally reasonable to talk from one's own perspective when discussing a piece of life advice.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#44

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rayxi271828 wrote: post #29

Interesting. I had to make a conscious effort to go the other way around, i.e.: to talk more about me. I grew up reading too many books aimed at the extroverts among us ("There's a reason we have 1 mouth and 2 ears!"; "Silence is golden!"). It's hard to underestimate missed opportunities because a shy introvert (me back then) took and (mis)applied advice meant for extroverts who were already unable to stop talking ab…

To add to your experience, there's also a group of people that grew up and lived their adult life so isolated that they will start dumping on anyone that shows a little interest, smothering them. I know I'm guilty of that sometimes.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#45

Post by shrikant »

Nobody else has brought up the elephant in the room, so I will.

OP: Your Substack is called "Thoguhts" and not "Thoughts" -- is this entirely because someone else is squatting on thoughts.substack.com? Or is there some additional "deeper" significance to the obvious mis-spelling?

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#46

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gulyams wrote: post #18

This describes me well. How can you find the inner home? How can you be more conscious during conversations? I often come from an interaction with someone thinking: "God, I talked way too much. Should've listened more."

I can't give much advice there, other than be conscious/mindful and practice. Learn to pause between sentences, breathe, ask questions, listen, don't move to a next subject, etc. I think a lot of people have a fear that their soap box will be taken away if they don't fill the space, which... unfortunately isn't wrong because others love to hear themselves talk too.

But yeah, it takes conscious effort and practice.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#47

Post by Cthulhu_ »

DanHulton wrote: post #14

The irony.

The author is self-aware at least; I do think that the internet (blog posts, social media, comment sections) have something to do with the phenomenon described, since most people will share their own experience or opinion on something; slow form things like comment sections aren't very condusive for back-and-forth communication.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#48

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Cypher wrote: post #3

How am I suppose to embody the world if I can't talk about myself?

You're aware of the problem, that's a good first step. The next step is wanting to fix it; your phrasing indicates there's something blocking you, have you tried looking into that? I'm not saying "go to therapy" but it might help to look around.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#49

Post by Cthulhu_ »

upupupandaway wrote: post #20

I feel like social media made this trait almost into an epidemic.

For sure, most social media activity is sharing something about yourself (activities, etc), and it often feels like any interactions with others have an ulterior motive of getting something in return.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#50

Post by teekert »

scrapheap wrote: post #23

I'm more than happy to hear people talking about themselves - I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before. The third time you hear about someone's school days when they did X, Y and Z can get a bit boring :D

I talk too much about myself, but am working on it. I do notice it can build connections especially when you share ever so slightly embarrassing things or express emotions like doubt and uncertainty.

Anyway, I am always happy when someone interrupts me "yeah, you told me about that indeed", before I bore them with the same story.

Where I live we call this "having your heart on your tongue." It's a way to cope with stress (for me at least). I try to limit it, but it always makes me feel better when people have been through similar things and I am genuinely curious as to how they solved similar situations.

Btw, I may remember that I told the story before, I'm just very bad at remembering who I told it to.

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