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Stop making every conversation about yourself

thoguhts.substack.com

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Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#81

Post by boffinAudio »

There is a huge difference in values to be observed between an individual who is interested and one who is interesting.

Interesting people are tiresome to be around and very rarely productive. If all you ever do is try everything possible to be interesting, you're boring.

Interested people are a lot of fun and get the ball rolling on a lot of productive energy. If you take a great interest in others and pursue that interest, you make the group great.

Its really that simple. Next time you find yourself nodding off around someone, count the times in the conversation they took an interest, versus the moments they spent trying to be as interesting as possible. You may observe a big release of energy by spotting this factor ..

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#84

Post by tescocles »

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 just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before.

I always get paranoid they'll remember half way through the story that they've told me it before, and then ask why I didn't say anything.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#85

Post by zimpenfish »

cauliflower99 wrote: post #68
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 (currently) have the same problem! How did you learn to speak more about yourself when (if you're like me), your mind starts to shut down as soon as you start?

Same problem here - grew up in toxic friend, school, and social group environments where anything you revealed about yourself was almost certainly going to be weaponised against you at a later point. You pretty quickly learn to never divulge anything...

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#86

Post by bobmaxup »

dvcolgan wrote: post #58
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…

I relate very much to this. I have autism and in-person social interactions have been challenging at times to understand. So, I became a student of the human social experience and read a bunch of books about how to speak human, which I think indeed sometimes were more for extroverts. I have been learning how to gracefully interrupt, how to start conversations, how to have an opinion that is different from the others…

How do you measure success with something so subjective?

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#87

Post by passion__desire »

andirk wrote: post #25

A dating advice, for a guy, is "70/30"; Let her speak 70%, you speak 30%. People really like to share their own knowledge because that is their comfort zone, especially about themself. When I throw a few cocktails back, I can get too comfortable with ranting, so I try to stfu every couple minutes to let others take the reins just in case I'm being overzealous (which is also embarrassing).

In that 30%, try to have maximum impact. That's the reason, clever, witty guys are admired.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#89

Post by DonHopkins »

Kiro wrote: post #34

I don't like to talk about myself and I don't like listening to others talking about themselves, and that's all there is to human interaction so I rather skip it altogether.

1) You do to like to talk about yourself: you're doing it right now.

2) And you like to listen to others talking about themselves: you just read an article of somebody talking about themselves.

3) And you don't skip human interaction altogether: you just initiated it right now, too.

Three in a row: You may not be very good at introspection, nor honest with yourself and others, but you do actually talk about yourself, listen to others talk about themselves, and initiate human interaction, so there is hope!

You should get out more, and learn more about yourself and other people, because you have a lot of mistaken beliefs about yourself and others, and as much to unlearn as you have to learn.

Sorry to talk about you so much, but you brought it up. Now I can get back to talking about myself!

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#90

Post by DonHopkins »

slowhadoken wrote: post #26

Worse than that are people that turn a subject into an opportunity to talk about themself. It’s always the clue I’m talking to a narcissist. They’re always offended, demanding answers, rephrasing what you’ve said, attracting negative attention and blaming you for it.

I think the whole world is already extremely familiar with how Donald Trump thinks and acts and talks by now, and why he is such a horrible un-empathic person and a menace to society, who is absolutely unqualified to hold office.

See? That wasn't about myself at all. That's how it's done.

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