Have you ever been in this situation before?
You and your s/o, roommate, person of interest, etc. are sitting there talking about an important issue that needs to be resolved, there are good points that you’re making and surely the other person is also making good points but it seems like the conversation is going nowhere. It feels like every time you drag out your excellent point which should put everything into perspective and make them understand, they just rehash their same points or bring what they believe will be the “winning blow” of the argument.
Congrats, you’ve now become entrapped in an argument loop that will surely go nowhere over the course of the talk. This happens more than you know. In fact, it seems as if this is the primary mode of communication for some people. It might be a bit more of a widespread and endemic problem than we’d like to think.
As you probably know, the ability of people to talk and listen to others is a learned skill. When I say “Listen,” I don’t mean listen as in hearing in order to respond, I mean listen in terms of fully ingesting their point and formulating a thought out response that morphs in regards to what information they’re telling you. Too many times, we only listen to just get new context on how to shoehorn our original thought or idea into the conversation without it feeling out of place. The whole idea of listening just to respond is not a new thing either. There is actually a cousin or you could say ancestor of this sort of phenomena called “Psuedolistening”.
Psuedolistening is antithetical to active listening and the article by Wikipedia on it actually states that it can occur for a myriad of reasons:
Listening for ways someone can reject you.[7]"Forming your response to the speaker instead of focusing on what is being said.Preoccupation, when there is too much on the mind of the listener, so that they cannot listen.[8]Preexisting familiarity with the topic of conversation, which results in less effort to actively listen.Only listening for information you want to hear, giving little attention to the rest.Listening only for the flaws in their argument in order to gain an advantage over the speaker.Social pressure to be courteous to those speaking.Hope that they will believe you are listening and return the favor.An effort to build others' views of you.Desire not to hurt someone who is sharing experiences.
Notice the emphasis on #2 which directly segues into the point of this article. Being very attentive to the crux of a person’s statements and being able to pull insight out of what they say is almost essential to being able to have a functioning society as well as improving as people. We are each other’s greatest resource. Being able to learn from each other and talk to others and glean some sort of new understanding is the core advantage to having communities. When someone tells you something and you’re unable to pick out the hidden gems (Many of which that person themselves may not be aware of) and respond in a way where you’ve pulled new understanding and they also get understanding from your response, then you both may as well save the extra O2 that you’re consuming to talk for a better purpose.
“So Flex, you’ve told me the problem… How do we fix it?”
……..
”Hush my student, that answer is not something I can easily tell you. All I can do is get you started on the proper path, but beyond that I can definitely get you started with a tip that helps me.”
Cue Flex’s golden tip:
When someone is talking to you, something that you can do that works extremely well is to save what a person is saying in your head and make it almost a pop quiz as you’re talking. Part of that extends to being able to memorize the parts of the conversation where their vocal inflection changes, their eyes or body language perks up, or you see a discernible shift in energy. These are important markers for where you need to be drawing up a mental flash card and quizzing yourself on:
What they said.
Why they said it.
What context prior in the conversation led to this statement.
What you would do in that situation.
The mental flash card strategy works extremely well for me because it keeps my mind engaged and allows me to be able to really think around things that they say. That should be the entire goal of your conversation. If you’re not employing this strategy or similar ones, then you may want to take some time and really practice conversation and where your weak points in conversating lie.
Are you even listening?! (FREE VERISON)