Talk, Talk, Talk.

I had a conversation with one of my roommates. He is a teacher at an elementary school and normally has a few stories about his day with his students. This time he had a particularly difficult day with some of his students.

I am someone who enjoys talking with others but, also I tend to be the one talking a lot in the conversations. So, for this conversation with my roommate I focused on really listening and not trying to bring in my own personal experiences to relate with his. I was able to get a lot of information about his day and his story. Also, it can be really easy to start to multi-task while having a conversation with someone. I know personally, I really don’t like when people clearly aren’t in the conversation with me. I’d rather them just not be in the conversation at all, just like Celeste Headlee mentioned in her TED talk. Being present is important because, then you really are hearing what they are saying.

Instead of focusing on what I was going to say next to what he said, I just focused on listening to him and the responses just came naturally. I could tell he felt heard and that I was really engaging in our conversation. Sometimes, you don’t realize how good it feels to have someone truly be in the conversation with you. Nowadays people are so occupied with a million other things going on in their own lives they tend to not fully engage in their conversations with others and are only halfway in and halfway out.

This exercise opened my eyes to having more engaged and interesting conversations. I had a great conversation with my roommate that night because, I was fully in it and it made my responses so much more meaningful. It also showed me that you don’t always have to share your experience too after their done telling theirs. I was able to takeaway a great conversation from this experience and hopefully have many more in the future.