Embody Curiosity, Boring Into Conversation
Listen. Care. Learn. Grow.
Embody Curiosity
Curiosity is the process of asking questions, genuine questions, that are not leading to an ask for something in return.
Brian Grazer
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Albert Einstein
Be curious. Ask questions. Be sincere in the questions you ask. Be genuine with your curiosity. Listen intently when given a response. Paraphrase and repeat back the response given. Ask for confirmation you relayed it back properly.
Watch in real time as your world opens up before you.
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
E. E. Cummings
When you approach the world with a genuine curiosity you vastly increase what you are able to perceive. Your world will grow and your community will appear far more inviting. Imagine the possibilities you open yourself up to when you genuinely care to know more or understand what's around you.
By doing this you stave off the inclination to become defensive. If you enter into conversation with someone with an air of curiosity, opposing viewpoints are no longer attacks on your own, they are simply thoughts and perspectives of that interesting person across from you.
By embracing curiosity you have effectively turn that person from potential foe to potential window into the unknown. In other words a potential friend.
Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.
Bryant H. McGill
This is a powerful way to find peace as well. If you no longer have a world full of adversaries, what is there to be anxious about? Why would you be nervous around people with varying perspectives even ones that carry the polar opposite of yours?
Yes, they won't subscribe to your views and may even attack them but that's okay. Why? Because you want to know what they think. So it's no longer taken as an attack or skirmish but as an opinion to be taken into account.
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wonder what we could learn by taking an approach like this. I truly do wonder. This is why I am okay taking criticism (for the most part, I am imperfect as you know).
Open yourself up to awe, to wonder, to curiosity. Feel the peace it brings. Reap the rewards of perspectives and friendship it brings. If you cannot be open with anybody, you close out the world.
Start with those you trust implicitly. Me, for instance. And continue on from there. I am the last person to be judging anybody else. My closet was full of skeletons at one point.
I have worked a long time to clear it out, airing out my deepest and darkest. I am not innocent.
Do not worry about judgment here. Be yourself. Be curious.
I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.
Johnny Depp
Boring Into Conversation
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
I could do better during conversation. Often I’ll take long pauses, which makes me uncomfortable. They’re times when I am attempting to find the right word or next thread in a chain of thought. I don't like doing that. It allows confusion.
If you pause but you're not done because you're in the middle of a thought, that's an opening, and people might misunderstand and think you're finished. Long pauses don't generally happen because most of what we say in conversation is shallow. There isn’t much thought required. I don't value that in my own speech.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
I value conversation with people though, even shallow conversation. I value their time, opinions, and feelings. It’s unlikely they’re encouraged to think beyond shallow often, or at the very least, they've learned not to do so because most people don't care. Which is a shame.
I hear people say, "I don't talk to this person because they're boring," or "I'm bored here, and the whole room is boring," but that's garbage. The truth is if everyone else is having a good time but one person is bored, there’s a good change the problem is that person.
It's unlikely that there is an entire room of incredibly boring people, and if everybody else is talking and participating, they’re not bored. It's one of those rules of three, right?
If one person says something about you, it's their problem. If two people say it, it may still be a fluke. But that’s your clue to pay attention. If three people say it, it’s statistically likely to be true.
Generally, if three people accuse you of the same thing, you're probably guilty of it, barring some collaboration or all being present at the same time. There are exceptions for group think and ideological capture, dogma, racism, etc. But the point is to pay attention.
Good listeners have a huge advantage. For one, when they engage in conversation, they make people 'feel' heard. They 'feel' that someone really understands their wants, needs and desires. And for good reason; a good listener does care to understand.
So if you're in a room of 10 people and you happen to be one of those 10, and everybody is having a good time, maybe laughing, joking, and carrying on, and then you leave that room and you have this thought, "Man, everybody in there was boring," it's probably not them, it's probably you. Even though that sounds harsh, and it is, this realization can change the way you see other people and allow you to be a better communicator.
But back to the original point, people are not boring by and large. You're not boring, at least you the person. You may come across as boring because you don't allow yourself to talk to people or to open up, but you as a whole are not.
You've lived a life, there's way too much that you've gone through that's going to allow you to be boring. Talk about that. Talk about your life. You don't have to, but I guarantee you're interesting, especially if you do talk about your life.
Life can't be boring. If it was boring, we would go crazy. Humans are not meant for comfort, we're not meant for boredom, we're not meant to do nothing.
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Andrew Ussery
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