Yeehaw! What's up, family? Spooky season is upon us, and so is the new Halloween movie 👀. Because the days are slowly getting colder, I'm trying out new coffee recipes and flavors. It's like my new things these days. School is fine because I am officially in that phase where you say, "you only live once," so yeah, I'm just vibing. Today I discuss a topic that I have lately noticed, especially at college, and just a slight change in your habits can teach you a lot. It can also introduce us to learn the cues of when someone needs help. I have more time in my hands, so I'm trying to help out other people as much as I can. Let's not wait and jump into it 😬
Tale of a Girl and Her Honesty
My family has consistently criticized me for being too honest. What does that even mean? How can someone be even too honest? I don't know mannn, but what I know is that I say what I feel. I don't like to lie or please people with fake talk, so I just keep it real. So because of this, I have been under scrutiny at times. One day something happened that made me realize what being too honest meant. I remember my sister struggling in her exams. She took this exam multiple times, but she failed. One day, we were talking casually, and I said something insensitive that hurt her so much that she started crying. This was my first time making someone cry. Mind you, my sister is like seven years old than me, so it was kind of disrespectful too. Being the youngest in the family, I was just so used to nobody listening to me. But this time, my sister was listening to me, and it hurt her. All of a sudden, I realized that what I said really mattered. Right after that incident, it was almost like Karma hit me like a bitch. Everything in my life started going wrong. I got into accidents, lost my job, and much more. I was in depression after that. At that time, I also didn't know how to apologize to someone sincerely. Anything that had to do something with the emotion, I tended to ignore it.
I also wasn't close with my family at that time. I had no friends to talk to. I spent countless days in my room, just locked up. I could feel some numbness in my body, but I didn't know what to do with it. I was too caught up in the world and running on autopilot that my body and spirit were not connected. I decided to do something about this depression and started working on myself. I tried meditation to praying to eating good and working out. I started reading a lot and practicing staying quiet. At that time, I also decided it was time to patch things up with my sister. Months later, she was still very hurt. I took her out for coffee and explained to her what had happened. I continued to apologize to her for my unintentional harm to her feelings. She accepted, and I got my closure.
Two Years and One Month?
That up there was just a short story of how my words hurt someone very close to me, and I never realized it. But did you ever notice that we have two ears and one mouth? Why is that normal? Probably for a good reason. Well, the internet guys say that this is the main reason you should talk less and listen more. Honestly, so many good things come out of listening and speaking less, and I'm going to share some with you here. Also, before we dive into the reasons, did you see this paragraph's title pun 😁 You will probably go back and reread it. It's ok. I did too! Even though I wrote it 🤔 Well back to the benefits:
You give yourself time to think of the words before you speak them out loud
If I had a dollar for every time, I said something dumb. I would have about $1000 so far.
You make the other person feel valuable
When you listen to someone, it makes them feel like what they have to say has meaning to you. You'd be surprised that many people these days don't have too many people they can talk to about difficult things in life. A couple of days ago, I met this young fellow (I'm so old, lol) who I thought was well versed in life. Then we started talking, and that's when I realized how much underwater he was. Sometimes people just need to be heard.
You learn a lot of verbal cues and body language of people
This one time, my friend I hadn't seen in like four years came to visit me. We were having dinner, and he was telling me his life stories. I was just very calmly listening to him and realized that his hands were very shaky. It was almost like he was nervous. I asked him about it, and we had a whole debate on it. But honestly, You'd be surprised at the number of things you will start noticing when there is silence on your end. Humans are already very complicated, and when we can't communicate in words, we tend to communicate by giving signals from our bodies.
When you speak less, people will pay more attention to you when you speak
It's true. When you start speaking less and less every day, people will be curious to know your opinion on matters. When you talk, people will pay attention and make notes about it. It's like economics term, supply and demand. If you supply more (talk more), there will be less demand (of your opinions). But if you supply less (talk less), there will be high demand (of your opinions). It's straightforward.
In Hear-Clusion
I worked in customer service for years, and let me tell you, half of the problems were just solved by listening to people. There was a time when I worked a call center job from home, and I had so many hour-long calls where I was just lying down on my couch and hearing what people had to say. Also, remember, what you see might not be exactly what it is. That's why listening to people's stories is very important. This gives inspiration to some people. That's also where the concept of many movies comes from and why autobiographies exist in the first place. Someone telling their life story and things they had to go through to get to today is how humans learn and evolve. If we never listened, we would continue to commit the same mistakes and never grow.
Just try to forcefully stop yourself from speaking too much for some time and watch it become a habit in no time.
Cheers to a better lifestyle 🥂
Also you guys should follow me on Tiktok because I am a clown🤡
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