Making Friends: Zip Your Mouth and Just Listen

Do you want to have so many friends who care about you? Do you want to have influence over people and want people to listen to you? Who wouldn’t want that? Then let’s get on to it and make ourselves influential.

There is one thing very basic and well integrated in our routines which limits our options to make friends. When we really want someone to care about us, we ourselves get in our own way.

I am talking about our need to talk about ourselves. I am talking about the “I” in our sentences. We cannot stop talking about ourselves. We have to say everything about “our” day and what “we” have done.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply” ― Stephen R. Covey

Everyone wants to feel special but very few people care to listen what others have to say. So the solution is very simple. All we need to do, in order to make an impact on others, is just listen. Just zip up our mouths and listen.

I recently came around a book called “How to Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. And although this book was published way back in the 1930s, it has given me an extremely great and useful tip about how to make others care about myself by first caring about them. If I am being really honest then a great deal of my conversations do in fact revolve around me. I have never for once stopped to think if I might be talking too much about myself. We can never realize how much we talk about ourselves unless someone else breaks it to us.

This great book has really changed the way I use my words. I have really started to listen to my own words now. Most of the time, I wouldn’t even know what I just said a few minutes back. But now I know what words I am using and whether or not I should speak anymore. It has changed the way I talk.

Now on to the interesting part. After realizing the problem with my discussions I got to do a really amazing and thought provoking experiment called “The Interested Challenge”.

The challenge requires you to only inquire about others for 24 hours, no talking about yourself at all. All the people that you come across in these 24 hours, you can only inquire about them. Even if they ask about you, you just take the discussion to them and only listen to other people, what they have to share, what their stories are.

So I took the challenge and did exactly what was required. I made a pact with myself to only open my mouth if I was going to inquire about others for the next 24 hours. Since I was already a bit ashamed at my tendency to talk too much about myself, I took this challenge with a great deal of intrigue and interest. And before anything else, let me tell you about my reflection on this experiment after those 24 hours.

It is extremely difficult to avoid talking about yourself, and I really do mean it. I cannot describe how often and how easily I slipped and realized that I was going the wrong way. I do not know about others, but for me, it was mind boggling. But these 24 hours have been the most thoughtful, provoking and life altering experience of my life.

I can say with pure certainty that I am a changed person now. I do not know how much, but I know this for sure, that I have changed. My talking habits have changed. I might have started to talk less than I used to, but I have started to listen to others.

Believe it or not but in the aftermath of this challenge, the people whom I listened to have started to initiate more conversations with me. At least 2 persons have called on me just to have a chat with me. It must mean something and it does in fact. I have become more likeable to them. They have started to realize that I really listen to them and I care about them.

I urge everyone to take this challenge and see for yourself if you do not believe me. I can assure you it will change the way you talk to others and it will bring a huge positive change in your life. Just trust me on this one and give it a shot.