Listen More, Talk Less – One Thing I Wish to Change about Myself
If there is anything I wish to change about myself right now, it is talking too much. It has been brought to my notice that I tend to be overbearing in conversations that border on subjects I think I’m knowledgeable about. That has not always been the case, though, because I used to be a very shy person. I struggled to break free of timidity. A few years ago, I began to talk more, associate more with people; tell the jokes I write in my head. I began to assert myself because my ‘gentle’ was taken for granted more times than I can remember. Now, I talk too much and become quite overbearing simply because I think I know something. This is costing me a lot.
One instance of the negative side of this phenomenon is something that happened last year between me and my student. This student (I won’t say she is my favourite student because just as a parent cannot have a favourite child, a teacher cannot have a favourite student) who had always greeted me with a smile suddenly started to keep ‘malice’ with me because I said a particular kind of food did not look appealing and did not make sense nutrition-wise. Truly I did not like the food, and I said what I said as a joke. What I did not know was that the dish was her traditional delicacy and she cherished it a lot. I am a foodie, so I felt like an Opeyemi Famakin, passing judgment on every food I come across.
The person who took this picture of me taught me to talk too much.
It’s just impossible for anybody to argue about football, unless you are of course a professional footballer or a backroom staff of any football club. Now that I think about it, whenever I argue about football, I think that I read the game better than the players themselves, so I begin to talk like all those pundits on television. My friends find this exasperating. Or should I mention how I connect any discussion of literature to western literary theories? My friend once said that I did that just so I can take the conversation away from the others.
I want to be this quiet again in real life.
The truth is, I’ve tried to stop talking above others, but it has been difficult. As much as I love the interactive method of teaching, I often find myself steering towards the narrative/facilitation method. Now, I wrote “Talk Less, Listen More” above my table in the office to help me remember to really not be overbearing. I want to be that guy who is fun to talk to, not the guy who takes the wind out of everyone’s balloons. If there is anything I wish to change about myself right now, it is talking too much.
@joe2580 and @medemausi care to join the conversation?