Your guide to a healthier perspective of life
Ask more questions, but ask better questions too. You already know what you think you know. Your goal should be to understand what other people know (or think they know). What can you learn from them? But don’t pester them with annoying questions.
Be curious. The more curious you are, the faster you’ll learn and grow as a person. And, hey, some additional perks are you’ll probably have some great conversations and grow stronger friendships too.
You can be very knowledgeable and “have the answers” that others are looking for, but until they know how much you care – how passionate you are about that topic, how interested you are in their well-being, how much you understand what it means to them – that’s when you win them over.
Just like in most things in life, it’s not about you. People’s first thoughts tend to default to thoughts about themselves. You can say it’s selfish, but it’s true. That’s why people tell you to be interested in others, to listen twice as much as you talk, to ask questions about them, to use the other person’s name in conversation…they want to know (or at least think) you care about them. If they believe that, you will earn their trust and then they will be more receptive to your “knowledge.”
“Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?” – T.S. Elliot
We are so inundated with information, most of which is irrelevant, that we lose the part that is actually important – the applicable knowledge.
Don’t confuse the two. Start/continue to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, to read articles and books, and to try to learn as much as possible, but make sure you occasionally take a step back and figure out if you’re just consuming noise (information), or if what you’re letting in will help you. Then apply what you’ve learned. The best teacher is experience. You can read as much as you want, but you need to actually start “doing” to gain a complete knowledge of a subject.