Yes, there is a time for talking, but not until you know exactly where the other person is coming from. For this to happen, you need to bury your ego. You don't exist. Only the other person matters. This may not be easy if you are a Montague and the other party is a Capulet, but that's the very point: your opinions, your expertise - your emotions - only get in the way.
Again, I had beginner's luck working for me. When it came to the fine points of taxation, I had no opinions, no expertise. I had no temptation to jump in and contribute my two cents. I had no temptation to show off how much I knew. I could listen with complete dispassion because I had nothing to be passionate about.
Unfortunately, that was not the case in my personal life. At the same time, my first marriage was falling apart. Neither of us were listening. Both of us were doing a lot of shouting.
Never once did I hear her say: "What I hear you saying is ... ," "I can see why that would make you upset," "Keep talking ..."
Never once did I say: "What do you want out of this marriage?" "What can I do to make this work?"
The screaming got worse.
Within months, I was out of the house, never to return. The job that I knew nothing about? Turned out that after three years, I left on my own terms for an even better position. I actually wound up publishing three books on business/finance topics.
The one thing I had going for me in my professional life was my ability to listen. By keeping my ears open and my mouth shut, I actually learned quite a lot about topics I knew nothing about. So much so that people actually started asking me for my opinions. Get this - they actually wanted to hear me talk.
Too bad I lacked the same listening skills in my personal life. Practically all of us do. We're so busy thinking about what we want to say next that we fail to pay attention. We only want to talk. We fail to realize that talking doesn't work if no one is listening.
No wonder our lives fall apart. No wonder, we have trouble getting ourselves back on track.
It took me a long time to catch on. I'm still learning...
