Many of us never make it past this point. I know what it is like to be entombed in my own silence. I also know how liberating it is to break through and hear myself talk. Therein lies the trouble. Once we get talking, it's hard to get us to stop.

We are in the loudmouth trap. The only thing we are aware of is the miracle of ourselves breaking the silence. Everyone else wishes we would shut up. Alas, poor Yorick. Who is going to invite him to sit at their table?

***

A few months prior to running into Yorick, I had breakfast with Pete Earley. We were at a national NAMI convention in San Diego. Both of us are journalists and authors and do some public speaking, but Pete is in a league of his own. Pete used to be a star reporter on the Washington Post, has been on the NY Times best-seller list, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and is in high demand as a keynoter. At the breakfast table, he demonstrated why he was a way better journalist than me.

It was simple. He got me to do just about all the talking.

That's how journalists make their living, by getting the OTHER person to talk. It's a skill that carries over extremely well into social settings. So here we were, two journalists having breakfast ...

Here are a few things Pete did. He made ME feel like the star attraction, not him. He showed he was glad to see me, he made me comfortable. He complimented me on my book. He acknowledged my journalistic strong suits and showed he was interested in picking my brains on a topic that was my passion (brain science).

Brain science for breakfast? Out of compassion, I kept my answers short, giving Pete plenty of opportunity to break in and change to a subject more to his liking. Instead, he fed my talking points back to me, in his own words, showing he was both listening and interested.

So if I said something like, "it's the genes and environment together," he might come back at me with something like, "so what you're saying is it's nature AND nurture, rather than nature VERSUS nurture."