Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Suppose you need to see the ophthalmologist, because your glasses are not helping you much. You had your appointment and after some chat with the doctor the moment you enter the office, he or she hands you his or her glasses. At first you don't understand but the doctor says:

Please use these, they are good and helped me a lot. I have another pair at home. So you can use it!

What would you think? Surprised? Angry? Reckless? It would be awkward right? Because giving prescription without analysis first, doesn't mean much. Also there is no generalization of a solution , which suits everyone!

Prescription comes after analysis

If we look at our daily lives, don't you think that more or less the same story is going on? If I think about my whole day in the evening, I realize that I am always trying to express myself, explain my idea or explaining my decisions. It doesn't matter much if the routine is my professional career life or family life. It feels like the communication line is run mostly from me to the other person, not much the other way around. Briefly we don't listen as much as we talk!

The story above with the ophthalmologist wont happen in real life. Because there are roles very well defined in our mind. You are patient and the other one is a doctor. Expectations, limits, knowledge base, the tools and methods are all defined. So when we go to a doctor we listen as much as we can and we accept the words from the beginning.

I think in our human interrelations on public zone, the roles are not defined very well so the expectations. Sometimes we perceive the other humans as targets, to discharge our inner emotional tensions, without thinking that they perceive us almost the same way. They want to talk as well.

But without the cast system that our professional lives, our careers insist, we seem to find blurry relations in between. And the only thing we want to achieve is to express ourselves somehow. At this point, I guess we have to practice stop talking and try to understand first. Really and deeply. Intentionally.

Doing it, may promote our interpersonal relations as well, by adding quality to it. Real listening and our own experiences will bring quality analysis. It is also called empathy. And whatever comment we make after listening, will mean something to the other one. I think this is important. The bonus is, this behavior may spread.