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Everyone has faced a situation wherein a hot discussion is going on and all we can think about is OUR TURN. That's very natural because it's in our nature that we wanna be heard. We desire to be heard, understood, taken seriously and be dominant. This quote by David Leviathan fits perfect here:

The desire to be heard is as deep as the desire to be loved.
-David Leviathan

But there is a problem with this desire to be heard, it blocks our minds intake of new information, ideas and facts and that in turn renders our thinking ability obsolete. Whenever we are arguing with someone our mind is constantly trying to figure out how should I respond or how should I present my idea so that it dominates the other person.By doing this, we completely shut the window of understanding with the that person and the conflict never resolves. The thing about understanding is that it can only be achieved if we listen. Listening is very important even more important than speaking our own opinions. And believe me we can never give a solid counter argument if we don't listen to other person's arguments with complete attention and then form a well suited and well informed opinion. It's very obvious really, how can you argue about something you don't even know? To sum it up here's a quote by Charlie Munger:

I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.
-Charlie Munger

And this can only be achieved by listening to their arguments.

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Now let's discuss about OPINIONS

We are living in a time where there is a flood of information. We encounter new piece of information every minute. The feeds of our social media networks, the blog posts on the web, the articles in newspapers and the talk shows on TV every second something new is fed into our tiny brains. The situation is really overwhelming. In such an overload of information, our brain stops processing the incoming information because there is too many of it. Hence, we the consumers of all this information lose the ability to form new ideas and opinions about things because we are not thinking about the information being fed to us. This murders our curiosity and originality.

Now, the question is how to form an opinion? The first thing to do is cut off this overload of information to your brain. Our brain can't multitask like computers, we can only think about one thing at a time. Figure out what you wanna learn about or make an opinion about. Research about that thing, listen to the arguments about it as many as you can from both sides, argue about that thing with people who know more about it than you do and listen to what they have to say attentively, go over all this information in your head and come up with analogies and connect all the relevant information like a decision tree. Now make your opinion after going through all of this and come up with arguments against you own opinion, fight your way through these arguments in your head and reach at a solid, well informed, tested and still open to change Opinion.

Summing it all up, I would say, build a habit of listening to others opinions and arguments to create an air of understanding. This will help you learn new things, make you understandable and wiser. Whenever you have time, just sit down and really think about things you observe, feel, listen, watch and read about. This will make you better understand the world around you. All this will sharpen your mind's thinking, decision making and learning capabilities. And the most important thing is to be receptive about your opinions that just tells people that you are here to learn.

I am just starting out this writing stuff and I need all the support I can. So, I would love to improve myself from your insightful comments. Thank's for reading and have a nice day!