Release the desire to seem funny and smart, and listen instead
What are your biggest regrets? Photo: Lambert/Getty Images Recently, several articles have addressed the nuts and bolts of how to have more engaging connections and conversations. I read these eagerly . Health writer Jane E. Brody includes a short piece of advice in her latest column for the New York Times. Although the column is technically about becoming a mentor , the advice seems universal: “The key is not being interesting,” author Marc Freedman tells her.
It made me think of a Cup of Jo essay I read last fall, in which the writer and director Lisa Rubisch shared her own personal “Social Anxiety Cure-All”: remembering that the only social basics are to be curious and kind. “You don’t have to be the smartest in the room,” she writes. “All you have to be is curious and kind. No one can fault you for that.” Or, if that feels too difficult , consider the 2017 study about how people like people who ask them questions.
Sometimes when I’m talking with someone, I get distracted by the concern that I’m not being funny or interesting enough, and I miss details. It’s not going well, I think, which in turn makes it not go well. A friend of mine once asked a group of us what the biggest regret of our 20s was. It was a fun and a hard question to think about. We all went silent for a while. Some people mentioned the relationships they were in for too long, or the jobs they wish they’d left sooner.
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