#just a thought
I am reading this interesting book on “how to listen better”.
One of the things the author stresses about is to invite the other person to continue talking so that she knows you are interested and actively listening. You have to follow some steps, an important one being to say “tell me more”.
Now, in theory, this looks great! There’s even a pretty diagram that sums them up. In the examples he gives it makes sense and it seems to work great.
But after some struggles on how to apply it myself I realised that this “tell me more” doesn’t have an easy replacement in Romanian. And I am not talking only about the words themselves, I am talking about the fact that we don’t use a “tell me more” type of invitation in normal conversations. If I use it it will just sound weird, fake and forced.
So now I wonder on how to adapt the model to replace the “tell me more” with something more suitable.
This a common problem when you import all sorts of methods from other places. And this is also a huge problem when it comes to all those fancy models out there. They look great on paper, but do they REALLY work?
Yes, models help us approach these large amounts of information we’re surrounded with. They can be useful to create some sense, to help you retain information and to explain it to others. But I invite you to not take them for granted, to test those models and see what works for you and what doesn’t. Especially because they usually have to change with time and conditions. Don’t fall in love with them!
We know we are complicated and…life is complicated. Why fool ourselves it’s not by forcing it to fit in a simplistic model?
Just be present & aware, accept & enjoy, adapt & come up with your own solutions, have fun – you’ll be fine, you don’t need all those models, all the time.
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