I’ve noticed that I often struggle to express what I actually mean during discussions.
Sometimes my main point gets lost because I phrase it poorly, use a weak example, or realize later that I misunderstood what the other person was saying. I often leave conversations thinking, “That wasn’t what I was trying to say.” or “I am not being taken serious.”
For those of you who used to have this problem:
How did you get better at expressing your thoughts? Did you practice in a specific way? How do you make sure you’re responding to someone’s actual point instead of what you think they mean? Or is it really just keeping your mouth shut if you aren’t knowledgeable about something.
It has gotten to the point that I find myself just not wanting to jump into the discussion, because I feel like that it’s more about who is right , than understanding and being understood.
I’d love to hear any advice or habits that helped you become a clearer communicator. Book recommendations are also welcome.
Lemmy doens’t have Social Skills community(that i can find) or anything so sorry for posting this in AskLemmy.
Reflections so far:
Be curious. Socratic method; phrase your statements as questions. It helps soften your dialogue quite a bit and makes the conversation a quest for discovery.
Try to formulate things simple. The simpler u can explain something, the better u understand it and the less words to be confused about for both parties.
Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos and Logos
Write more. It forces u to think critical about things. And gives u the opportunity to reflect on your own opinions.
Don’t take yourself, or other people too serious.
I would suggest a few things. First, be genuinely open minded to the discussion/topic (as in your opinion can change with a good enough argument.
Second, I would suggest using “feeling” language as much as possible. Examples are: “I feel like that will cause an issue with…”, “my understanding is…”, “my thoughts are…”, “from what I’ve seen/read the setup is …”, etc. From my perspective, feeling language lowers the “absoluteness” of statements and makes conversions easier by changing them from arguing absolute truths, to discussing lived experiences.
Third would be to reframe the discussion/argument from “you vs them” to the two of you vs a problem/issue and you both are working together to find the answer. This somewhat goes with being open minded.
Fourth, I don’t think works too well in online discussions, but in person I find starting from a base situation and asking the other person their thoughts on it, and adding your own, works well. So, start with a base situation and then adding a little complexity each time you both agree on the outcome and reasoning. Once you’ve found your divergence point you can start having your discussion about the pros/cons of different approaches/solutions to that specific situation.
I love this. Sadly it often feels like the default is to fall into the you vs them. I really need to meditate more to be clearheaded and keep things like this at the forefront of my mind.
Yeah, it definitely feels, to me, like the current world/society is built to be competitive rather than cooperative :(