Monday, April 23, 2012

what to do when you talk too much

I've always been a talker. If you know me in person you know that "concise" is not something I do well.

At all.

I tend to state and re-state and over-state my point until someone physically shuts me up. It's taken me almost 15 years to realize that I actually need to talk LESS if I want people to listen to me.

Which is not at all easy for a motor-mouth like myself.


I was complaining about this to some friends a few days ago, and one of them commented that I wasn't talking too much after all - I was simply speaking to the wrong audience.
Maybe this makes sense to you guys right away, but at the time I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

He explained something very interesting to me. Instead of talking to people (some of whom aren’t interested) I should talk to God (who is ALWAYS interested.) The amount of talking I do is fine, it's just the amount of talking I do OUT LOUD that needs to be curbed.

And I was actually - ironically - speechless. I couldn’t think of one darn thing to say. It was so obvious that I'd missed it completely.


Everything leads back to prayer. When you worry? Pray. When things go insanely well, you pray. When you hurt? Pray. When you talk too much to people and they stop listening, pray.


Talking isn’t a bad thing, I’ve just got to make sure I’m talking to the right audience. Namely, God. Because he always cares. EVERYTHING I say is HUGELY important to Him. 

(Of course, listening is a hugely important part of prayer as well. I could write a whole 'nother blog post on listening [and maybe I will sometime!] but for now I'll focus on the talking aspect and just point out that it's important to listen, too. And not just when you're praying - listening is just as much a part of any communication as talking.)
It's amazing to think of the epiphanies you can think of while conversing with other people; it had never occurred to me to turn my ceaseless chatter into a new way to communicate with God until that conversation.
Now I think about it all the time.



4 comments:

  1. Talking and listening... It's amazing how much can be said about that, but then, if everyone's talking about it, is anyone listening? And if everyone's listening to everyone else, who's talking? With people, you have to know what to say, when to say it, what not to say, when not to say it, how to say it, how to not say it, and how much of it to say or not say. It's all so complicated. Talking to God is, in a way, much easier. God reads the heart.

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  2. Your comments crack me up. ;) But yeah, sometimes it's a lot easier to talk to God.

    But not always - sometimes it's insanely hard.

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  3. "And I was actually - ironically - speechless." <-- Hilarious! Haha!

    Very thought provoking post. I feel like I often have to repeat the lyrics of the Relient K song "Bite My Tongue" to myself. That is a very interesting point though, just talking and spilling to God. I definitely don't talk with God enough. Although, there is something to not talking at all. When I went to public school, I almost never talked. I would only raise my hand and answer a question when I was absolutely sure I was right. So whenever I raised my hand, I was right. As a result, the rest of my classmates thought I was a genius, and that I ALWAYS knew the right answer to every question, which definitely wasn't true. But it goes to show the impact remaining silent can have. In a spiritual sense, I think there is a lot we miss because we are constantly talking, either with our mouths or with our thoughts. That's why silence and solitude are good disciplines to practice.

    But that's a different topic. When you do talk, you are right. Audience is key. A Realtor will say "Location, location, location," but a Rhetorician will say, "Audience, audience, audience."

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