Categories: FeaturedPeople

The power of yes or no in a conversation

Advertisements

A simple yes or no can be a life-changing event considering the context it is used in. People often tend to overlook the complexity of a few simple terms and this is true for all aspects of life. We keep looking for more challenging things and ignore the small ones. In this post, I am citing a few examples, which will help you in selecting the right people to talk to. These are not guidelines or tips on how to do small talk or how to converse better. Rather it is my opinion on how to choose people you should talk to. If you are wondering why does that matter, I’ll quote a famous dialogue: “You are average of the five people you spend your most time with.”

And I personally believe the statement to be true as well. Let us start with the yes part.

You should always look forward to talking to people who say yes to you. Note that this does not mean people who are agreeing with you always. That can be a dangerous set of people to be with. People who are looking forward to talking to you, interested in small talk and share common interests with you are the ones you should keep up with. Although this is no rocket science, very often people forget this. Take a look at this TED talk on improvisation in which the speaker beautifully illustrates how conversations can happen and stories are made by simply having people who say yes.

People who ask the question “And?” or ones who add their own feedback should be kept more closer according to the speaker. And this is not just about improvisation, it is true for conversations too. People who are listening to you with interest make conversations enjoyable and not just a question response affair.

Moving on to the next section, I’ll cite a few examples from my life for this one. The No. You need to avoid people who are saying no to you, that is who do not really want to talk to you but are just talking for mere small talk. But the more important “no” is that you need to learn to say it to people. Many people fail in this regard. One friend of mine cannot say no to people and lacks the ability to do it. Such people will always avoid the topic, but not directly say no which keeps the other person in anticipation. Another wants to say no, but his interest in talking to people is so much that he cannot resist talking to some people who respond occasionally. By trying to constantly keep up, they achieve the opposite.

Learning when people are interested or not is an altogether different task which requires a lot of practice as well, but you have to start somewhere. Do keep in mind that everything mentioned will vary with people’s personalities, their availability, and the troubles they are going through currently. Don’t sweat out too much on these as the guidelines for conversations.

And always remember that Yes and No are like Alan Turing of the second world war, crack them and you win the war of talking 😉

So this is my opinion, I would love to hear your’s on the same topic. Do let me know what you think in the comments.

Saransh Kataria

Born in Delhi, India, Saransh Kataria is the brain behind Wisdom Geek. Currently, Saransh is a software developer at a reputed firm in Austin, and he likes playing with new technologies to explore different possibilities. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science. He also shares his passion for sharing knowledge as the community lead at Facebook Developer Circle Delhi, NCR which is a developer community in Delhi, India.

View Comments

  • "Avoid people who are saying no to you, who do not want to talk to you, but are just talking for a mere talk" or just because they need something that only you can help them with and come back only when they need something else.

    This was the best part of the article indeed!

Share
Published by
Saransh Kataria
Tags: People

Recent Posts

How To Get The Hash of A File In Node.js

While working on a project, I wanted to do an integrity check of a file…

2 days ago

Native popover API in HTML

Popovers have been a problem that was typically solved by using a third-party solution. But…

1 week ago

Node.js 20.6 adds built-in support for .env files

Node.js 20.6 added built-in support for the .env file. This is an excellent addition to the platform…

2 weeks ago

Object destructuring in TypeScript

Object destructuring is a powerful ES 6 feature that can help developers write cleaner code.…

4 weeks ago

Improve git clone performance in a CI pipeline

Have you felt particularly annoyed by the time it takes to clone a large repository,…

1 month ago

Fix: Hydration failed because the initial UI does not match what was rendered on the server

Within a React or Next.js app, if you encounter the error "Hydration failed because the…

2 months ago
Advertisements