Your internal dialogue runs at 450 words per minute while you speak at 150, leaving constant mental noise that fuels defensiveness and assumptions. Replace unconscious, ego-driven intentions with curiosity: enter conversations wanting to learn about the other person, not win or close a deal.
Chapters
Well, what gets in the way of our interpersonal skills is yourself. That's, that's what gets in the way is you get in your own way. One, you get in your own way with number one is your self-talk, right? And so your self-talk is— think about this— we think at about 450 words per minute. That's on average. We think that. We're only able to say maybe about 150 words per minute on average. So that leaves 300 words milling about there. It's almost like you have the radio on in the background and it's like FM radio self-talk, all self-talk all the time. There's a lot of noise going on in there. Or think of a snow globe and you shake it up and every— all the glitter and everything is all over the place. That is our self-talk. And that's what gets in the way of our interpersonal skills, which is we're making all kinds of assumptions. Our ego's in the way. We're fighting to be right. We're fighting to win the argument. We're fighting to win the sale. We're fighting to win. The contract. We don't believe that we deserve this contract. We don't believe that we deserve this raise. We don't believe that we should be talking to this person, or why can't this person read our mind? Don't they understand what we're thinking? So our expectations are not met, a big factor in our interpersonal skills. And part of that is what I like to call is our unconscious intentions. So when you go in for that meeting with our salesperson and that person said they have— they're having a tough time, Your unconscious intention going into that was, I don't— I believe this person is just gonna waste my time. It's not a— it's your unconscious intention. In the back of your mind, you're going, I don't like this person. I don't like people who waste my time. I don't value people who call me in and waste my time. So that's the back, the self-talk going on. So that's what gets in the way. How we can fix that is to be more of a conscious intention, which is, I'm going to go into this meeting and really want to— my intention is going to be I'm going to be curious about this client. I'm not going to try to close the sale because if I try to close the sale, my expectations are not going to be met because no one's going to close the sale in the first 5 minutes. But in the first 5 minutes, why don't I go in and just be curious about this person? We haven't met. I'll go in with a curiosity. That's my conscious intention.
