The Dinner Conversation That Taught Me Everything

So one of the most important things that any of us will ever learn how to do is to be a friend to another person. This isn't always easy, but it sure has great dividends when you take a little bit of time to recognize other people are important. And spending time with them is of great benefit not only to them, but also to yourself.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm, and today I want to talk to you about something that I think will be very helpful. It's in the area of friendship. And all of us have friends. Some of us have more friends than others. I can remember that sometimes I feel like I have so many friends. I actually have thought about starting something called D Facebook and just get rid of all my friends. I have too many I can keep up with. But seriously though, I'm just being silly. I think it's important that we recognize that friendship is a major part of life. And I just left a friend having dinner with a friend of mine and we've been friends for over 50 years and he's just a great guy. He's a dentist and he called it, asked if I was available tonight. We went and had dinner. We talked about a lot of different things because we have similar interests. I was going to be a dentist. Growing up, that's what I wanted to be. And it turned out I had ended up going a different direction. But I've always liked him because he's not only my dentist, but he's also a dentist. And that's been one of my favorite professions that I was able to not only speak at a National association of Orthodontist convention a couple of years ago, but have many friends who are in the field of dental science. But the thing that interests me as I was driving home tonight, I began to ask myself, what do we talk about? What do you talk about to someone that you've been friends with for 50 years? What do you talk about to someone that you've only been friends with for five minutes? Then I want to share something with you. This is probably not an original with me, but it is something that will help you learn how to be a good conversationalist. Have you ever been with somebody you just didn't know what to talk about? Well, you can talk about the weather. It's a pretty day outside. Yeah, it looks like there's still a lot of sunshine today and probably going to have sunshine during the day, and then it might rain another day. And I mean, that goes nowhere. You can talk about the weather and you talk about sports if you want to, and that's okay. Who won the ball game and. But that's going to get old pretty fast. So I want to share with you and again, I want to share with you in retrospect. Here's what I mean. I was thinking about it on the way home tonight. Of these four letters is called form F, O, R, M. Perhaps you've heard of this. If you hadn't. This is a great way to communicate and interact with other people, and it's a great way to create friendships. And may I add one other thing, after you've been friends with someone for 50 years, it's still a great way to interact and talk with another person over dinner or any other opportunity that you have to learn and grow together. So let me go over this with you real quick. Maybe you want to take some notes. It's easy to remember. We call it the form methodology F. F stands for family. How's your family? How's your mom as your dad? How's your brother, your sister? How's your husband or your wife, your kids, your grandkids? Oh, my goodness. I have six grandkids. All you got to do is say, hi, your grandkids. And you had me at how are you grandkids? I love my grandkids. Some of them are older than others, but grandkids are wonderful. My father used to say, if I had known how wonderful grandchildren were, I'd had them first. Well, F is family. When you're with somebody, talk about their family. Talk in interest of their family. How's your family doing? If you know someone in their family, that makes it even better because then you can call them by name. How's Carol doing? I haven't seen her in a while. And so you mention someone by name. It's great if. But you got to be careful because sometimes if you haven't seen somebody in a long time, maybe someone has passed away. So when you're talking about family, it might be a good idea to posture the question. I'm just curious. Are your folks still living? That's a much better way of saying, how's your mom? And then having to hear, well, she passed away last year. So you kind of feel like all, I wish I had the basket that way. There is a better way of asking if you haven't seen somebody, you can Just say, may I ask, how are your parents still living? Are they okay? And that, see that enters, that eases into it. So much better to just simply be gentle, be loving, be kind. I'm just curious, are your folks still living? How are they? And then if they say no, I say, I lost a mom a couple of years ago. So when you're talking about family, always communicate and remember there is no perfect family. You're not trying to be nosy, you're not trying to, you know, find out some good juicy gossip that you can share with someone, but you genuinely care and are interested in their family members.

How are they doing if, if they, if someone's in school and you know that. How's your son doing? Is he still in school? What's his major? How's he like school?

What does he plan on doing when he gets out? All of that. I just finished a three hour dinner with a good friend of mine. We talked about our families. I asked about his family, he asked about my family. We pretty much covered all of our, our mates, our, all of our parents are passed away. So we talked about our mates, we talked about our children, our grandchildren, and it was a very uplifting, encouraging, hey, I care about you. And I've known them for many, many years. I remember when they were a little kid, now that now they're grown and married and have kids of their own. So just remember, whenever you're talking to someone about their family, communicate love, respect, interest, and that will go a long, long way. The next letter is O. Remember this is the word form, F, O, R, M. The letter O stands for occupation. I've touched on this just a little bit. Ask how they're doing in their occupation. As I mentioned earlier, my friend's a dentist. I said, are you still practicing? He said, yes, I'm still practicing three days a week. He said, I am involved in dentistry. Said it's going great. He said, I could really.

Be doing this more hours every day, five days a week. But he said, I've, you know, I've gotten up in the years and I, I've still got a steady hand and I'm still careful and I love what I do. Someone once said, if you love what you do and you do what you love, every day is the vacation. So he's, he is involved in his occupation. He asked me, tell me about your business. I told him, well, you know, he said his, I thought it was interesting. He said, what is a typical speaking engagement like for you? He's had aspirations to want to do public speaking. He said, like, like, do you do it all in one day or two days or three days? How does that work? And I shared with him what I normally do, how it varies, depending on the company and depending on the opportunity. Usually it's two days where I'll do something on a, on an evening and then the next morning and afternoon. And we just shared. He asked me all about, you know, do you mostly, do you drive, do you fly, how do you get to these places? And how do you get speaking engagements, all of that under the big umbrella of one letter O. Occupation. People, like, people who are interested in other people.

Learn to ask people, how are things going? I once read that over 50%, I think the number is 52% of people in America do not like their occupation. They do not like what they do for a living. They do it because they thought they would like it or their parents talk them into doing it or, or someone sent them to school to do it. I never will forget my wife and I met a young, young gentleman in Philadelphia. His name was Lancelot. He's a real easy gentleman to remember because I've only known one Lancelot in my whole life. And Ancelot was at our table. And my wife started talking to him because she said he just looked so sad. And he began to tell us he was an I type personality. That's inspiring. Inducing, influencing, interesting, impulsive, interactive, kind of a, hey, hey, Jose kind of guy, a little bit like me. And he just seemed so sad. And my wife said, you're an eye type personality. And as they talked, he said, well, yeah, he said, but I'm just so depressed. He said, I'm a cpa. He said, I'm the first African American to graduate from college in my family. He said, my uncle sent me to school. He has an accounting firm. And I just, I just am miserable in my job that I need a job and I need to make money and I got to take care of my family, but I just hate what I do. It's just not, it's just not me. It's not what I like. And I'm miserable. And my wife said, well, what would you like to do? And he said, really? I'd like to be a high school coach. I would just love to coach young kids. And he said, I love to play basketball. I was great in basketball and be a basketball coach. And so my wife said, well, why don't you talk to your uncle about that? Your uncle does not want you to be miserable your whole life and hate a Job.

And listen good for your uncle. He puts you through school and you have a degree and you have a career that you can fall back on. So we talked to him a little bit. Well, a year later we saw him again. He did not even look the same. He was so happy. He was like walking on a cloud. He walked to my wife, he said, I talked to my uncle, he said, if you can find a job as a basketball coach, why don't you take it? He said, so I found a job and I took it. I'm happier than I've ever been. Hear me well. I love accountants, I love CPAs. But not everybody's cut out to do that. I love coaches. Not everybody's cut out to do that. Find what occupation you think you would like and go after it, be fulfilled. This is the only life you get on this earth. Let me encourage you. Find an occupation that you will enjoy. The next letter S. Family, O. Occupation or recreation. Where do you like to go on vacation? What sports do you like? Some people love baseball. Baseball is known as the American pastime sport. Football, college football. I'd rather go to a high school football game than anything because they play with their hearts. I don't even. I'm not interested. It's just me personally. I'm interested in pro football, barely interested in college football. But I have a few teams that I follow. And like, I live in the Southeast. I like to see what happens to Georgia and Georgia Tech and Alabama and Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, some of those schools. And then Texas, because we live there. Texas A and M, Some of those schools that I'm more familiar with. When you talk to somebody. My friend tonight was telling me about a young man that went to Georgia Tech and another young man who went to Clemson. We were talking about sports. He's a dentist. He was telling me about some of the injuries he's seen that people have sustained in their mouths with teeth in the end, that he has worked with. He even had some pictures on his phone of a young kid and how he had to fit in with braces because there's a special situation. You see, recreation opens up a whole new opportunity to talk about what we like, what sports we like. What do we like? Do you like to fish? Do you like to play golf? There are so many areas of recreation that ask people, what do you enjoy doing? Some people enjoy different kinds of recreation. Personally, I enjoy vacationing in Cancun, Mexico. I've been all over the world. Cancun, two hour flight from Atlanta. Boom. I'm there. I Enjoy that. If you were to tell me, doctor, I won the lottery, I want to send you anywhere in the world, I'd say I'd like to go to the Moon palace in Cancun. I've been everywhere in the world. Pretty much a two hour flight. They put on a white bracelet and it's all inclusive. Oh, boy, it is wonderful. That's my recreation. I go there to read, I go there to eat popsicles. I go there to swim, I go there to eat. I go there to eat popsicles. I go there to read, I go to take a nap. I go to eat popsicles. I guess you can tell I like popsicles. Or recreation. You're always going to be good when you're talking to people about things they enjoy doing. For vacation and recreation. Last letter M. M stands for motivation. What really motivates a person? Why do we get up every morning? Why do we do the things that we do? Why do you enjoy doing whatever it is? Have you been doing anything new lately or have you just. Life just become routine. The older I get, the more I see the value of routine. Routine is great. What motivates me is pretty much doing the same thing every day. I enjoy reading, I write, I study, I speak, I travel. There's probably about seven or eight things that I specialize in that I really, really, really enjoy. That motivate me. If you were to say, oh, I've got a great thing that would motivate you. Why don't we do some accounting in tax forms? Oh, my goodness. That. That motivate me. That demotivates me. But there's some people that make a great living at being CPAs and accountants because they love to crunch numbers. You see, every one of us is different. Every one of us is unique. And every one of us needs to find the things that motivate them. Motivation is very internal. That means what inside of you makes you want to get out of the bed in the morning and get involved in your day. I hope you can find some things that you enjoy doing. True. Sometimes we have to do some things we don't like. Sometimes we have to be involved in work or a job or go places or spend time with people that maybe are not our favorite people that don't motivate us, they demotivate us. Let me encourage you. Get yourself in an environment that motivates you, where you can flourish, where you can learn and grow. Personal growth and development are a choice that you make every day by being motivated to do the things that you like to do. And hang around other people. I am never around somebody who's trying to get me in trouble. I'm never around somebody who's trying to do a drug deal. I'm around people who encourage me, who love me, who love the Lord, who want to have a great life, who want to develop financial resources, who want to have a great future. That motivates me, and I hope it motivates you. So there it is. That's my dinner tonight. We talked about F O R m family. We talked about our occupations, we talked about our recreation, and we talked about the things that motivate us and we motivated each other. But hear me well. I didn't go into the dinner with that on my mind. I only thought about it on the way home. I'm glad that I can look back in retrospect and see that what I learned many, many years ago, that the Form F o R M technique works. You can do it by subject. We did it tonight in a subjective manner. When I'm thinking about it or if you don't feel like you're a good conversationalist, learn that the form technique can help you to be the life of the party, where you can get involved in everybody's life and all kinds of great interaction by simply understanding there is a pattern that you can form and will help it. I mean it sincerely. There's a pattern you can form that will help you become a popular person and interact with others in a way that creates great friendships, great memories, and a lifetime of fulfillment. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope this was helpful today. I look forward to our next time together. God bless you.

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