TJ Walker explains how to build genuine connections by practicing active, agenda-free listening: empty your mind, restate the speaker, ask deeper questions, and resist preparing rebuttals. He argues many conversations are parallel monologues rather than exchanges, and that true listening increases respect and reciprocal attention. Walker also links declining interpersonal skills to increased screen time among youth, recommends Jonathan Haidt's book "The Anxious Generation," and describes his family's restrictive screen policies. He further claims steep increases in youth suicide rates (citing rises as high as 100–200% among young girls) as part of this trend.
Questions this video answers
The Power of Genuine Connections Revealed
June 1, 2024
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
He states suicides have sometimes risen 'up 100, 200%' among young girls.
Chapters
To figure out where to start this, where to stop it. When they edit it together for a social media video, are you reflexively listening to the person talking to you? Are you just waiting your turn so that you can speak? So many things that seem like conversations really aren't. They're just different monologues taking place. Everyone's talking past the other person. There's no real exchange of information. There's no real learning. There's no connection. There's no meeting of the minds. If you want to be a good communicator, the first thing you've got to do is realize, stop thinking about the perfect thing to say. Stop thinking about the perfect put down. Stop thinking about the perfect witty thing that's going to make everyone think you're charming. Instead, empty your mind of thought. Instead, just listen to the person. Listen to the person talking to you. Whether it's a friend, a colleague, someone sitting down at the coffee shop, or in a business meeting, someone else presenting, truly listen to them with no agenda in mind. Don't think about how you can top that. Don't think about how you can show them they're wrong. Don't stop to think about, hey, my idea is even better because instead, just listen to them. Listen to every nuance. Look at their face. What is it they're really caring about? Look at the subtext, listen to the words, analyze the words. But see if you can figure out what's their real agenda, what is it they're trying to do? What are they concerned with? Then instead of saying what you want to say, that gets to your agenda. See if you can ask a question that goes deeper with what they said. See if you can have a deeper understanding of what they're discussing. Now, before you even do that, what you may want to do in a one on one conversation is to restate what they said and just ask, am I getting it? Am I understanding you? The person's going to respect you, like you and feel good about this exchange. You know what else? That person is a lot more likely to listen to you when it is your turn. And trust me, eventually it will be your turn. But if you try to jump the gun, get ahead, then that person's going to resent you. Well, he didn't listen to me. I'm not going to listen to him. Now, they might not say it like that, they might not have a silly expression on their face, but subconsciously that is how we all feel. So if you want to be listened to, if you want to be a better communicator the first step is changing that dynamic. When you are hearing someone speak and really trying to have your mind go blank as far as your responses. Instead, focus intently on trying to understand what that person is saying. Do that and you'll have a strong, strong foundation as a communicator. All right, so that wasn't nearly as long as I like to do for a lot of social media videos, but that is what I had to say. So I, I don't want to pad it and go on and on and on. Talk. Whether you're on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, I always take questions. We give priority to anyone brave enough willing to push the button for Stream yard and to come right in. I share the screen. It doesn't have to be TJ all the time. And we can take a look at other people's suits as well. So feel free to, to join us and talk. If you don't want to come on screen and be seen, you can come on and just have your audio and you can ask me a question or you can debate something I said or disagree with me. That's perfectly okay. And I just am checking now to see any other, other questions. I still don't know what the vacuum question was about, but I do appreciate you stopping by and saying hello. What's your opinion on something? Creatine and the problem with the youth? I have no idea what that is. So if you want to clarify, if it's some sort of a supplement, this is not a health show. What we are about right here is communication. Now, if you want to talk about the problem of youth, I do think there is a huge, huge problem. It's an epidemic for youth. I would highly recommend a new book by Jonathan Haidt called the Anxious Generation. He makes an extraordinarily compelling case that today's youth is in fact being destroyed. We've gone from a play based childhood, the one that I went through, many of you did, where once you were out of school, your job was to go out and play outside, experiment with friends, go off in the woods, play in the playground unsupervised, to now. We are living in a world where people are focused primarily on their cell phone, their iPad, their screens, and parents think, oh my gosh, I can't let little Timmy go outside. Bad people will get him. And kids are spending all their time looking down because of that, they lose the ability to communicate. They're not actually talking with kids. They're not having a negotiation of who gets on the seesaw first, who gets on second, who Hops off first. All of these skills you learn on the playground, skills like Nigma, skills that children have historically developed and now they're not. Because every second of the day is either supervised at school, a parent, an official after school program, or kids are staring at their phone. And I got to tell you, it is a real pet peeve of mine when I have an 11 year old, when my family and I go out to dinner and it's a chance to actually talk to human beings, and my daughter's friends are on a cell phone. We're here to talk to people. Can we put the cell phones away? And it makes me look like the bad guy. And I don't. I don't particularly enjoy that, but I. I will, in fact, do it. So here's the problem. If you spend all of your time looking at a screen consuming content, you lose the ability to look at a human being, to read eye contact, to figure out, okay, they're finished. Now it's my turn. Oh, they seem down. Let me show empathy. You lose all of those skill or you never build those skills in the first place. And this is one reason why many social scientists, including Jonathan Haidt, say this is why we've seen suicides skyrocket and sometimes up 100, 200% among young girls, because of this constant staring at screens and no longer playing it. Now it affects boys as well. That's a little bit different with them, where they get so tied into video games, they lose all contact. They're not playing outside, they're not playing with people face to face. So I am happy to talk about that particular problem. In my own family. We give very, very limited access to screens to our daughter. She does not have her own phone, she does not have her own iPad. That makes her an outlier. And.
