Face-to-face conversation is far more than just communication. When we have a conversation, we don’t just exchange information. That’s what computers do. It’s not what people do. People filter, interpret, and elaborate on what they hear.
Everyone interprets what is said differently. Two people can hear the exact words and take away very different ideas. We have little idea what others take away from a conversation or what they think.
Conversation is spontaneous and dynamic. It is not planned or scheduled. We don’t prepare our response to something someone says – it emerges spontaneously. The Conversation can be thought of as being in charge. The conversation takes us where it wants to go.
Conversation is shaped by our moods. A conversation held one day will take a very different path and have very different outcomes compared to the same conversation on another day.
The environment in which a conversation is held also impacts the actual conversation. Conversation conducted in a quiet room will take a very different form from one in a noisy cafe, on a train, on a boat, in a car, or while walking.Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits.
When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, and engage in new trains of thought.
Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
And it’s not just the words spoken that form the communication. The speed and volume of delivery, the tone, and the emotion in the voice shape the meaning of the words conveyed. And the eyes and the smile convey so much, along with other body language.
We have evolved to be very sensitive to body language and can detect deceit, lies, stress, and other underlying emotions. Someone said to me recently “I don’t entirely trust her, she smiles far too much when I talk with her.”
Conversation can inspire and motivate us or depress and turn us off.
In conversation, we make new connections in our minds, and our thinking can be triggered down entirely new paths. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that a good conversation can entirely change our lives. However, such discussions are rare, and we hardly ever recognize the long-term impact of the conversation at the time.
A single conversation or a series of conversations over a period can have a massive impact on us. We start to make different decisions, not realizing the influence that earlier conversations have had on us. A conversation held today is heavily influenced by discussions held in the past.
Conversations shape and mold our minds and, thus, our thinking and the decisions that we make. Conversation shapes our lives.
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Detailed Resources
- Article: Embodied Cognition by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021)
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