Clean Speech Illinois Volume 2: Week 18 And the Winner is ...

[Watch the video at?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rJY6ztxHTI ]

Did you ever talk with someone and it felt more like a competition than a conversation?

You think you got a bargain? You should see what I got. The same exact paper towels for half the price!

?You got a 98 on the spelling test? Well, guess what? I got 100 plus 5 extra credit points!

?Your son got into medical school? That’s nice. Did I tell you that my son just passed the bar?

When we’re always trying to “one-up” the person we’re speaking with, we’re not really hearing what the other person is saying. We’re just using what they’re saying as a backdrop to share our own news.

In a really competitive moment, we will even compete over bad news. One mother complains that her baby kept her up half the night, and her friend replies that her baby kept her up the entire night.

It’s like saying, “I don’t care about your tiredness, because it’s nothing compared to mine.”

One has nothing to do with the other. She’s not less tired because of how tired her friend is. Do I have to prove myself to be the most tired person in the world to merit some sympathy from a friend?

Sometimes we get so wound up in our own worlds that everything refers back to ourselves. If someone tells us, “I got a parking ticket,” our first response is to tell the story of when we got a parking ticket. If someone tells us that their child is engaged, we immediately launch into a discussion of how we felt when our child got married.

In these moments what we’re saying is, “It’s all about me.”

An effective way to avoid this kind of?onas devarim?is to focus on the other person in the conversation. If we are genuinely interested in them, we won’t try to outshine their moment with one of our own — since our goal is to hear whatever it is that our friend wants to tell us.

Try This at Home:?Today, if you feel tempted to speak in a demanding, egotistical way, check yourself to see whose benefit you’re really fighting for.