Don’t tell…nobody wants to listen to your story

All of us have a perspective…all of us have our own story…we want the world to know it…we want to tell…

We somehow think our experiences are a lot more significant, valuable and worth telling. To the extent that we block the other from telling their story, by cutting them sharply right in the middle of the conversation, not realizing hoe egocentric and unfair that is.

Our story can be something simple…everyday experience that we want others to know…that such things happen in our life too… or it could be something  really big…so big and even difficult to tell… difficult to even put in words that the others can understand.

Why do we have this uncontrollable desire to tell our tale?

• Need to get the world understand us, we feel incomplete if others don’t understand and accept us
• For vindication…we can sigh in relief if our tale is told and we see some smile, nod or even simply look as if they understood
• Our perspective is churning inside us…we want it to get out…let it out and see what happens
• Somewhere inside there is this desire to get a rousing appreciation from the world out there
• The anxiety of bottling up is getting to us…we need an outlet
• And lastly we humans are egoistic …we need to show off… so we want to tell our story.

The last is the most common reason why people talk so much about themselves and their life.

What are stories about? They could range from serious life and death experiences to everyday occurrences. It depends upon what we think is important

• Childhood experiences; grandpa is very fond of telling these
• College problems; we all are happy to narrate them
• Love affairs that did or did not work out; some of us are in a dire need to confide about them
• Achievements and failures ; most of us like to brag about achievements and discuss failures
• Job troubles; who doesn’t like cursing the boss?
• Family challenges ; women tell this often to get relief
• Every day activities ; some have the habit of narrating everything they do as if that was very important for others to know; what they cooked, how they went to office, what happened when they fell of their bike etc…

For a long time it was assumed that women have more of this tendency than men. But now research shows that hardly any gender difference can be attributed. Individuals have this desire, Period.

Many among us do get an opportunity to tell all…or we have enough ingenuity to create opportunity for that.

Some instances are

• In the office meetings! The bosses have lot of opportunity since they have captive audience
• Parents at the dining table, here again captive audience
• For teachers in the classroom. The best kind of captive audience
• In family gatherings, the elder ones have to be deferred to, so they can tell their stories
• Then come the pushy characters, who tell their stories by monopolizing the stage, anywhere, anytime.

What happens when we tell all?

• The listeners may enjoy our story, and repeat it to others, making us famous or notorious depending up on what our story was all about
• Others pretend to listen; are bored and we leave no impact on them
• W e scare them! People would want to run from us
• There are some who don’t believe a word we say and laugh behind our back
• Then there are some among us who tell all and realize that they have messed up relationships all round, which cannot be repaired
• Then if our story was really impactful, others may be struck by it and learn something from it.

So what do we do?

Some ideas on how to go about this tricky desire that we all have and we don’t want to be ridiculed, cursed, laughed at or taken advantage of.

• Tell your story at the right time to the right people; deciding that is a problem but use your common sense
• Impulse control…don’t give in to that every time you see a gathering
• If you can’t control, choose a safe part of your story to tell, not those ‘difficult to explain later’ ones.
• If it is a really traumatic one, and you badly need an outlet, don’t tell but write it out to an imaginary recipient. Works wonders in relieving the stress
• Lastly, it’s best to die with our stories than tell them…if our story is worthwhile, others will tell our story. We don’t have to…