Listening is made incredibly difficult when no one else is talking. It's a heavy bout of silence that you have to force yourself not to fill. When there's nothing but silence, there's no follow-up questions to throw out, and it's hard to find footing for an opening question. Perhaps we need to generate even more specific things to ask about. But let's table that for the time being and come back to it with fresh legs later.
Today, I'm going to work on Poker Face.
This is to extend from my previous goal of Being Quiet While Other People Are Talking. That went reasonably well, so let's move on to "Not Making Faces When People Say Dumb Things". I have a penchant for wearing my emotions on my sleeve, as they say. Dumb saying, isn't it? Not my sleeve. My face. I've gotten a few comments that lead me to believe that what I'm thinking is perfectly apparent if you're looking at my face. Thoughts such as: "Why am I still here, and why is this person still talking to me?" or "This is the freaking stupidest conversation I've ever had." So, maybe that's not the best way to 'Be Quiet While Other People Are Talking'.
Poker Face! The art of not giving away what you are thinking, even if the meeting is ridiculous, even you are speaking to someone who probably ought to be picking ticks out of the other primate's hair, even if you're really bored of the current topic. On the other hand, I'll also try to tone down my facial expressions for when I'm really interested in the conversation, and itching to jump in with a question - because that probably looks the same as "I'm waiting for you to stop talking, already!"
I suppose I'll take a look in the mirror later, arrange my face into a half-smile (when I don't smile people often say I look angry. Just a quirk of the face, I guess.) and see if I don't look like I've been popping Vicodin.
