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I never really understood the whole āempty your cupā and āunlearn what you have learnedā thing until maybe a couple of years ago. Like, intellectually it sorta made sense, but... is it really that big a deal? It actually is, IMO, and Iām wondering now how I learned to see it

I think it mightāve been a consequence of being exposed to a much larger number of people and having lots of conversations - over time I noticed that some people were bringing all their baggage to every conversation, while others were listening intently https://t.co/KNfvIZVFU6

ānever be looking so hard for something that you fail to see what is thereā - thereās a quote like this and Iāve seen people retweet saying āah itās about journalismā and others saying āah itās about scientific discoveryā and āah itās about parentingā ~~Itās about life~~

If you start looking for it there are tonnes of gems throughout the history of art and culture and storytelling that try to convey this. In TDKR, Batman couldnāt make the leap until he let go of the rope. A metaphor for letting go, more broadly, in general https://t.co/jZhqbR7SpI

We can probably graph this in some way. When weāre holding on to preexisting ideas abt what weāre looking for, who weāre talking to, etc - thereās a sort of Procrustean effect. We mostly only see what weāre looking for. It makes us slow, stupid. We fail to notice nuance, surprise

We might *feel* fast and smart, but weāre only fast and smart within the narrow bounds of the game that we think weāre playing. When we are fixated on the game we think weāre playing, we close ourselves off from playing a bigger, better, more interesting game https://t.co/M0Ur5FKu05


Circling back to āactive listeningā - thatās another thing that sounded dumb to me. I hear what youāre saying, why do I have to be all... wooey... about it? But Iāve grown to realize that words they say are like ~20% of whatās being communicated https://t.co/fvewalLpsU

The nuance in this GIF is pretty challenging to convey in text. āIām pretty sure youāre wrong, but I donāt want to shut you down - Iād like you to reconsider this, now that you know Iām not too cosy with the way you frame it.ā Body language + tone of voice can be 80-90% of comms https://t.co/81pPr9wJXZ


The best questions you can ask someone is in that space where youāre paying close attention to them - to their face, their expressions, their body language, and you notice that theyāre holding back in some way. They might not even realize themselves that theyāre doing that! https://t.co/uycjsv2nZD


This is true for regular conversation too, and I think itās true of comedy, wit, and of business - IMO I almost always want to be willing + able to drop my current routine/pattern instantly in order to respond quickly and nimbly to whatās in front of me https://t.co/0bpT0AwC1L

Flirting is a conversational OODA loop Teaching a single formula then can be counter-productive, because good flirting is about switching formulas on the fly, appropriately and adeptly so much so that in practice itās āthe formula of no formulaā

At the heart of this, I think, is a question: do we allow life to surprise us? Bc everything we think we know is a *tiny* fragment of the world. The world *will* surprise us, in both good & bad ways. Emptying your cup is about refusing to be in denial https://t.co/zQO7traLAn

Your personal experiences make up <0.0001% of whatās happened in the world but 80% of how you think the world works. When experiencing a fraction of whatās out there but using that to explain everything you expect to happen, you'll be disappointed & confused by othersā decisions.

emptying your cup is about making room to be surprised https://t.co/eamUtBb7Mw

This is the script of no script, the formula of no formula, you just pay really close attention to the other person in a curious, non-judgmental way without the burden of expectations, and look for anything surprising or interesting - and ask about that in a supportive way

yes. read the room https://t.co/ysRsY1WVwX

"attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object" https://t.co/9Le6CGBgTY

"it takes effort to hold awareness in clumps" https://t.co/9E4eDsiApm