How to Be a Better Listener

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Listening isn't easy. Listening just turns out to be like this amazing superpower in every aspect of your life with your kids and at work. So that was one thing for me, like, if I could stop just talking for the sake of talking, it opens up a space in your life where you can listen. What you realize is, oh, man, I can make my wife's life really better. And then that's the biggest gift you can give to the world,.

We live in a chatter-filled world. People will talk your ear off when you see them in person and everyone is constantly sharing their thoughts online. But my guest would say that all this chatter may be hurting us more than we know, and it would be better to close our pieholes and sit on our typing fingers a lot more often than we do.

His name is Dan Lyons, and he's the author of STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World. Today on the show, Dan unpacks how being quiet and speaking with greater intention can improve your life. We discuss why some people tend to overtalk more than others and the six types of overtalkers out there, from the blurter to the most extreme case, the talkaholic, for whom overtalking is practically an addiction. We then discuss not getting sucked into spouting off online, avoiding conversational narcissism, the argument for spending less time working on your personal brand and more time doing quality work, how silence is power, how the best way to deal with issues in a marriage may be by not talking about them, and more.