Contributing noises

I sometimes come to the thought that I'm just contributing noise, meaning, I speak what I want, No one hears or is willing to hear and no one benefits from that. As such, I've come to a school of thought that I should control my own speeches.

When will I feel that? When I argue over facts with a friend, I tend to get overexcited, ignoring if he or she cares. when I play online games, I tend to type what I want to type, ignoring what else is going on. As a result, I confirmed more that, when people talk, they can't listen; as a result, they contribute nothing when they speak.

When you feel so strongly about an idea, which in fact might be wrong, you defend it as if it's your identity. You will not back down when others over eagerly want to correct you and this has 2 meanings to me. If you are the one feeling strongly about the wrong idea, why not let your friend correct you? He'll be glad and you'll get something new. And if you're the friend correcting, think if correcting them would help the situation. Would the guy want to be corrected? Probably not, so just let him continue to err, if it doesn't hurt anyone.

Examples are like; Your friend is a team leader, and you realises that a particular detail of when to meet is given wrongly. The rest of the team has already the correct detail, and no one is taking down notes or listening intently, should you correct him? I beg not to. Firstly, you put him in a spot difficult for him to get down the stage, and secondly, it's not like anyone benefits to know, since no one is attentive enough. They'll follow their memory anyway.

Let's say you are talking about eating healthy food and the topic suddenly digressed to cucumbers being unhealthy. You are for cucumbers being healthy food while your friend refuses to accept, and says that it's not. Deep in you, you are not sure, but you've heard someone say that cucumbers are healthy. You don't want to lose this argument, so what will you do? I'll start from analysing how helpful it'll be for you to win your friend's POV. Winning, as in convincing your friend either forcibly until he has nothing to say or convincing until he agrees, is no big deal. Your friend won't die from not knowing that cucumbers are healthy and he won't enjoy benefits from knowing that, and worst still, he doesn't want to know that he is wrong! So, logically speaking, You should let your friend win by stepping down so he can reinforce his case.

These are just my thoughts. Everyone has a fixed set of beliefs and everyone treats them like their identity. They do not care if they are doing the wrong thing or knowing the wrong thing. They know it's their identity and they will feel threatened if forced against them. They do not want to know that they are wrong, they just want to convince someone else to their POV. Sadly, everyone has their POV, and so no one effectively convinces another person. Why try to win-lose by convincing if you could otherwise win-win by letting your friend win the conversation and you, not challenging his ideologies, since he won't care about your opinions on the issue anyway.

I know how difficult it is. Ego is a major culprit in this case, but that is just pushing the blame to a self-created "third-party". In the end, it's still us, are we willing to let go? Do we just want to win? If we just want to win, then go ahead, and convince your friend. Since you feel so deeply for your opinion, if you succeed, you have one more person on your side. Just don't let wanting to win engulf you. Control actions you take to win, and not let the want to win control it. I'm very confident that the latter loses you friends.