Good conversations create safe spaces. These are emotional paradises where we can exchange enriching information, build confidence and relieve stress through positive reinforcements. In addition, we know that even biologically these conversations with known or unknown people act in our brains as a powerful reward and wellness system.
A dynamic, stimulating and productive conversation between two or more people acts as a true alchemy of neural mechanisms, barely noticeable, but with each information that is received the engine of empathy is ignited and the dopamine and serotonin circuits are activated to give us a pleasant feeling of well-being and motivation.
- Most of us have experienced this wonderful injection of positive energy on countless occasions.
- So while we talk to a lot of people about the most different things every day.
- Really rewarding dialogues don’t happen as often.
Many times we suddenly encounter a stranger, someone with whom after an exchange of words comes coincidence, affinity and those good conversations that give rise to magical relationships. The story tells, for example, that this is exactly what happened to Henry James and Robert Louis. Stevenson.
These two great writers met after the publication of Treasure Island. After this first meeting, despite the personality difference between the two, their nationalities, their lifestyle and their way of writing, after an informal conversation, a lasting friendship began. decades epistolarly and with encounters in which their conversations lasted until dawn.
“Good conversations should exhaust the issue, not the interlocutors. “Winston Churchill?
Certainly, Henry James and RLStevenson, in addition to being references in the world of literature, would also characterize what we now call Conversational Intelligence, a term introduced in the world of psychology just a few years ago by Judith E. Glaser, talking about a basic tool for our personal development.
In fact, if there is one thing that most of us know is that not everyone can have good conversations, Truman Capote, for example, said that a conversation is first and foremost a dialogue, never a monologue, that is why this type of conversation is usually carried out rarely, due to the scarcity of intelligent people.
There’s something to add to that reflection. It is not the lack of intelligence that limits the quality of good dialogue, it is the lack of emotional competence, however, currently the field of conversational intelligence is gaining ground, why are basic dimensions such as empathy, social skills, common sense, trust. , integrity converging?
Conversation is more than a communication process for exchanging information, it is a deeper and more rewarding act. After all, dialogues, understood as the space where two or more individuals interact, also occur in the animal world.
When we talk to someone, two things can happen: either we feel comfortable or not, no matter if you’re a known person or a stranger, we all have partners or family members we never feel comfortable with.
Other times, we start good conversations with someone we have just met, someone with whom we feel affinity and who not only gives us interesting information, also gives us a sudden sense of confidence and comfort, in these cases a space opens up in this emotional universe where high quality interpersonal bonds are formed.
Therefore, as far as possible, it would be desirable for us to provide such situations. Studies such as those published by Dr. Matthias Mehl in specialized journals such as Psychological Science remind us that empty, idle and forced conversations generate tension and discomfort.
Therefore, we must be those social explorers who know how to generate good conversations, explorers who rely on important people to immerse themselves in an intelligent, exciting, comfortable and enriching dialogue, after all, this is where happiness is, in these safe spaces where you can learn, understand and form their affection.