These are my thoughts about Rule 7 from Jordan B. Peterson’s “40 Rules”. You can read them all here. In the case of the rules that made it into his “12 Rules for Life” book, I’m not going to repeat any of his explanations here. These are my own thoughts about each rule from my own life and experience.

7. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know. Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.

I’ve been a “know-it-all” for most of my life. I’m intelligent, I love to read, I’m fascinated to learn new information, and I almost always think I’m right…about everything.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the past half a century (!!!) of acting this way:

• It hasn’t helped me financially.
• It hasn’t helped me in my career.
• It hasn’t helped me in my personal relationships.
• Most of the information that I force-fed my brain has been useless in my actual real life.
• Many of the times when I argued with someone, it turned out, in the long run, that I was at least partially wrong and usually completely wrong.
• In the times when I was right, it didn’t really improve my life or the life of the person I was arguing with and it certainly didn’t help my relationship with them.
• Most people would rather stop talking to me if I argued with them rather than go through the hell of trying to prove their point, especially because I would get louder and more forceful the more the argument continued and I would stand my ground regardless of the valid points they made.
• Even in normal, non-argumentative conversations, I was thinking of what I was going to say rather than listening to the other person.

Little by little, I’m getting better at listening but, after a lifetime of preferring to listen to myself talk, it’s definitely a struggle.