What do we human beings do everyday? Amongst other things, we indulge in a lot of conversations, without which life would be unfulfilling.
In an age where conversations are also ‘doctored’ due to technology and social media, there is a sense of decadence of dialogue. Conversations often revolve around destinations, rather than around the romance and nuances of the journey. Prime Time media conversations mirror this decadence of dialogue, often filled with acrimonious twists and turns.
Our daily conversations in family and at the broad societal level are driven by reels, WhatsApp forwards, YouTube content, etc. With Artificial Intelligence (AI) also throwing up astonishingly varied and rehashed content, ‘Thought Originality’ seems to be under severe stress, if not threat. Reports suggest Indians consume over two hours of social media content everyday, with our minds glued to varied technological platforms.
The biggest victim of this bombardment of content is PERSPECTIVE, which too is often gained by many by ‘asking’ the AI tools. This phenomenon somewhere may be leading us to developing set patterns of thought structures, stifling expansiveness of thinking. When the mind is ‘trained’ to think within the accepted ‘blocks of wisdom’, the wisdom tree shrinks, leading to a steady collapse of thought vibrancy and questioning.
When you are conditioned to always seek validation for your thought structures, you allow self doubt to creep in with greater force, denting elevated conversations. The art of elevated conversations lies in developing the mental agility by staying rooted to our introspective convictions, born out of our own unique experiences and objective observations. Our perspectives are always a blend of what we experience, and what we see and feel around in the environment. It is ironical that the phenomenal access to information is leading us into a maze of conflicting perspectives, where what we truly believe gets shrouded or even lost.
The evolution of society is a result of ideologies and thought systems which have adapted and reformed as per newer revelations, born out of constructive arguments and dialogues. Inter-personal and empathetic communication have pre-empted many unhealthy conflicts and evolved many models of human progress through healthy conflict dialogues.
The art of elevated conversations lies in our ability to cut off from the cacophony of content, develop the ability to navigate our way through the chaos, and see with clarity within as well as without. This can come from intelligent distraction management and connecting within for longer periods. Choosing the content space we can revel in is the key to developing vibrant, stimulating insights, thereby elevating our daily conversational patterns. Templatising conversations is a recipe for mundaneness, even amidst a seemingly fast moving social ecosystem.
(Hariharan Iyer is a seasoned Motivational Speaker, Corporate Trainer and Author of multiple management books. His latest release is Off Stump – Life And Management Lessons From Cricket. He is the Founder-Creator of Hariharan’s School Of Success Education (HSSE) - www.thehsse.com. He is popularly referred to as The Enter-Trainer®. He can be reached on hariharan@thehsse.com).
