How's the haircut?

Isn't it amazing how a bad memory can stick to you like a wad of gum in your hair? You try to remove it, but in order to do that, you need to cut off some of your hair? At first, you’re apprehensive, but in the process, you end up with a nice hair style?

At the beginning of my career, I was working at an apartment complex.  I must have upset my boss by interrupting him when he spoke to me.  I hadn't realized I was in a bad habit of talking over him. I was so anxious to prove I was on top of all the assignments, but in this process, wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise.

One day, he held up an eyeglass case and said this signified when it was his time to talk. In front of the other staff, he actually held up the case while he spoke to me. I was embarrassed by his demeaning ways. I didn't put any credence in his opinion. I wrote him off as being a mean old man!

For a while, I carried this memory like a wad of hardened gum in my hair. It was brittle and would have thought it would have washed away, but I was still stuck with it. Instead of time fading it away, the memory was hardening all the more.

Years later, I saw the movie Pulp Fiction. There is a famous scene where the character Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta) “In a conversation, do you listen or wait to talk?” He replies “I wait to talk but am trying to listen.”

I loved his response, because it made me aware that I wasn't the only one at the ready to talk, like I was mistakenly led to believe by my old boss. I resolved to try to listen—in a way, I cut off the “hair” surrounding these dry memories by using a different tactic.

Then an amazing thing happened—the more I listened to the person instead of waiting to talk, the more I was being heard when I added to the conversation! Before, when I was interrupting trying to be heard, I was actually shutting them down, the exact opposite of what I was trying to accomplish.  Also, more people were striking up conversations with me, giving me more opportunities to strengthen my listening skills or as I like to think, show off my sassy “haircut”!