More Fine Line Words
I previously discussed the difference between reasons and excuses and have now decided to add a couple of important examples.
“Stubborn” and “confident” are two words that often get mixed up.
People are sometimes labeled as stubborn when they are confident, so I want to clear up the difference between the two.
The big difference is that a stubborn person refuses to consider the possibility that they are wrong. You can usually tell the difference between a confident person and a stubborn person because the stubborn person often sounds ridiculous.
A stubborn person also usually hates to even hear the other side of the argument because they know they won’t change their minds anyway. If you do get a stubborn person to listen to you, they probably just want to let you get it out of your system so they can tell you you’re wrong again.
A confident person might argue their point for hours, but they’re only doing it because they’ve considered everything you’ve said and still believe they’re right. They will want to listen because they believe that either they’re not explaining themselves right or they’re not understanding you entirely since you still disagree.
If you want to see if you’re being stubborn when arguing, make sure that you’re listening to the other side of the argument. If you think to yourself “I don’t care, I know I’m right”, you’re being stubborn.
On a related note, another set of fine line words are “hearing” and “listening”.
There is a huge difference between these two words. When someone hears you, they hear the sound, the words, or maybe even the sentences, but that doesn’t mean they’re paying attention to what you’re actually saying. Hearing is just our ears picking up sound waves, but listening involves some thought.
If you know someone well enough, you can usually tell the difference because they’ll say generic things like “oh yeah?” or “mhmm”. Asking them “are you listening to me? What did I just say?” won’t help because they can probably repeat back what you just said because it’s still in their short term memory.
A better test is to ask them what they think of what you just said. If they heard you but weren’t listening, they’ll hesitate and then take a guess by your tone. For example if you sounded angry they might say “I think that’s horrible” or “I can’t believe that!”. But if you sound happy they’ll say “that’s great!”. Once again, the better you know someone, the more you will pick up on these little tricks and catch them wandering off.
Good listeners are hard to find, so if you find one, keep them around. Confident people tend to be good listeners, while stubborn people usually only hear words because they don’t care about what you have to say. Like how I tied that all together?
3 years ago