For Lent this year, I decided to try something different other than giving up morning coffee or snacks. I am trying to give up talking about myself. The idea came from googling what to give up. This IS going to be hard for me, I have quickly realized how much I like to start my conversations with “Guess what I did” or “Guess what happened to me.” So for the next forty days, I am attempting to pay more attention to others and worry about myself less. We’ll see how it goes. Catch the irony though? I am writing about my experience of not talking about myself.

Day 1: The first day of not talking about myself did not go well. I have learned a lot from today though, I’ve become conscious of how much I mention myself in conversation. Tomorrow I have a goal; in one of my elective classes we have a pretty open environment and I’m going to make an effort to ask a few people I don’t usually talk to some questions and get to know them better.

Day 2: Today went a lot better in not talking about myself. I made a conscious effort to talk to new
people and not add so many of my personal stories throughout conversations. Everyone I talked
to seemed much more involved in the conversation when it was all about them.
Day3: I spent most of the day babysitting so it wasn’t hard to not be concerned with myself but
when I went out to eat with a friend that night it was really strange to not throw my own stories
into the conversation, only answering questions they asked about me made it harder to be
interested in the conversation.
Day 4: I worked most of Sunday so it wasn’t hard then either to focus on other people than me
since I work in retail. Updating this blog seemed weird since it is writing all about myself.
Day 5: Today was pretty boring and I didn’t find it hard to not talk about myself.
Day 6: Being back at school makes it hard not to talk about myself a lot but I kept pretty focused
on keeping the conversation about other people.

Day 7: I worked today so that made it easier to focus on other people… It is still really hard not
to bring myself up a lot in conversations. I have learned more about the people I worked with so
far by asking them more questions.
Day 8: I struggled at school today not talking about myself but I did try and ask more questions
to the people I sit by in anatomy and learned more about them as people. I worked again today
but I did have to catch myself and not quit talking about me a few times during my shift.
Day 9: One thing I have learned is if you focus on other people when you talk, it’s really easy to
find things to compliment people on. I make it a goal of mine to compliment at least one person
a day but I’ve been finding more and more good things about other people the less I focus on
myself.
Day 10: Today at work, there was a sales representative in the store and by focusing on asking
more questions to other people I learned that he lives a very interesting life. He was in the Prince
movie, has been in sales for 35 years, and was a tour guide for Paisley Park in MN. He also has
a son that is working for NASA. I also learned that one of my co-workers is in one of my
favorites songs music video. We’ve worked together for almost two years and I knew that she
used to act and do music videos but I never focused on the details.
Day 11: Today was pretty boring in my life so I didn’t find it hard not to talk about myself. I did
see the Peter Rabbit movie with my little brother and would recommend lol.
Day 12: Going back to school seems to be hard for me in not talking about myself.
Day 13: I did find myself talking about me a lot today but I also tried really hard to focus on
asking people more questions about them. If I have learned anything from this, it’s people do
really like to talk about themselves and it’s worth taking the time to just listen to what they say…
they seem so much happier when they’re done talking.

Final Entry: 

Well, readers, Lent is over. I did a terrible job upkeeping this blog, but that is because it was the same daily struggle of trying not to be so concerned with myself. Not talking about myself was an unobtainable goal but it did make me conscious of asking other people about themselves. I have learned so many things about so many people- whether it being people I have met during this lent or people I have known for years. People really appreciate you being concerned about what they have to say.

There was one week where I really did a good job listening to others but most days it was really disappointing to sit down and think of all the conversations I had that included things about me. I did catch up with a lot of people I haven’t talked to in months so obviously I had to talk about myself but there were also many times where I threw so many unnecessary comments into conversations. What I ultimately have learned is how little I used to think about others and what they had to say and I  am now able to listen to what they have to say and not be so self-focused.