How can you force yourself to listen to others?

Question

How can you force yourself to listen to others?

Answer 1

Stop talking so much.  Stop constantly thinking about what you are going to say.  Ask them questions if you are genuinely interested in.  Some people are truly fickle spoiled individuals and aren't interested in anything anyone else has to say.  The fact that you ask the question proves that you don't want to be that way.

Try to (subtle, discreet) time yourself.  You are talking to someone about what you've been up to for 5 minutes.  Now stop talking and spend the next 5 talking about them.  All your questions will be to get them to say more, to learn more about them.  So as you don't know the answer, you can't talk over them.

Learn body language.  If you talk about yourself all the time, you are boring everyone around you.  Notice how they fidget, glance around, nod while their eyes look dead.  They aren't asking questions of you and as soon as you stop talking they excuse themselves and run away.  They don't volunteer info about themselves.  If you watch body clues, you can pick up the MOMENT your story gets too long winded or too much bragging on your superior skills.  As you don't want to bore, you can wrap up the story and start focusing the conversation on them.

I've had several dates where the guy talked about his prowess in everything for the first two hours.  I remembered that I had to get back immediately after dinner because of a crisis or term paper.  I bet he was shocked at why I never wanted a second date.  The point of a date is to find mutual interests, to find out if you agree on important matters.  You can't find that out if the topics are merely all about you.