Review: Mindful Conversation by Peter Gibb

Mindful Conversation
Peter Gibb

My Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Non-Fiction/ Communication

Blurb:
Expand your world with deeper connection and more compelling expression. Stir in less anxiety, less struggle, more peace. In short, better relationships, improved satisfaction, and joy.

This book explores the three levels of conversation in a delightful mix of inspiration, practical advice, humor, stories, and practice exercises to guide you along the path. If you’ve ever felt left out or wondered why others don’t pay attention to what you say, felt stuck about how to start (or end) a conversation, or been “triggered” by the very person you most need to connect with, this book is your friend and ally. Conversations with your partner, your children, your boss, your parents, with difficult people, customers and strangers – the secrets are revealed in these pages.

Mindful Conversation presents a fresh inner/outer approach to the most important life skill you never studied in school. A compelling, enjoyable and practical guide for the intelligent conversationalist eager to move beyond small talk.

Change how you talk. Change how you listen. Change your relationships with others, and yourself. Change your life.

My Review

I received a free copy from the publisher through Netgalley.

Conversations can be quite the struggle for me sometimes, at times I find it hard to speak up, I don’t know what to say or feel misunderstood. So when I saw this book on Netgalley I jumped on the chance to read it. This was a great read and it gave me a lot of insight in and knowledge about conversations and what can make conversations go wrong or right.

It’s filled with tips and advice and I found this book very helpful. It taught me a lot about conversations and I felt like this book really helped deepen my knowledge about conversations. A lot of the style of this book fit well with me and I felt I could get a lot out of it. I started realizing why when I have conversations with some people it doesn’t go smoothly and come up with ideas on what to do differently next time. I learned more about my own conversation style and my pitfalls when it comes to conversation. I also started recognizing conversation styles as well as recognizing some of the mindful conversation techniques in others. I also realized why some conversations are difficult and started spotting some of conversation “sins” as the author calls them.

I also found the chapters about the Me-Me conversations very helpful. This focuses more on the story you tell yourself and how you talk to yourself and how to change that. The chapter about the Me-US conversation didn’t resonate as strongly with me and I felt like I was sort of getting what the author was trying to say, but also not quite fully getting. It also was a bit less practical then the other chapters.

I appreciated the hopeful and encouraging tone of the book. Even while talking about things going wrong in conversation there were always the tips and techniques to change things around and examples how things could go different. And even with the encouraging hopeful tone I also appreciated the few remarks the author made that sometimes you can try your best and the conversation with someone still won’t pan out, I thought that was a good realistic touch.

To summarize: I really liked reading this book and found it very informative. I learned a lot about conversation and I started recognizing conversation styles, conversation “sins” and even some of the mindful conversation techniques in myself and others. I got a lot of insight from this book and found it very helpful in understanding more about conversations and there were lots of ideas and tips to try and apply. I also found the chapters about how you talk to yourself very informative. The last chapter about the Me-Us conversation resonated a bit less with me though, although I feel like I can sort of see what the author meant with. I would definitely recommend this book if you want to know more about conversations and how to approach them more mindfully.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.