When people talk about themselves

Many times when people talk about themselves, I do this mind game of counting the times of a repeated statement. And when people are talking about themselves, hence activating the feel good response, they tend to emphasize certain points or qualities about themselves.

Some people I encounter are well-off. Those people strike a heavy impression because...they are well-off, and I am not well-off. When talking about themselves, some would say, humbly, that they are comfortable. Some people would just admit with pride that they are wealthy and tells some 20 something youngster to go see their house. Then there are the kinds of people that want to vaguely imply how rich they are by telling me the yacht they have in Baltimore, the W they stayed at when they were in Las Vegas, how they buy their girlfriends monogramed handbags and red-painted bottom shoes. They spit out a mouthful of information with one central idea - they are rich. Hearing those kind of talks never make me comfortable, because it indicates a certain level of arrogance and belittlement within their tone.

When I accidentally got someone to start talking about themselves in this way, it's no longer a conversation, they are making an argument -- usually an argument about how good they think they are, are indeed how good they actually are, as if they are telling you a secret that researchers don't know. So I came up with a formula when I talk to people to allow me to differentiate the actual truth from egoistical beliefs.

When you are listening to someone talking, you can start counting the number of times they argued for the same point. If they mentioned it once or twice out of a twenty minute conversation, then it probably means it's true yet it's not a main emphasis of their life. If they mentioned it more than three or four times, or circulate around the same topic for two or three minutes out of a twenty minute conversation, then it probably means it's something they really believe in and are currently on their mind. If anything more than that, it for sure means that they are trying to brainwash you into believing whatever they are trying to tell you. In this case, don't believe him or her, and run as fast as you can, because a man aggressively trying convince you of something is either a really good salesman or a control freak.