Bestselling author discusses importance of connecting with others
SYLVANIA – Lourdes University hosted hundreds of people Oct. 8 for a lecture, Q&A session, book signing and reception with New York Times bestselling author David Brooks.
Brooks discussed his new book, How to Know a Person, at the Lourdes University Franciscan Center.
In his 40-minute speech, Brooks opened with stories from his early life. He said the book, A Bear Called Paddington, inspired him to be a writer at seven years old. He also talked about his educational background and journey to obtaining an education at The University of Chicago.
Brooks also gave good advice on making people feel heard or important. One example he gave is not to try to respond to someone’s struggles with something worse that happened to you.
He offered three steps to know someone:
- the first encounter
- accompaniment
- conversation
After his speech, Brooks invited audience members to ask him questions for about 30 minutes. When the Q&A was finished, he signed copies of his book. After the book signing, he took the time to explaine to fans what How to Know a Person is about.
It’s really about how to see others deeply and make them feel deeply seen. How to make the people in your life feel like you really understand them and respect them and value them.
David Brooks
Brooks said he’s is trying to reach a large group of people with this book, and understands that most people would benefit from making more friends or social connections.
He also said that he wrote this book because of the social breakdown he was witnessing. Worsening statistics for higher suicide, depression rates, and an increase of people who say they feel lonely or have no close friends were factors in his decision to write his book.
“When a third of Americans say they’re lonely, then we’ve clearly got a national problem around this. There are a lot of different ways to address it, but the piece I thought was important was arming people with the skills: If you’re going to make a bench, you need to have some carpentry skills. If you’re going to be a decent human being, you need some social skills,” he explained.
Brooks said connecting with people is important because it makes them happy, and having good relationships makes people feel fulfilled. He finished by offering some of the advice from his book.
“Some of it is just practical, like how to ask good questions, how to be a really good listener, how to take an average conversation and turn it into a deep conversation. And that’s done by asking big questions, like I mentioned in there. If five years is a chapter in your life, what’s the chapter about?” Brooks asked.
“If we have a conversation about that, then I’m going to learn something about you and you’ll learn something about me, and we’ll take a normal conversation and make it a memorable one,” he said.
