*Let's Talk Comfortably. When I read a book, I tend to read related books together. While reading Let's Talk Comfortably this time, I read Kang Won-guk's "Kang Won-guk Speaks Like a Grown-up" and "I Write the Way I Speak" alongside it.
Lee Geum-hee's book reads easily and is fun, while Kang Won-guk's book feels weightier and full of depth. Lee Geum-hee says that "speaking" was never that difficult for her. She also says that doubt or anxiety rarely welled up from deep within her. As the secret behind this, thinking that it is okay to make mistakes, nerve, and memories of her parents listening well to her stories from childhood helped her become a person who speaks comfortably.
The reason we cannot say all the words in our heads is the fear of being judged, and the fear of how we will appear. The thought of "what if they dislike me for saying this," "what if I look foolish," makes both our words and our writing shrink back.
If even adults are like that, then if a child is continually criticized or ignored, speaking becomes hard for them too, and their self-esteem will lower. Have I been listening well to my own children's words? I, too, came to reflect.
She says that when I reveal myself as I am, I look natural and confident. My shortcomings are also part of me, and trying to package them feels forced. What Kang Won-guk and Lee Geum-hee have in common is that speaking, too, improves only with practice. It is not only foreign languages that improve with practice; our own language also becomes fluent only when we practice listening and speaking. Not only speech but writing, too, must be written again and again, and they say you should write as you speak and speak as you write.
When it comes to speaking, Lee Geum-hee devotes much of the book to speaking centered on the listener rather than the speaker, and to the importance of listening with empathy. "I see, yes, that must have been hard, well done, how admirable." She says that speech is communication between people, and relationship.
Lee Geum-hee's "Let's Talk Comfortably," like listening to a lecture or watching a short YouTube clip, is composed of short sentences and chapters, so you can read the whole book without strain. It seems a book worth reading once when you want to speak a little more comfortably.