You lost me ages ago!!!

As human beings we tend to communicate ideas, thoughts, feelings and even opinions to other people like us. But of late the greatest question has been how are we doing it? How are we going about communication skills? What are the do's and dont's of communication? So I was reading this cool book and happened to bump into ways in which we lose friends in conversation.

1. Freely volunteering information in conversation or speeches when you are uninformed.
2. Monopolizing every conversation i.e. making it a one man show, always talking and letting your friend be the listener without contributing to your story.
3. Repeatedly interrupting others while in the middle of the conversation.
4. Having a secret satisfaction in contradicting the speaker or showing him where he is wrong.
5. Asking a question the interrupting to ask another before the first one is answered.
6. Talking continually about yourself, your family, your achievements, your interests, just loading the conversation with things about you, you and you!
7. Having a tendency to exaggerate what you say.
8. Failing to show consideration for the sincere opinions of others on controversial matters.
9. Converse at great lengths about details and sometimes about nothing.
10. Often gossip about others.
After I had finished reading this all I could think of was someone and whether I was often losing my friends in conversation by doing either one of these listed items or all of them. Then it got me thinking, what is a conversation?
A conversation is communication by two, three, or more people but talking is only using the mouth. It is a social skill that is not difficult for most individuals. Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views on a topic to learn from each other. This is from Wikipedia, but what is conversing to me? Is it just talking to someone or connecting with that person? A conversation involves body gestures,active listening, talking and most of all a sound connection with someone. It is important to engage in a meaningful conversation with people because then you get to form opinions, share values, know speech patterns, understand the influence of culture on us and most of all it makes you social.
The tips I shared with you are some of the things we need to avoid doing while engaged in a conversation with someone, they help improve our public speech performance and increase our ability to network. Just ask yourself, simple questions involving each tip, for example, who would want to listen to me go on about myself?