Jasmin Terrany at AUREA: Stop Having Level Two Conversations

Jasmin Terrany began by saying the thing everyone in the room had been privately thinking.

"I have a love-hate relationship with events like these. I come and I listen and I have these beautiful moments, and I also feel really awkward and alone. Are you my people? How do I talk to you people? We're all a bunch of strangers in this room."

Her diagnosis is precise and slightly damning. These rooms are built for personal growth. Everyone faces the front. There is no actual intention to connect the people in the seats to each other, so a room full of extraordinary people go home having met nobody.

"We're just going to be here at another event, have these beautiful moments, and then all go home to our lives. And then what?"

Why she never felt like she belonged in either world

She has spent about fifteen years in private practice, working with highly successful people on the half of life nobody sees: the relationship to themselves, to their partners, to their bodies, to stress.

"Everybody's got stuff going on, no matter what you're doing in the world."

And she names her own version of the problem, which will land for a lot of people reading this. She has a foot in two worlds: the achiever, get-it-done world, and the free-spirited, flowing one.

Too free-spirited for her conventional friends. Too organised, too full of agendas, for the free spirits.

What she has been hungry for is people with a foot in both. That's exactly the room she was standing in, and exactly the room that was about to disperse without exchanging anything real.

Why real friendship usually takes a thousand hours

She read the research on how long it takes to make a genuine friend. The number was around a thousand hours: the lunches, the check-ins, the repeated ordinary contact.

She has two children, a husband and a practice.

"Who's got time for that? But we all want it. So I created a formula."

She built it over a year in a women's circle, designing for one outcome: how do you take strangers and get to the depth of friendship everybody actually craves, without the thousand hours?

Her word for what it produces is co-elevating. Growing because of each other, not just closeness.

What the three levels of conversation actually are

Level one is the weather. What do you do. Where are you from.

"Who likes those conversations? Nobody. Why do we all do it?"

Level two is where most people stop, and her read on it is the sharpest thing in the talk. Feelings, opinions, what he said, what she did. It genuinely creates connection. That's why it's everywhere.

But it doesn't make you better.

"That's why we have such a society of drama. We're doing level two conversations to create that sense of connection, but not with any real intention to elevate as a result."

Sit with that one. A great deal of what people call closeness is level two, running on gossip and shared complaint, producing warmth and no altitude.

Level three is intentional. And her reason for demanding it is the most uncompromising thing she says:

"The only thing I get in this life is this moment, and I'm sharing it with you. I have a standard for the moments in my life. If I'm giving you a moment that isn't with my children, it's going to be good."

She is being arithmetic about it, not precious. Every conversation costs you a piece of the only thing you have.

Which licenses the move most people are too polite to make: naming it out loud. This is a bit weird, I don't know you. So what would you like to get out of this conversation? Let's actually be intentional about being around each other.

"Nobody talks like that. That's weird. But we all want it, so let's do it."

How active listening works, in four moves

The second piece of the formula is the skill a therapist runs, and she taught it to the room in about ninety seconds.

The point is not to prepare your answer. The point is that the other person ends up feeling heard.

Reflect. "That must feel like…" / "It sounds like…" Not "you should," and not "well, my mother…"

Clarify. "Can you tell me more about that?" / "What was it like when…?" You are trying to draw more out, not close it down.

Summarise. Give it back to them and check. She is right about how that lands: hearing your own thought said back to you accurately is startlingly satisfying.

Ask what they need. This is the one nearly everybody skips.

"Do not assume you know what they want from the conversation. Ask: what would be most helpful for you right now?"

And if you do have advice, ask permission before delivering it. I have some thoughts if you're interested. Most unwanted advice is not badly meant. It is just never asked for.

The third piece of the formula is consistency, the part no single conversation can fake.

What happened when she made the room try it

Then she put the room into threes, gave them a single prompt (belonging) and had each person talk for a couple of minutes while the other two only listened. No fixing. No advising. Then swap.

The most telling detail is what happened at the end: she could not get them to come back to their seats.

One woman reported doing the exercise beside her husband and learning something about his inner life she had not known. After two minutes.

How to have a real conversation, starting today

The people you most want to know are usually already in the room. What is missing is the willingness to say out loud that you would like this to be a real conversation, and then to listen as though it is. Chemistry and time aren't the problem.

You don't need a formula to start. You need one prompt, three minutes, and the discipline not to fill the silence with your own story.

Watch the full talk above.

Frequently asked questions

What are the three levels of conversation Jasmin Terrany describes?

Level one is small talk: the weather, what you do, where you're from. Level two is feelings and opinions. It creates most social connection but doesn't make you better; she calls it the source of "a society of drama." Level three is intentional, naming out loud what you'd like to get from the conversation.

How does the four-step active listening method work?

Reflect what you heard back ("it sounds like..."), clarify by asking for more, summarize to check you got it right, and ask what the person actually needs rather than assuming. "What would be most helpful for you right now?" is the step nearly everyone skips.

Why does she say most friendship takes a thousand hours?

That's roughly what research shows it takes to build genuine friendship through ordinary repeated contact: lunches, check-ins, and so on. Since most people don't have a thousand spare hours, she built a formula to reach real closeness faster: intentional level-three conversation, active listening, and consistency.