“God gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately.” – Epictetus
Speaking may be an important skill but you can accomplish way more in life by becoming a good listener. In fact, people with the most valuable information to speak and share acquired that information by being strong listeners. Listening is a far more powerful tool than you may realize. By tuning up your ability to listen, you can create an incredible life experience. In this post and the next, we will discuss some of the barriers that block our ability to listen well and understand. At the end of the next post I will also give you a simple tool to help you to listen more actively and effectively in your life so you can create more of what you desire.
A Common Barrier to Listening: “But I am listening!?!”
When taking in new information in person or by reading, if you want to get the most out of the experience, you may want to consider that you are not a very good listener. This is a more empowering point of view than thinking you are a great listener. If you believe you are already listening well, you will continue to listen in the way you always listen, even if you have not been listening well at all.
Consider taking the point of view that you are not a very good listener and that you are probably not even listening right now. If you do this, you are much more likely to consider that you could be listening better. Being aware of the degree to which we do not listen is a powerful access point to great listening skills and the beginning of being able to take in new information, so that you may hear the information in the appropriate context and perceive its intended meaning.
Instead of listening to what the person is saying and hearing the intended meaning of their communication, most people are often distracted by their own thoughts. Their attention drifts while their face continues to indicate to the other person that they are listening. Most people just step over this instead of generating the courage to say, “My apologies, but could you please repeat what you just said? My mind went elsewhere for a moment.”
You may notice this distractedness occurring as you read this blog as well. To correct this issue, all that is required is to keep acknowledging when the mind wanders and bring your attention back to this moment, right here and right now. However most people do not even realize that their mind is wandering because they have become so used to not being in the present moment that being mentally somewhere else in time and space has become normal to them. They have not been present for so long that they don’t even remember what the experience of being in the present moment is like.
Even when we are working on being in the present moment and paying attention to what is being said, we are always observing life or listening to others through a series of unconscious filters. We tend to think we are observing and listening objectively, but we are mostly (although unconsciously) looking for what we want to see or listening for what we want to hear. Most people tend to listen more to the voice in their own head than to what is actually being said. Because of this, much information cannot get in because it gets blocked or changed by our own biases, opinions or even by simply having a different understanding or definition of the words being used. Many of these filters were created long ago in our formative years and have been in place so long that they have become completely unconscious to us. We end up being mostly unaware of their presence because we don’t even remember creating them.
This post may be short but it has the power to change your life. Reflect deeply on this information before moving on.
More to come on this in the next post.