Texts, tweets, emails. Phone calls. Notifications and alerts. Posts and shares. Likes. Comments.
It’s incessant.
All day, every day, we’re bombarded by data, interruptions, information. Everyone has an opinion or a share. There’s a lot of noise, a lot of talking.
But listening? That’s harder to find, and listening –in many ways—is the most important part of communication.
It makes me think of that old saying about how we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listening is everything. It’s how we learn, it’s the basis for how we synthesize and understand ourselves and the world. It’s the foundation of real connection. Cheryl Richardson says: “People start to heal the moment they feel heard.” I love that, and yet it feels like listening is a virtue that’s often overlooked as our common craving for attention and validation is so intense.
So, let’s dig into it. Let’s talk about the art and beauty of listening: Why it matters and a few gentle ways to maybe do it better.
The bottom line is that genuine listening requires our full presence and participation. It’s an active process.
We all know how the opposite—passive listening—feels. When you’re sharing something, and the other person is clearly thinking about what they’ll say next, or perhaps they start tinkering with their phones. It can be even more subtle, too: They’re not interrupting or looking away, but their feedback is vapid or random. I had a friend back in the day who used to say, “there yah go!” whenever I finished a story. The memory of it makes me laugh, but it used to make me furious. It was so empty and disconnected! I remember thinking, “that’s it?!?!?” We fell out of touch.
Anyway, to be fair, none of us are perfect listeners.
How many times have you introduced yourself and immediately forgotten the other person’s name because you’re more focused on yourself?
It’s common to be in our own heads, accessing how we’re coming across, how we look, how we sound. Then to get into a conversation and be similarly more absorbed in our own thoughts and ideas than open and available for our counterparts. We’ve all done it.
But again — active listening is not only how we learn, it’s also the basis of relationship building, and high-quality connections are the cornerstone of a meaningful life. This is worthy of attention and reflection.
Could we be better listeners? Could we make it a priority to slow down, tune in, and really show up with the people around us?
Saying yes to that and acknowledging the value of quality listening is how it starts.
From there, little ways to improve our listening skills can include things like trying to actually start getting people’s names. In conversation, allowing there to be moments of silence, and using those pauses to take a breath and collect our thoughts, instead of actively calculating while someone else is talking. Also, trying this trick that I’ve come to rely on a lot: Instead of trying to think up profound feedback or worrying about having the perfect response, I often continuously ask people to “say more.”
Especially when someone is sharing something difficult, this has an amazing effect. For one thing, it helps the speaker flush out their thoughts and often even solve their own problems. It also helps the listener fully understand a situation and better relate. When I do this, I keep listening, putting all judgments aside, until I’m either struck by something that feels valuable and relevant to say, or the other person gets all their stuff out and seems to feel some relief.
The holiday season may be a challenging time to take this on, but it’s certainly opportunity-ripe.
Deep, active listening may be the best give we can give.