Are You REALLY Listening?

The other day I had a great conversation with a dear friend of mine and we had a great conversation about LISTENING. After our usual catch up, she started talking about the importance of being a great listener to foster healthy relationships with people. We talked about how we’ve experienced poor conversations with people (even with a couple of friends) because they aren’t ACTIVE listeners and we were grateful for each other because we give our undivided attention when we do speak to each other.

According to the article, “9Things Good Listeners Do Different,” (great article by the way!) it references that “the average person has 25% efficacy” when it comes to listening. That’s pretty sad because that means most of what you say to a person is falling upon deaf ears. With this in mind, it made me think about how our world could change if more people would just listen! As a citizen of this world, I try to remain informed about current events; however, it’s heartbreaking to watch the news today because there are so many issues going on at once. Perhaps absent listening skills is the root of it all?

Technology has been a gift and curse to us all! By far, it has significantly reduced our human interaction abilities. We’ve relied so heavily on smartphones/handheld devices to communicate on our behalf that we’ve forgotten how to just pick up the phone and call! It’s hard now to hold conversations with friends and family members when they’re easily distracted by the chime of a new text message alert, a “like” on a photo and of course being busy (I’m guilty of this one).

Statements like “shoot me an email” or “text it to me” have become all too familiar instead of “I have someone on the other line, I’ll call you back” or “I LISTENED to your voicemail so I’m returning your call.” 

Instead of making time to listen to someone, you wonder why it is difficult to watch the news because you’re tired of HEARING about gun-violence, suicides, drive-bys and more. But did you ever think that maybe if you became an active LISTENER, you could change a person disposition?  In most cases, people show out or explode because they feel like they aren’t being HEARD or misunderstood so they feel the need to do something drastic to get the undivided attention they deserve! After all, we all have something to say but it would mean more if people gave the respect and the attention to hear that person out.


Photo Courtesy of Flickr.com/By Shel