 It is incredible what you see when you look. It is incredible what you hear when you listen. It is incredible what you feel when you touch.
Do you notice something about the verbs in these sentences? See...Look...hear...listen...feel...touch... One is passive, and one is active. One happens on its own the other requires intention. You can see something without looking at it. You can hear something without listening to it, and you can feel something without touching it. It comes down to intention. Why listen? Why see? Why feel? As storytellers, we have to be intentional. Intentionality is apart of the magic of storytelling as it is living. We take the insignificant and examine it for greatness. Some of the greatest moments in life occur because you have paid attention. You've listened in someway. Listening is the only way to examine effectively. The art of active listening must be a regular practice in our humanity. Two keywords here. Active, which means there is required action, and practice, which means it is a skill that needs honing. Active listening is not something that happens on its own without thought and intentionality. We are never really taught to listen; we are told that we must listen. How can you do something that you don't know how to do? You create a method, whether it be right or wrong. It is a method that fits the need of the time. It eventually becomes a regular practice. As time goes by, your listening strategy has worked. You think it's right until you arrive at a situation where it no longer works, but you do not realize it is not working. Those situations manifest as arguments, confusion, relationship problems, general dissatisfaction. To help solve these problems, we must become active listeners for the sake of our relationships, ourselves, and our stories. Here are 5 ways to improve your active listening skills. 1. Unplug Unplug from the electronics and move from the distractions. Put the phone down. Close the computer. Turn off the TV. We cannot listen when we cannot hear. One of the significant dilemmas for citizens of the 21st century is the bombardment of distraction. We have so many things fighting for our attention. We have control on where to put our intention, but we fail to choose wisely. Before you can listen, you have to unplug and get away from distractions. 2. Connect Connect to the person you're talking to. Let the person know you are giving your undivided attention. Just note, that person, maybe you. We have to listen to ourselves as much as we have to listen to others. The person you are listening to needs to know you are present and you're listening. They need to know they have your attention. You know when someone is there in body but not mind. You can see it on their face. Physically, they're a few feet from you, but mentally and psychologically, they're thousands of miles away. Find ways to connect to let the other person know you are present. 3. Feedback Give good feedback. Feedback lets the person speaking know that you are with them. You are occupying the same space, and they're being heard. Feedback does not mean you chime in every time the other person takes a breath because it is more than words. We spend more time thinking about our response in conversation than listening to what's being said. Feedback is reciprocal communication to let the other person know they are being heard. It is beyond verbal, and nonverbal feedback is as valuable as words. Feedback could be as simple as a nod, a smile, eye contact, anything as long as you are making a connection, and the other person is taken seriously. 4. Understand Understanding is the purpose of communication. Your job as an active listener is to make sure you understand what you are hearing. If you don't understand, state that. Repeat back what you've heard. Ask them to repeat or rephrase what you didn't understand. This concept is true when we communicate with ourselves. We have to make sure we understand who we are as people. That means engaging in conversation with ourselves. We may have to ask ourselves to repeat or rephrase what we don't understand. 5. Judge Not Listeners are not judges. The world is full of enough people to provide judgment on us. When we are in the role of the listener, we need to hear. We need to take in what's being given to us. We need to recognize it and understand it, but we do not need to judge it. People feel comfortable talking with us for a variety of reasons. Not feeling judgment could be the main reason for comfort. As a listener, know your role. This is true as we communicate with ourselves, especially when we engage in creative work. We are our harshest critic because we fail to listen without judgment. We would not say to others what we say to ourselves. There are plenty of judges; we need to welcome the conversation. When you listen to yourself, don't judge. Accept. When you listen to others, don't judge. Accept them. Over the next few days, weeks, and months, challenge yourself to be a responsible, active listener, not only to others but yourself. Consciously, unplug, connect, give feedback, understand, and judge not. You will be surprised by what you can hear when you listen, and what you can learn when you are mindful.
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 "I hear everything you say!" That was the most frustrating line I heard as a child. Now, granted, I was probably like a broken record, and I was saying the same thing over and over and over again. I knew my mother was tired. I know now as a teacher, you can only hear your name so many times before you want to change it to anything other than what it is.
Regardless of what I did to garner that response, my frustration came because I was being heard not listened to. Many of the problems we face are the result of being heard not listened to. How many relationships have failed because of the lack of listening? How many wars have started because of the lack of listening? How many opportunities have been missed because of the lack of listening? Over the next several posts, we are going to discuss the importance and power of listening as it impacts living, understanding, and storytelling. The first step to better our understanding of listening is to define what it is by recognizing what it is not. Hearing and listening are not the same things, but we often use the words interchangeably. Vocabulary is so essential. Hearing is the physical act of taking in sound. Hearing is essential to the work of the equipment. If you have ears and they work to the slightest degree, you can hear some noise. That is the extent of hearing. Noise happens, and you, through the miraculous design of the human body, consume that sound. That is hearing. That's it. Period. Listening is processing sounds for meaning. When we process in the form of listening, we take the sounds in and try to make sense of them. We are all wired to be storytellers. Jonathan Gottschall, in his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Makes Us Human, says that our brains are so hungry for stories that we will subconsciously make stories up to satisfy our minds. For example, if we see chewing gum stuck on a piece of furniture, our mind will tell us the story of how it got there. True or not because we feel we must know. We say to ourselves, "You know I bet some kid got tired of chewing and just stuck that there..." "Look what some lazy person has done..." The scenarios we create in our minds feed us the stories we need. They are not right or wrong. We don't know how the gum got there, but our mind supplies us with narrative possibilities. We have an innate need to know. Hearing and listening are not the same, but we must hear before we can listen. Another example, a mother knows what her baby needs by listening to the sounds it makes. She can distinguish the cries one from another. One cry means hunger; one cry means wet; one cry means pain. There is a cry for everything, but a mother knows. To the nonparent, the cries could be irritating and sound like obnoxious noise. The mother can interpret the noise to understand the needs of the child. That's listening in its purest form. This information seems simple and common sensical. It is. Often the simplest things are overlooked due to their simplicity. It is essential to note that listening takes practice, and it just does not happen on its own. The mother has experience knowing her child's sounds. The passerby does not. As listeners, we must practice. We must take time to distinguish between hearing and listening, and we must listen to what is around us to interpret the message we need to understand. There is so much we miss because we fail to listen because listening goes beyond audible sounds. We listen to our bodies, our conscience, our environments, and we probably do that without realizing it. The importance of listening is to do it purposefully. When you are mindful in your actions, you will discover new meanings. New meanings lead to new experiences. Over the next few weeks, we will raise our listening awareness. Up next...5 Ways to Be an Active Listener |
AuthorCharlie McCoin is a teacher, a traveler, and a storyteller who works to help people discover and tell their stories. ArchivesCategories |
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