Why I love listening to what people say
I became more silent just to hear what others say.
I am a User Experience designer in the profession. The job that I am doing made the glue into a monitor looking into many ways of making my self a better person than today I was. Most of the time I spend time alone or with books that made my self-comfortable to hang out with. By time problems started happening in my life, which was sometimes out of my control.
The problems occurred, mostly when I started talking or during a conversation that I had with someone. Having a conversation with strangers was something foreign to me. I had to get used to it. Most of the time I was honest about what I was telling and someone could tell that I was pouring my heart out when having a conversation with someone.
The problem I had was should I talk more or should I not talk at all with anyone I knew or didn’t know. My idea of staying as a dim person was not paying off. Then I thought of listening to people talk. It does not mean that I started listening to others conversations, but I started listening to people who talked to me.
Listening is considered as a socio-cognitive activity that is affected by our past experience and present expectations. We are more likely to be listening to people who can have an effect on our future than our past. According to Dr. Joseph Dispenza, humans process only 2,000 of the 400 billion pieces of information that come into our brain per second. That means most of the time we only process a small bit of information that we hear from others. The other most important thing is that we always have the control over what we listen.
Why do I think listening to people is important?
Understand their character: Communication is one of the key methods to understand how someone’s character is about. In the current society, most of the people hide who they are and what their motives about. Some people are really good at manipulating others by body language and talk. When you start listening to what they say it’s easy for you to understand what the words really mean. You can get a clear understanding of what their motives are and why they are talking like that. Understanding a person just by talking is quite a difficult thing. Most of the behaviors and attitudes are given to a person by their surroundings. You might not be able to understand the person fully but up to a certain level.
Understand their problems : Understanding someone is a hard job. As a designer, I always have to look into problems and find solutions. Most of the time people come to me with their problems, but half of the time they don’t even know the problem that they have. Listening to someone you open your mind to understand what they say. It also creates a pleasant atmosphere in the conversation where the person who is talking feels comfortable and happy. It opens up the conversation and you create a better communication channel with the other party.
Empathizing situations: Empathizing is someone we always bring up and mix up with sympathizing. The word empathy has three stages. They are as following. Not empathizing, empathizing and over-empathizing. Listening to someone carefully and mindfully would help you to empathize with their situation properly. We always miss someone’s pain, troublesome situation, the problem that they are facing or it can be an mental stress or depression situation where it can lead to a death. People always forget to understand someone’s problem using empathy. The decision we take based on not empathizing can create a painful experience. Even you might not understand the gravity of the situation or the decision you have created the impact the other person is having might be greater than you may think.
How to listen to someone mindfully
Listening to someone mindfully requires you to understand what the person actually saying. In psychology, it’s commonly called as receiving empathy. Receiving empathy requests us to understand what others actually feeling, needing and wanting from other people when they talk. The technique behind receiving empathy is to empty our mind and be fully focused on what the other person is saying. Having an empty mind is to have no or minimum distractions as possible and completely focus on other persons thoughts and feelings. We should not correct, interrupt or make them feel uncomfortable while they talk.
Listening is sometimes can be a boring thing. But when you listen to someone you can always create a better and a wonderful environment where everyone feels special and happy about the other. It always helps you to solve your own problems by listening to your self and be a better person than yesterday.
