Develop: The art of listening
“When we listen attentively to somebody, we forget ourselves. If we never forget ourselves, we never listen.” — OSHO
That’s so very true and deep. Listening is definitely hard. We never listen to understand the other person, but always listen to react. That’s where we fall and misunderstandings take birth. Listening attentively (by heart; word to word) is the toughest task a human would do ever, after solving those lengthy mathematical equations. It is not a passive activity. It’s not about being quiet and hearing words spoken. It is an art to be practiced and mastered thoroughly.
Listen from one ear and throw it out from the other — Is the most practiced phenomenon we’re engaged to when we don’t find our ears listening appraisals. But why do we do that? When we have the ability to judge people, why can’t we listen to judgements made for us? Why is that we always want to hear good words being spoken and no bad words. Are we not humans? Don’t we commit mistakes? So why fear? Sometimes it’s just the bad words or scolding of our elderly that can lead to a completely different path of success.
When people are talking, there is no need to do anything but receive them. Just take their words in. Listen to what they are saying. Listen to each other with respect. Remember that we don’t have to agree with what the other is saying, in order to listen them with respect. Listening often provides us a different point of view which we won’t even put light to. Listen to that view, without defending your position. It does take a lot of practice. We need to open up ourselves and create a new space for this kind of listening.
It takes a lot of audacity to listen to someone’s pain and anger. We always jump to tell our story rather than listening to them and finding that dead path where things went wrong and nobody noticed. We never take efforts to let the other one finish and then start our own story but keep on mumbling in between and congratulations a whole new havoc is created. Sometimes it may lead to a fight, a new just born fight between the two sharing their tales. So make a habit of listening patiently. Listening, to find a solution to the problem and not to create one.
Having the room to listen without reacting negatively is a gift we can choose to give. Knowing that we don’t have to respond is a big help. It gives us a freedom to simply learn. The best way is to mute your phone and let the other speak while communicating over mobile phones. Let the other speak and even if we mutter in between he’s not disturbed. Long ago while in schools we heard our teachers saying don’t talk in between, don’t make noise my link gets broken etc was nothing but the teacher trying to make you listen. Not that her link was broken but ours was broken, leading to zero understandability of subject.
The way we listen to others often has an impact on how they listen to you in return. Now that’s a revenge game. If you kept pressing the person on one point or the other in between, now get ready for the same. We all are crabs here. If one goes ahead we stand right behind him to pull his leg and bring him down. Even people can plan for a great revenge in a small five minute talk. This would lead to frustration and the day ahead is ruined. So understand this art as: Listen calmly to make your tales heard later.
This art requires another thing to be practiced hard — The practice of being silent. As we exercise being silent inside, we make more room for others- we have more space to listen.
Also give a thought to learning new things while listening. We can do that. The person talking might have travelled in areas of concern to you. He might be skilled in one of the fields that is of great concern to you. While on a conference call, we can understand the whole talks in a totally amazing perspective once we master this skill. We can then do wonders. We can complete our whole lessons while other people teach us. We can excel in our projects if we strive hard to listen and understand each word of our mentor. Just imagine how things would be more at ease than today.
Be a compassionate listener and the world will know you by your stories.
