The Sound Of Silence
People are not listening.
When is silence important?
If you want to learn something, you must be prepared to listen. The silence refers to your own words. If you’re always talking, how can you listen?
My dad used to say:
“You need to understand that your head is not a hatrack. You were given two ears and one mouth. This means you must listen twice as much as you speak.”
Different points of view and how they impact us.
Over the years, I learned to be the first one to listen in a business meeting. If it was our presentation they came for, it was still they that spoke first; what an advantage listening gives those who listen first.
In high school, my best friend and I were sharing stories and eating burgers. All of a sudden, one of our other friends burst into the quiet night and announced that something had happened. While he was going on about something we already knew, my dinner friend stopped me and said quietly, let’s see what he knows. It turned out that my friend and I had learned something from our excited friend.
What we learned is not the point. The fact that he spoke first and we learned from it is exactly the point. It’s the lesson learned that has been applied over and over again that truly matters.
