Master active listening
Part two of five ways to be emotionally woke
For our second sneak peek of the advice shared in our book, ‘How to be Emotionally Woke’, we want to talk about listening.
It’s hard to sustain meaningful relationships without being able to listen properly. But strangely, given its importance, it’s not something we’re ever taught how to do properly. Like many of life’s most crucial skills — resilience, empathy — there’s a prevailing view that we should leave the learning up to osmosis (read: chance). As a result, most of us are pretty terrible listeners: we immediately forget half of what we hear, and only comprehend a quarter of it.
Listening — really listening — makes the people in your life feel respected, taken seriously, and understood. Many of us in the modern world struggle with a sense of isolation or disconnection, often as a result of unfulfilling, surface-level interactions and relationships. We find ourselves listening only passively. This is when we wait for someone to speak, make an appropriate mumbling reaction — the real-life equivalent to WhatsApp’s blue ticks — but don’t really engage. Or we listen only to see how we can shoe-horn in our own point or anecdote. Both distance you from the other person. Neither is active listening.
Active listening is when you consciously and purposely try to engage and empathise with what the other person is saying. Here are a few tips to help you listen actively.
Try not to think about what to say next: you can’t rehearse and fully listen at the same time. Picture what the other person is saying in your head, either as an image or a diagram, to try and understand it better. Don’t feel the need to fill silences: count to three in your head before cutting in, as the other person might be trying to articulate something tricky, and people usually open up more when given enough space. Check you’ve understood by paraphrasing what they’ve said back to them. And don’t feel pressured to offer a pep talk or a solution: just sit with any emotions that arise.
