If I’m being honest with myself, I would have to answer “talk more” to the first question and “no” to the others. It’s not a confession that I’m proud of. But admitting something is the first step to changing it.
And the thing is, that when we are “bad” listeners, we learn less from our conversations. And we annoy people. And we make ourselves less likable. And while saying more, we communicate less, since it’s difficult to get someone else to listen to us, when we don’t listen to them and try to understand their needs. When we’re just anxious to get our point across, with no regard for the other person.
And I believe that, as with so many things, a deficiency in our ability to listen, has to do with what we’ve trained ourselves to do. As I’m writing this post, I’m 38 years old. And I started to reflect on my ability to listen this year. It means that basically for 37 years, I’ve just let my listening happen the way it has happened. Since I’ve had a few interests that others have found interesting and strong opinions on a few subjects (which is something that I’ve let go of more and more, since I’ve realized how unimportant opinions often are), this has meant that I’ve talked a lot and listened little. And I’ve practiced doing this year after year.
It’s not something that I’m going to punch myself in the face because of. As with so many things that were right in front of me, it never crossed my mind that there was another way of doing it.
And as with so many other of these obvious things, the first step towards change is to, in my everyday life, remember that there is something that I wish to change. When I’m in conversations, I need to practice being aware of what is going on inside. Am I listening or just waiting for my turn to speak? Am I listening or planning what I’m going to say next? Am I trying to understand or just to make the other person change his or her mind? Am I asking questions? Are the questions sincere? Do I actually understand what the other person is saying? Am I asking questions to confirm this?
Now, as I said, it’s crucial to remember what we wish to change. I have noticed this in my own life. I know that being present in the moment is better than to be lost in thoughts while not really being there. I know that I have better conversations if to truly listen to what a person is saying, and yet, when the topic is emotional, I get swept up by those emotions and just think of what I want to say, while waiting to get my point across. And I know that other people have interesting things to tell me if I just listen and ask the right questions. And yet I find myself engaging in a monologue about my own knowledge, insights or plans. Have any of this happened to you?
To conclude, I would like to repeat that I don’t think that we should be too hard on ourselves. As I said, we often get so lost in the complexities of life, that we tend to ignore the simple things, such as in this case, how we listen to people. And so we learn to do these essential things in a significantly impaired way. There is no shame in this. It doesn’t make us bad people. Until we noticed, we didn’t know any better. And now that we know, we can change. We’re not perfect. There will be mistakes. I know that I’m stating the obvious here. But we so often forget to be kind to ourselves in the process of working on our serious commitments. We can’t always expect greatness of ourselves. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know when we’re doing our best and when we’re not. And sometimes it must be okay for us to say: “today I just don’t have the mental energy to struggle with the habits that I wish to change.”
All it takes on our part is a serious commitment to change, in areas of our lives where we believe that change is needed. The rest is up to God.
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