Are You Listening? Pay Attention!

I am in a queue inside a grocery, and I hear this, “Will you please pay attention.” I turn around to see, and I see a woman screaming at a man beside her while he is busy scrolling through his cellphone. The poor woman was still trying to get his attention as she talked to him in a muffled voice. I can see her irritation and frustration. And I thought to myself, yes, he may have heard what she said, but I bet if you asked that man what she just said to him, he would not know because he was not listening.

Listening is a significant part of social interaction. And if we only hear and fail to listen, then we miss what is real and vital.

Social interaction is how we relate with other people and how we behave as they relate to us. And through this interaction, we form relationships: friends or family, strangers, from acquaintances, casual friends, close friends, to intimate/romantic friends. But a considerable part of social interaction is listening. And it is only when we listen that we can have a meaningful relationship from social interaction.

Good Listener vs. Poor Listener

Paul T. Rankin did a study, and he said that on average, 75% of his subjects’ waking day was spent in verbal communication-30 percent in talking, 45 percent in listening. Note the most significant percentage is listening. And I know I have said this comment a few times in the past when I am having a conversation about to turn to some serious argument, “You are not listening to what I am saying. You heard the words I just said but did not understand a word.” And I often wonder, is it me who is at fault? Am I demanding too much? Am I expecting too much? Am I imposing my standards on other people? Or the person simply does not listen?

Research done on the listening ability has this as a general conclusion: The average person is a “half-listener” and retains only about 50 percent of what he hears right after hearing it.

Why is there an inability to listen? Can we attribute this to our system of classroom instruction?

Listening is a mental skill that can be developed through training and practice. We must not only let the sound waves into our ears, just as reading requires that you do more than look at the print. Good listening requires active participation. But there are a few roadblocks. One of them is that we think much faster than we talk. Generally, the rate of speech is about 125 words a minute, but we think four times that fast, which means that in each minute a person talks to us, we usually have about 400 words of thinking time to spare.

1. If we are poor listeners, we become impatient and easily distracted. Our attention goes to something else, no matter how brief the inattention, that when going back to pay attention to the person speaking, the speaker is far ahead of us. We missed some information already, making it harder to follow and understand, and the cycle continues. Because we missed some of the information, we fail to understand until we give up even though the person is still talking, and our mind goes somewhere else. Poor listeners give passive attention. A good listener learns to confront distractions by closing a door, turning off his cellphone, and only interrupt if needed to clarify a point before transitioning to the next topic.
2.  Good listeners use the thought speed and spare thinking time to what is being discussed. Interest is critical to listen. Good listeners will find something interesting in what is being discussed and see how this discussion can help you, and is it something you need to know? Such questions keep us on track and help sharpen our listening skills.
3. During the discussion, a speaker will always touch on something that can either be biased or a conviction to the audience. A bad listener will start thinking of refuting or starting formulating questions to cluster the speaker or redirect to thoughts that uphold his perception or emotions. A good listener, on the other hand, trains himself to keep on listening. He aims not to be too eager about the speaker’s perspective until he has heard and understands everything. He is not quick to make an opinion but gathers all the evidence before forming his conclusion. He leaves his ideas out and only makes his decision after hearing everything from the speaker. He is open-minded and not quick to judge. They focus their attention on the main idea, which makes it easier to remember the supporting facts.
4. Intelligent listening also helps a speaker give more information because he knows that his audience is listening. So the listening audience learns more.
5. A good listener will turn out to be a good speaker later. Just as you learn so much from listening, so others will, in turn, get more of what you say.

In Summary

Hearing is the perceiving of sound by the ear. Hearing happens. Listening, however, is something we choose to do. We concentrate and pay attention so that our brain can decipher the meaning from the words and sentences.

Clinical psychologist Kevin Gilliland, PsyD, says the difference between the two is night and day. “Hearing is like collecting data,” he explains. The act of hearing is rather simple and basic. Listening, on the other hand, is three-dimensional. “People who excel at work, or in marriage or friendships, have honed their ability to listen,” says Gilliland

We now know the benefits of being a good listener, so let us learn, train, and practice to be good listeners. This skill will surely benefit us in all aspects of our life.

Source

Reader’s Digest(1965). How to Live With Lifep.32-35