Art of listening

Hmmm? What's that? Pardon? Can you say that again? If you like such questions, you listen with one ear...the other is reserved for your cell phone, conversation at adjacent tables or the mention of your own name by someone else in the room. Other reasons include you are trying to generate your what u want to say rather than listening, or your thoughts are occupied with other things. It's not too late to know that you might hurt the talking person in a way that her words are not being taken seriously and plain ignored. Put it this way, you don't value what they have to say. Unless you are good at pretending, they could feel it. It is even more unacceptable to be pretending to listen while you are looking away at something else. If you are not interested in the conversation, you should try to change the topic or frankly set the time limit like "I have a couple more minutes then i got to go. Tell me more when you have a chance. I definately want to hear it." or something nice you can think of.

I had a friend in high school whom i believe to be an excellent listener. Every time i said something he always opened both his eyes the size of a fried egg(just exxagerating) looking straight at mine, and his ears seemed to be ready to absorb anything, and his mouth opened up accordingly to a big or a little surprise. He made it like every word he heard is his oxygen. He didn't talk about his part a lot but asked and listened attentively. He started his sentence with "You .... or We....." not "I....., My......, Myself...." He rarely interrupted unless it was important enough to get to the point. By the way he was not an alien, though he looked like (sometimes) lolz.

Having someone around to listen is a gift. You can have a great conversation with someone even with your mouth less open, but your heart more open. Like any skills, you can practice listening everyday until it becomes second nature. You can learn a lot more from people by focusing on listening and asking than by talking about your own storyline. I don't mean that you should not talk about yourself at all but at least you should make sure listening is also a part of your conversation. And of course, even though i couldn't hear what you want to say, i am listening to what you have to comment. P-)