Listening

The mastery of good listening skills is widely respected and valued across many areas of human endeavor.  Being a good listener tends to be one of the most endearing of social qualities, helping us make and keep connections with others.  It also avails us of very useful information about situations and people in our lives, including some subtle or detailed information that the inattentive may completely miss.  Even further, when we listen well, people tend to tell us more.

There are an array of skills and styles that can constitute “good listening’.  Some of them can be learned or imitated as techniques, but genuinely attentive listening of any style arises through our natural faculties of creativity, curiosity, and connection.  In this sense, the most powerful foundations of good listening skills need only to be reclaimed and renewed from whatever has diminished them. 

First among those diminishing influences on our listening capacity is the insecurity that unavoidably burdens us when we are not safe and at home within ourselves.  We set the most important foundation for listening, of course, by healing our relationship with our own thoughts, emotions, and desires.  The more we create safety within ourselves, the more we free up conscious and relaxed attention for others.  This is where the idea that we can only treat others as well as we treat ourselves shows up with tangible immediacy.  If we are in chronic self-abandonment or betrayal, anticipating projected dislike, misuse, or rejection from others, listening to someone else will be far from our attention.  We will be way too busy protecting ourselves, and potentially doing it not very nicely.

There is a second, societal learned, tendency that substantially undermines good listening, but it is harder to detect.  It creates far less discomfort than insecurity, and it’s also very common, even “normal”.  This tendency is a way of meeting the world that most people call “being judgmental”.  We actually have to make judgments all the time to navigate through our lives effectively, and, done consciously, making judgements is a favorable cognitive function.  In contrast, “being judgmental” meets everything that comes our way first with scrutiny to determine whether we approve of it or agree with it.  “Do I like this?”  “Do I think this is true?”  “Does this support my preferences and self-image?”  “If I don’t like it or understand it, might I be wrong, or might something be wrong with me?”

We are so well-trained to use scrutiny as an on/off switch for our receptivity to information, or even people, that it happens automatically and unconsciously most of the time.  Our brains can filter information naturally to protect us from overwhelm, but “being judgmental” is overdeveloped filtering that shuts down the capacity for good listening in many, if not most, modern people.  Add a dash of modern haste, and real listening turns into impatiently “waiting one’s turn” to talk with little information gained and even less connection created.

Since it happens so automatically, the best indicator that we are “being judgmental” is tension in the body.  We can use awareness of physical tension to help us tune in to what is happening for us mentally and emotionally, and we can choose to relax.  We can get curious about our response to the other person.  Do we really understand what they are saying, or are we making assumptions?  Do we feel threatened?  Do we fear conflict?  It is possible to let another person articulate their ideas or experiences without having to decide if and how they match or conflict with yours.  What would it be like to just be curious about the information or experience someone shares with you?  What if we could lay down our temerity over what another person’s point of view means about us?   How would it be to listen to each other as though each of us had some unique and wondrous piece of the reality puzzle to share?