If I can truly understand him, even if I don’t agree with him, even if I would never choose to live like him, at least I will be able to treat him with more respect and not treat him. This does not necessarily mean agreeing with him, but only understanding his speech, mood, motivations, arguments, attitude or actions. If I really want to understand him and have a conversation at a higher level and a deep connection with him, I have to see things from his perspective. The details of the life of the man I am talking to are different from those of my life. We must stop filtering our own paradigm and stop reading our autobiographies in the lives of others (“I know how you feel! I’ve been through the same ordeal. We need to move the magnifying glass from our lives to the receivers.
To listen empathetically to another person, to listen to and truly understand what he is saying, we need to change our perspective on how we look at things.
Some are shocked when asked to practise empathic listening.Īs one learns to control their usual way of responding, and to listen with empathy, he/she may notice spectacular results in the quality of communication. Take care of the other with love and they will tell you what a lady said to someone who listened to his two hours in a row: What a good conversationalist you are.
Give yourself that gift and give it to others.Īsk questions, let yourself be questioned, live open to change.
#SELECTIVE LISTENING HOW TO#
When you know how to listen, you value others in their difference with genuine tolerance. Listen with humility and patience, open to practising the difficult art of learning and unlearning. What counts is what is said, not so much who says it. Go beyond appearances and labels and search for the truth, beyond your truth.Įvaluate what they tell you regardless of mental labels and conditioning paradigms. Look the other in the eyes, read their gestures and their silences. You need to listen without preparing your answer, listen with empathy and deep and loving respect. Listen with your heart, with care and attention, and you will see that the act of listening is like a flower blooming. There is a great miracle in listening when you do not interpret what you are hearing. And, to his friend’s amazement, he told him that everything depended on what one wanted to hear or feel and, to prove it, he did the following: He threw a coin on the floor and all the people turned to look.ĭo you see it? You listen to what you want. There, he found a bush in a cement bowl and in the foliage was the cricket.
I’m sure it’s cricket, said the Indian, and listening carefully, he crossed the street and headed for the corner. The other told him that he was crazy and that it was impossible to hear a cricket in the middle of that deafening noise. I have always been struck by the phenomenon of selective listening or selective vision: we listen and see what we want.Īnd a story by Tim Hansel reflects it well and, hopefully, it challenges you and moves you to broaden the spectrum of your perception:Īn American Indian was walking with a friend through the streets of New York and, suddenly, he exclaimed: I hear a cricket. Selective listening involves filtering the speaker’s message and selecting from what he or she says, a part that affects you or that interests you most. This type of listening can often cause conflicts or misunderstandings between people. Selective listening is a negative way of listening to someone. We also discuss how we can practice empathic listening and become better listeners and better conversationalists. In this blog post, we will speak about selective listening and other types of listening.
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