Am I a Good Listener?

 

LISTENING SELF-ASSESSMENT

The power of sound has a detrimental impact on our lives- sound and listening is how we make meaning. Even sounds of unknown origin like the sounds of the sea from a shell- can create meaning and memories. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate my listening ability as 8/10, because while I am active listener- I do have some barriers to effective listening such as: emotions and appeal of the speaker.

I am better at conscious and active listening when it comes to other people; however, I do get defensive whenever a topic is personal to me. Personal topics make me insecure and defensive and selective, because I am scared to trust people with information concerning me and my life. It takes me a while to earn somebody's trust and therefore it takes a while to establish genuine communication; however, once that is established I become less cautious with my communication and listening. 

Moreover, I tend to talk way to much whenever a person asks me about my feelings and the usual small talk questions- this makes me feel like a self-centered listener and communicator, but in the moment I do not notice it, so my first step in talking less is to become aware of the speed and frequency of the sounds I make. 

One thing I do enjoy doing while listening is relate to another person in so called, relational listening where the goal is to emotionally connect with the speaker. Emotions play a very vital role in my listening and communication. One thing I absolutely love doing is encourage  people to say more on the topic of their emotions as well as allow emotional people sometime to gather themselves to speak. My friends know that whenever I am angry- I cannot listen so they allow sometime for me to cool down and in turn I do the same for them.

One more type of listening that is easy for is supportive listening, because I am not judgmental whenever I hear a person say something that does not necessarily fit society's or my standards. For example, if a friends tells me something and then tells me " it is so weird that I do that... or I feel so bad to tell you this.. or I am a bad person.. or hope you are not mad at me for saying that". I realize whenever people talk they can be most vulnerable, so it is necessary to be supportive, so that the speaker can know his/her feelings are not wrong or foolish. Being judgmental will make the speaker feel insecure and uncomfortable. 

One type of listening that is most challenging to me is analytical listening, because I tend to selectively listen and ignore the message of the speak that has hurt me before or said something hurtful. Meanwhile it is important to separate the message from the speaker- it is hard for me to emotionally forgive that person. Emotions do have a huge impact on my listening, because there has been so many incidents in which I completely refused to listen to my dad, because he said something hurtful to me prior to speaking about an important issue. It is challenging to block out internal emotional distractions, because you can close a window if the outside noise is too loud, but you can't close off your brain, because it is inside of you. There is no a switch on and off in our brains- our brains are constantly working. 

To Improve My Listening: 

1. To make sure my emotions do not get in the way of effective listening - I plan on being honest with the person whom I do not want to listen to. I would try to explain that I am not in the condition to communicate and try to reschedule our conversation whenever my emotions cool down. Also, if rescheduling does not work at the moment, I plan on identifying emotions that prevent me from effectively listening, so that I can temporarily put them aside. Writing down information also helps in reviewing it later when I will feel less emotional to comprehend meaning. 

2.  To separate the speaker with the message- I plan on asking myself following questions: What can I learn from this individual besides the fact that he/she makes me feel sad, angry, happy?  How this information benefits me? What is the message being discussed?

Also, becoming fully present is how I plan on focusing solely on the message and not the speaker. For example, if my friend that I had an argument with earlier in the day, starts talking about different types of flowers, then I would try to concentrate on the flowers by physically imagining what the speaker is telling me about them - not on the fact that he/she was a total jerk to me.