Listening!

Hello everyone again! Today’s topic is on listening! Actually this topic should be the 3rd post but oh wells! I think it does not really matter right? At least I posted this entry! Anyway, what is meant by listening? Dictionary.com defines it as “To pay attention” I am sure this definition is straight forward and easy to understand. Well, to me, I think that listening is to hear, understand and internalize which is similar to paying attention. Let me ask you a question. Do you actually listen during lectures or tutorials or do you just hear the teacher teaching. I am sure for many of you out there; this is a rhetorical question, that is, a question which reflects the unstated answer. I am sure many people out there don’t actually listen very much; all they do is to hear. Let’s picture this, a lecturer is teaching and his words appear to be sound waves entering one side of your ear and leaving the other side. How many of you can relate to this? I am sure many of you can. This example can show that many actually hear and not listen as they do not internalize what they are hearing. So why does this happen? Or why do many just hear but not listen? There are many reasons which can range from one’s attitude (i.e. he may think that the lecture is boring and hence feel that there is no point in listening) to one’s interest (i.e. he may feel that since this is not his interest, there is no point in listening) Sometimes, it could be one’s beliefs too. For example, if one is with a group of guys who are having really “sick in the mind” conversations, and one is a person whose belief is to not be sick in the mind, then I am sure one would not listen to the conversation; instead he would just hear what they say and not internalize it. There are many filters to listening and these are only a few. There are also barriers to listening and these barriers can be classified into two groups, the external barriers and the internal barriers. External barriers, as the name suggests, are things where you can see, feel, hear or touch which distracts you. For example, a speaker might be wearing a very funny outfit and these would distract one from listening or paying attention. Internal barriers are things inside of us that affect us. For example, our emotions are internal barriers. One would ask, how do our emotions hinder us from listening? Let me paint this picture for you. If a speaker were to talk about a sensitive issue, let’s say a topic which is obviously, belittling your race or religion, how would you feel? You would definitely feel angry or upset and this would in turn switch of our brains, so to speak, and hence stop us from listening. How then should we get rid of these barriers or instill effective listening into our lives? The first and most obvious thing we should do is to have the right attitude about things. We should have the attitude of “I should listen as I am here to learn new things” or “I should listen to the safety instructions, if not I might jeopardize my life” With the right attitudes, I am very sure we would start listening. Secondly, we must be open-minded where we should not ignore the ideas of others; instead, we should listen to what others have to say which might even be better ideas as compared to your own idea. Many a times, we feel that our ideas are superior to ideas of our peers and this sense of complacency would lead to us not listening to our friends ideas. Why do I say this? That’s because I use to experience this myself and I really think that this isn’t right. This is because we all come from different backgrounds and hence have different experiences which results in different opinions; therefore, I feel that each individual’s ideas is important and that it might even be better than my own idea. Lastly, we should resist barriers to listening. However, not all barriers can be resisted; hence I would say that we should at least minimize these barriers. For example, it is hard to resist the barrier of emotions to sensitive issues, but we can resist barriers like not getting distracted by our external surroundings, like the speakers shirt and instead we should concentrate and listen to what he says.
Therefore in conclusion, we should all listen and not just hear as listening is a very important skill in our lives.