The Art of Listening

World listening day

Since 2010, July 18^th is known as World Listening Day. While it’s something we might want to consider honoring every day, perhaps we can take a minute to stop and think about how we listen to others and how they listen to us.

People talk and listen for various reasons. For those dealing with psychological or physical challenges, sharing stories might help to work through a solution or come to grips with a difficult situation.

Deep listening

Deep listening is about truly connecting with ourselves and our lives in addition to connecting with others. This practice can connect us with others at a deeper level and lead to a more blissful and calmer sense of being.

When we’re empathetic and engaged in deep listening, the speaker becomes more comfortable and tends to open up more. Thus, the listener sets the tone for the interaction. Most clinicians are aware that it’s best not to attempt to fix someone’s problem, but rather involve themselves in deep listening as a way to honor and enable the person to arrive at their own solution.

Listening and the mind-body connection

In their book about deep listening, Pransky and Wolf (2017) show readers how to use the mind-body connection to balance many bodily systems, which helps us heal, grow, and repair. The components of the systems are not new to us, but they’re presented in an easy-to-use manner. Such practices include meditation, yoga, relaxation, mindfulness, journaling, and an “instant pause and reset” technique that permits us to shift our energy and quickly refresh. This latter technique can be done independently and anywhere.

We can also use this reset technique when two individuals are in a disagreement and start to speak at the same time. This can be done first by one person sharing the other person’s point of view and then the second person does the same. After this pause, it is more likely that their differences can be discussed. Another scenario is that the individuals may even realize they actually agree and are making the same point differently.

Listening is more than hearing

The best clinicians believe that people must discover for themselves that change and acceptance are actually possible. “The listener needs to make the individual believe their narrative or story and helps them believe that only they can tell their story, because it’s their emotional truth, nobody else’s (Frank 1998).

Carter (2024) says—and I believe—that listening is not the same as hearing. The former is an acquired skill requiring practice and discipline. Undoubtedly, some people are naturally better listeners than others.

Carter also claims that there are a few components to good listening including: receiving (the act of hearing what is being said), understanding (seeking clarification as needed), remembering (when our brains process the received information from verbal and nonverbal cues) and, if indicated, evaluating (which is where misinterpretation can occur through judgments), and responding (as needed although some situations don’t always necessitate a response unless it feels as if the person wants it).

How to be a better listener

There are several suggested ways we can be better listeners. Here are some that I’ve gathered over the years:

• Talk less
• Cultivate ‘beginners’ ear
• Pay attention
• Be compassionate and calm
• Refrain from interrupting
• Maintain eye contact
• Be mindful of nonverbal cues
• Get comfortable with moments of silence
• Try not to be reactive
• Avoid the ‘shoulds’
• Be slow to disagree
• Ask good questions
• Rephrase what they’ve said
• Thank them for sharing with you