Listen

“Can you hear me now?” No, this is not a Verizon commercial but we all have heard this said time and time again. I was talking to my best friend the other day and I asked him if he felt like I was being truly present in our conversations. By present, I mean, fully paying attention and actively listening to what he was saying. That made me think about how often we go thru conversations and leave them sometimes not even understanding or fully remembering what the person was really talking about.

A lot of times, people just want someone who will listen to them. It is not so much about giving them feedback but more so about just being a sounding board. I heard a statistic the other day that the average person only pays full attention for 17 seconds in a conversation before they already want to interject or have started planning a response, thus checking out of the conversation to form their thought process. So my challenge to myself and to you is to just listen intently until the person has finished speaking and then give a response. That means, turn off the tv, sit with open body language facing the person, maintain eye contact and be fully present in the moment and conversation. Give the person full attention. This makes a big difference to the person who is speaking because it says that we care about them and what they are saying is important.

It is also important to give them feedback that you are listening by acknowledging what they are saying by either nodding your head, or saying “uh huh” or “ok, I hear you” etc. Communication is a two way street, it’s a dance of give and take and back and forth. By making it an interactive experience it raises the conversation to just mindless chatter to quality time with dialogue that has depth to it. The person who is talking to you will appreciate it and will often times feel better just from having shared their thoughts with you and you receiving them from a place of openness, warmth, sensitivity and caring.

Remember, words are very powerful. So think before you speak and next time someone is trying to talk to you…BE PRESENT and LISTEN.

~Namaste