liisi LAst Thursday I attended a training course on active listening. I agree it is a skill that helps you in many aspects of your life – business, relationships, school. Many fights and misunderstandings start from people being too narrow-minded and self centered. And we all are that most of the time, we just bluff well sometimes to get what we want :).
In my opinion the trick is to be interested. So there is a course you HAVE to attend and it is boring like hell. Find something that would interest you, ask strange questions. Don’t just sit in a class and write FB statuses “Am in the most boring lecture. Somebody get me outa here”. This is so disrespectful to your time, teacher’s time and while typing you disturb others around you.
During the exercises, I realized, that when I am in an interesting discussion, I did not even realize the trainers put the volume up – that shows again that when we are motivated, even the surroundings can’t disturb us, but when we are not, every little thing is a disturbance. But just the same, it is so easy to HEAR what you want to hear.
To achieve a goal, we need to hear other people, what they are saying, also between the lines. This “between the lines” is usually most important. I just went through a discussion where I should have used all this knowledge. Going through the discussion again and again, I realized that I could have achieved what I wanted and other person wanted, though then again, that would have been still for a short time cos for both of us the priorities were different anyway.
So again we get to the focal point: motivation, motivation to get something. Yep, that’s how egoistic it is, but since everybody is like that, that’s ok.
