You Did What?
Going into this weekend I posted a controversial picture on one of our social media sites. And yes, I have been somewhat judged harshly by it. The picture in question had a duel purpose & it has been a great learning tool for me because one finds out quickly who your true supporters are.! 🙂
Here’s why I posted the picture. The duel purpose of this picture was to make a statement and also a fact finding mission to see who is paying attention. The mission was a success and the statement is this……Of how far we as a nation, a country and a people have developed SELECTIVE LISTENING skills.
According to Eugene A Nida in applied Linguistics Language of Learning Journal: “Selective listening means just what it implies, namely selecting certain features and listening concentratedly for and to them….Another reason why we shun the auditory approach is our prejudice, built up largely by our own ideas about eduction.”
We all practice selective listening to some extent – our brains would have a major meltdown if we took in every piece of information that came our way.
Today in society though, we have taken listening to an opposite extreme. We only pretty much pay attention to shock value. The bigger the hype, the more flashy or most taboo makes us stand at attention. We have become so busy with our lives and the race to amass material things that we have forgotten how to ACTIVELY LISTEN. We have forgotten the ART of communication – instead we shorten our writings, we multi-task while people are talking to us, we don’t look people in the eye, we are thinking of all our to-do lists of our busy lives. We have stopped reading people, we have stopped watching body language and we have stopped enjoying conversation.
What is really happening on a deeper level when we do not practice ACTIVE LISTENING is that we miss out on bIg portions of what is ACTUALLY being said. On a deeper level we begin to miss out on what people are ACTUALLY speaking to, which is really HOW they are feeling (or felt) about a situation, their experience and WHAT meaning they are taking into account based upon their understanding and experiences. They are leaving big clues…we just aren’t really listening.
When we continuously do not practice active listening we begin to create HUGE rifts in all our relationships and eventually the people that are most important in our lives begin to give up trying to communicate. Unfortunately it begins with our children. No two ways about it – our children process their lives through talking – most times this is a joyous process of excitement, wonderment and “Oh wow.! HOW COOL WAS THAT?” And for the most part we get involved in this conversation – somewhat. “Yes, dear,” “Oh, really.!” By not really getting involved in this type of conversation we rob our children of the excitement of experiencing life. To us, we may have experienced, seen or felt a hundred times what they are experiencing for the first time, and by not totally & actively sharing in that excitement we rob them of the wonder of life. Remember the feeling of experiencing something for the first time? How exciting it felt?
They also process WHAT happens to them and they do this by talking about it over and over & over again until it becomes a non-issue to them….i.e. monsters in the closet, being bullied at school, an accident happening to someone else etc. How we deal with these types of situations when they are communicating sets the tone for how well they feel they are being heard and how willing they will be to continuing to communicate in the hard times.
Another way we dis-honor communication is by minimizing. As human beings we tend to value (pay attention) to what others are saying based upon what our experience has been, and for most of us, our lives have been pretty un-eventful. It has been very basic, so when we hear of tragedy, painful experiences, abusive situations etc…we tend to minimize what we don’t understand and so we say things like “Oh, it can’t be THAT BAD.!” “It COULDN’T HAVE happened that way.!” “You’re MAKING IT OUT to be worse than what it really was.” “You attract what you think about.” In other words, what we are communicating back is that we can’t understand so therefore it can’t have happened the way the other person is telling it.
I have been through some pretty tough situations starting in my childhood & I can tell you with alot of confidence that what I have experienced at the hands of others, I wasn’t asking to be hurt and I wasn’t acting in a way that would warrant most of what I have been through and I most certainly wasn’t thinking that this was how I wanted or deserved to be treated.! Most people usually don’t think that way. But Life Sure Does Happen and how we DEAL with life happening is usually where it really counts.
We tend to try to rationalize & minimize what other people are feeling rather than stopping a moment and realizing that if we happened to be in the same sort of situation wouldn’t we be thinking/feeling or acting the exact same way?
A good example of this is the other day I happened to get into a conversation with a friend who happened to be needing to go in to have some medical test done. They mentioned they were nervous about it and shared what exactly they were thinking. It was interesting to see & hear the responses people gave to this situation. Most were the ‘pat’ responses of …”Oh you’ll get over it”, “It’s not as bad as you think.” “It will be ohk.”
On the other hand it was amazing & heart-warming to see & hear the responses of those who were actively listening. “That happened to me and here is what I did,” “I get what you must be feeling right now.” “Not knowing is tough – but you’ll get through it.” “I am thinking of you.”
I sort of understand why most people use these standard phrases and often times we want to show we care – but we just don’t know what to say. But this is often the very place and situations where we can show up with the up-most compassion by before we speak taking a moment to ask ourselves a few very simple questions……”If this were me, how would I be feeling?” “How would I want someone to respond to me if I were in this situation?” And then responding from that level.
We tend to impose all of sorts of silly rules and now even laws so we don’t have to listen, we won’t have to face reality, & so we don’t have to feel; and it is killing our nation.
Starting with our children who are growing up in un-healthy situations, who when the brave ones come forward to speak their truth – they are being silenced by being bullied, they are told it didn’t happen, told to forget about it, told they are making it up….& even if they were making it up we aren’t looking for what might be motivating them to do so.
Their guardians are being pushed aside in favor of people who have money, and can manipulate the laws and systems to benefit themselves and keep their reputations in tact.
We are losing out on opportunities to make the difference we keep talking about because we are not actively listening. And when we don’t actively listen, we not only dis-honor the ones who are speaking, we are dis-honoring ourselves by risking losing out on gathering the very information we might really need to help others and ourselves.
This coming week I am going to be paying closer attention to how effectively I am listening and communicating. I challenge you to also pay attention to how effective your listening is. Are you hearing only parts? Are you paying attention to all parts of the conversation, even the subtle non-verbal cues? How can you develop better listening skills?
Leave your comments above, (click on the link ‘Leave Comments’ on the top left under the date & title.)
I would love to hear how you communicate.! 🙂
Balanced Expressions 