Listening is in five stages –

1.Receiving

2.Understanding

3.Remembering

4.Evaluating

5.Responding.

Listening is not listening if it does not involve all of these five stages.

Most of the time, what we do is hear not listen. To hear is to open your ears to the message without accepting the message into your mind; Very much like you opening your door to someone who knocks and yet not accepting the person into your home. When you stand there at the doorstep and you do not allow the person in, all you have done is open your door to the person, nothing more -No admittance, no acceptance. We are poor listeners. We hear a lot, but we seldom listen.

Listening is much more than hearing. We spend a great deal of time hearing. The first stage of listening is receiving. Receiving is also In two stages – (a).Hearing and (b).Attending. Hearing is the first stage of receiving. When you hear, all you have done is make your ears available to the message. This can be passive. You can hear without active participation. Giving attention to what is being passed across, is another thing entirely. Most of the time we hear, we do not give attention. Giving attention involves active participation. Attention is selective concentration. It is a decisive action, it involves mental application. Hearing does not involve mental application, it is simply making your ears available. How many things have we heard that we do not remember, that we do not even have a vague recollection of? Yes we heard , but we did not listen.

Hearing is selective. You selectively tune in to some messages and tune out others. The most common reasons why we hear rather than listen, is selfishness and impatience. When others are passing messages across we are restless in our minds and we are eager to say our piece. Human beings are predominantly selfish. We want to show off our own knowledge too, so we don’t have time to listen. What we have to say is more important. While others are passing their messages across we are preoccupied with our own thoughts so we do not listen. We are too busy having a conversation with ourselves in our minds, to listen to what is being passed across.

Hearing is switching on your ears. When you hear without listening, it means you have swiched on your ears and then switched off your brain. When all we allow ourselves to do is hear and not listen we become poor communicators. We always want others to listen to us, but we do not want to listen to others. Hearing without listening creates an “inattentive barrier” in our minds and this affects our brains negatively. IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IT WOULD BE BENEFICIAL TO YOU, THEN DO NOT GIVE YOUR EARS TO IT AT ALL. It is better not to make your ears available at all, than to make them available and then make your brain inattentive.

Listening is deliberate. No one listens unintentionally. There is no such thing as passive listening. For it to be called listening In the first place, it involves effort. Listening involves effort. Listening is more demanding than talking. You can talk without thinking, but you cannot listen without thinking. Every listening is active.

Listening is not easy. Distractions abound to make listening difficult. Some of them are, Cultural differences, Dialectal /Language differences, Nonverbal communication differences, Gender differences, Opinion differences, Environmental distractions and of course Fatigue.

Listening is beneficial. When you take time to listen, you exercise your brain. The reason why most of us are brain lazy, brain weak, or brain dead is because we do not work our brains in processes that will strengthen our brain muscles. We are a ‘copy and paste’ generation. ‘Flash drive’ generation. We pass data from place to place without being affected by it. We copy and paste information without being informed by that information. Listening helps you get informed by information. (Information is data, a collection of facts. Inform is to form or shape the mind and character by teaching).

Listening opens you up to knowledge. When you listen, you gain other people’s point of view. You know more about the human mind and how it functions when you listen to others. We learnt to speak by listening. The better you listen, the better you speak. The more you listen, the more you gain. The listener gains more in a discussion or conversation. Listening makes you king of your environment. When you develop and perfect the art of listening you will assimilate even more than is being obviously passed on. A listener is better able to evaluate situations, because he is attentive to details that most will ignore.

Listening helps you to improve your memory bank. Listening helps you gain perspectives that you would later on implement to achieve your objectives in life. Listening grows you and growth brings you to success.

Listening helps to build good relationships. Communication is very important to relationships. Without communication, there is no relationship. Listening is an integral part of communication. Listening improves relationships and fosters affection and good will. Listening strengthens relationships.

Give yourself to listening. Make a decision today to Listen more, it will do you good. – KJO. Shalom!