One of life’s greatest pains is the way we do not listen to others. It is like our minds pre-judge the value of what someone is going to say and before they say it, we determine if we are going to listen. I see this all the time in myself when I think someone in the family is going to disagree with me. I answer or react to their response before they respond. The only trouble with responding to the response before it occurs is that there are times when I am wrong. There are times when our knowledge of others and our pre-responses are helpful, like warning someone of running a light while talking on the cell phone. But most of the time it is “sneaky pride”. It is our pride controlling life and conversation to the point to total rule.
It takes patience and kindness to listen to people. Even in hearing what they are actually saying requires us to be kind and wait until we know if “what they said” was “what they meant”. Yet is seems like we are more interested in pointing out the faults of the one speaking, then we are hearing, understanding and developing a healthy relationship. We now have so much communication that we treat life like “facebook”, we just keep going if we don’t understand something. That or we correct it. Fight or flight on the social websites and in our daily lives.
So…… if we want to be heard, what should we do.
1. Talk less. We can say more by talking less. Everyone will benefit.
2. Listen to listen, not listen to respond.
3. Learn to be valuable in a group through smiling, body language, listening, serving and not just adding comments or sharing opinions.’
4. Wait for others to share. Just because you have stuff to say doesn’t mean you should share it. Give the more timid and humble an opportunity.
5. Practice silence. Every now and then practice seasons of silence, you can call it fasting words.
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