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The Hidden Risk of Tuning Out

Hey! Are you listening? You might be tuning out without even realizing it. When we’re not fully present for certain conversations, we can pay an extremely high price.

The Hidden Risk of Tuning Out
Photo by Chance Agrella, courtesy of FreeRangeStock.com

As Michael Hyatt points out in his book Platform, we live in an increasingly noisy world. As if your to do list weren’t already overwhelming enough, scientists claim that out of the billions of bits of incoming information coming at us each second, our brains can only register about 2,000 of them.

Everything else goes over the spillway.

One unfortunate result of this is a scarcity mentality about listening. If attention is a limited commodity, then it does make sense to spend it wisely. Without our built-in noise filters, our lives would be like a nonstop rerun of Lucille Ball’s classic candy factory scene. The problem is that our filtering habits can also cut us off from things that matter.

Here’s a sample of the hidden price we pay for not listening:

  • We run the risk of increasingly superficial and unsatisfying relationships
  • We miss bigger, deeper veins of opportunity by rushing off with the nuggets
  • We burn needless energy and resources on assumptions that could be faulty

Every message involves a sender and a receiver.

Obvious, but this is where the wheels begin to fall off. Speech and hearing are processed in different ways and in different areas of the brain. Most people interpret what they hear in a direct and literal way, but tend to speak more indirectly and metaphorically. Individual values, beliefs and memories also impact how people navigate this terrain in conversation. Allow for these differences so you don’t judge or label what you’re hearing too quickly.

The one who listens the most has more influence in the conversation.

There’s a reason why doctors (hopefully) diagnose before they prescribe. While everyone else is competing to be the loudest one in the room, you can be the one who actually understands what’s going on. I’m not talking about manipulative ways to trick the other person into THINKING that you’re listening. I’m talking about skills you can acquire to really do it in a way that benefits both of you.

Here are seven ways to become a more powerful listener:

  1. Set a simple intention that you’re going to connect with each person without obsessing over how you’ll do it. The more you focus on what they’re saying, the sooner an authentic connection opportunity will become clear.
  2. Acknowledge that this person has risked revealing themselves to you for a reason. See if you can honor the moment – and them – just for now without rushing forward to some other outcome.
  3. Make up a private symbolic ritual to alert yourself that for this moment, you’re turning off your impulse to multitask. Maybe it’s flipping over your smart phone or making a subtle shift in your posture.
  4. Most sales and negotiation courses teach “empathy” and “rapport” as techniques to get what you want from the other person. Try asking yourself what they’re here to teach you instead.
  5. Ask open ended questions to free up layers of meaning, but use them gently. Questions like “why?” or “how do you know that?” may sound like a challenge and cause the other person to shut down.
  6. If you feel a temptation to judge or label what you’re hearing too quickly, silently ask yourself “what else could this mean?” and gently bring your mind back to the conversation. This takes practice.
  7. Take yourself on an auditory field trip once in a while that’s got no conversational pressure attached to it and practice simple awareness of sound. Julian Treasure’s TED talk on listening is a great starting point.

These are just the seeds of another way of thinking, not an attempt to be glib about the complex science of human communication. At a minimum, being a more purposeful listener helps to limit the amount of unproductive noise in your life. It makes your relationships more meaningful and resilient. It adds clarity to your life and increases your influence. We may not be able to do much about our CAPACITY to listen, but there are things we can do to improve the QUALITY of the experience.

Question: How have important people in your life helped you to feel heard and understood?

4 replies on “The Hidden Risk of Tuning Out”

I cannot think of a particular answer to your question, except that my late son was one of the best listeners I have known. We were very close and I always felt heard and honored by him. He took it to the level of an art form. He had a stillness within and was immensely observant.

I remember when meditation went mainstream as the TM movement in the late 70s. So many people were finding that meditation markedly increased their success. There is no better practice for listening than to learn to still oneself. It is not that you necessarily stop the thoughts, but you learn to let them go without attaching particular meaning or necessity to them. The same goes for listening. When thoughts begin to invade, let them go. Since reading your article, I have been pondering the correlation between meditation and success perhaps being a direct result of refining one’s listening skills.

The other thing I meant to say here is not only are your skills improved for listening to others but I can see how you might attribute greater success in learning to be still to hear your own inner voice and listening to your intuition. How many times have you gone to someone with a quandary and found the answer coming from your own part of the conversation?

You’ve hit on something important here. I think that’s part of the gift we give when we listen with presence and generosity… creating a space for others where that recognition can happen.

Thanks for the comment, Karen! I think the key to all of it is not to be found in more book knowledge or techniques, but in learning to patiently enfold everything in the kind of stillness your son brought to his world and relationships.

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