Listening

Listening*

Here are some tips for active listening:

• Lean toward the person while they are talking to you.
• Look directly at them (instead of letting your eyes wander) while they are speaking.
• Listen with your eyes and ears. Look for non-verbal cues like crossed arms and legs, looking into space, clinched fists, fingers drumming on the table, wide gestures, the forced grin. Those cues usually indicate some level of stress.
• Don’t interrupt. Period. Just don’t do it. Don’t finish someone else’s sentences either.
• Ask clarifying questions. “Could you repeat that? How long have you been feeling that way? What else about that really bothers you? How often do you feel frustrated about the way I act?”
• Don’t plan your response while you are listening to them talk.
When they are finished, say something like, “Let me see if I can put that in my own words.”
• You’ll know you’ve been a successful listener when you can put their thoughts in your words to their satisfaction. After all, the bottom line on listening is not that you think you heard, but that they think you heard.

By the way, did you know that listening is good for your health.

• Listening says, “What matters to you matters to me.” Sometimes people do want advice. But often they just want to be listened to by someone who loves and cares about them.
What does active listening accomplish?

• Listening is a way of loving others.

• It says, “I want to understand and know you.”

• It comforts the brokenhearted, builds relationships, and encourages faith in God.

• Listening is also a means of learning the facts.

• Solomon, in Proverbs 18:13, warned that it is folly to answer a matter before hearing it.

• Most of all, listening to others should reflect our attentiveness toward God and His Word. God has so much He wants to teach us and tell us.

• Listening is hard work, and it takes time. It takes time to listen long enough to hear the other person’s true heart, so that if we do speak, we speak with gentle wisdom.

Oh, Lord, give us a loving heart and a listening ear. Amen

*Active listening*

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen.

Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention ….

A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

*Ray Pritchard’s advice on Listening*.

Psychologists talk about “active listening.” That means listening all the way through to the end of a statement. Which is not what most of us do.

The reason we don’t hear what the other person is saying is because we are too busy thinking about what we are going to say back to them.

Proverbs 18:13 says, “He who answers before listening–that is his folly and shame.”

Active listening means you focus on the other person, you listen to the whole statement, you let the meaning of it sink in, then you restate it in your own words.