September Blog Post: Listening Compassionately

We live in a world where are surrounded by sounds. "Hearing is a physiological experience in which sound waves vibrate our eardrums(Chris McRae)." We have the choice to ignore these sounds we hear and usually we do. By doing this we take these sounds for granted.

  Do you hear me? Are you listening? 

We all at one point in our lives have been asked either both or one of these two questions. The difference between the two can be easily missed. What is the difference? Aren't they the same? The answer is no, they are not the same. There is passive and active listening. Hearing has been taken to be a passive act. Listening has been treated as the active act.

After going over this in class, I have tried to focus more on active listening and really retaining information that I am receiving, whether that is in class, with a coach, or with a friend. I try to avoid being a pseudo listener especially when I am in a conversation I am not interested in. By doing this, I have found it much more easy to recognize when I was passively listening to something or someone. Before I had been introduce to listening compassionately, I did not compare or even think twice about if I was being an active or passive listener. My girlfriend would tell me at times, "you aren't listening to me." I would argue that I am listening and repeat what she was telling me. To me this was listening, but I realize now that to actually listen compassionately means to also understand or attempt to understand. When she would tell me this, she pointed out that my responses were too plain for me to be actually listening. She would tell me, "You hear what I am saying to you but you aren't listening to what I am saying." 

This might not seem to be a big deal, but imagine how many relationships, friendships, and families could have fallen apart because of passive listening. Our nations has a problem with this exact idea of listening. We as citizens and overall as human beings, take advantage or selective hearing. When it comes to politics dealing with our President, we chose to hear what best fits our point of view of what we believe is right. Think about it, do you care for any great ideas the other candidate may have? Most of the time if we do care for their ideas it is to attack the ideas that are opposing our own personal view. Listening compassionately can prevent conflicts and create more unity in the nation. Look at the riots over the black lives matter movement. Look at the unlawful killings of American citizens. Look at the misunderstandings that end relationships and lives. Most of which were sparked because of passive listening rather than listening compassionately and understanding. This nation is looking for someone and something that can change it and make it better when it lies inside of us all. The act of listening compassionately can change more than we can imagine. 

September Blog Post

"My mom had always fostered this idea in me that I was brave, which actually created a lot of anxiety. For years I was daunted by the expectations, as though I had to live up to her idea of who she thought I was (although I knew that I was anything but)."

Before this quote Gomez talked about how he had this perception of life, he was always scared of life. Scared that he would never make friends, never get a girlfriend, or that he wasn't smart enough. He was a guy filled with anxieties, his mom though, told him he was brave. I believe she did this to be positive, to be an encourager. Unfortunately though this only heightened his anxieties. It sounds like he never told his mom though that her telling him that made him feel that way. This reminded me of Goffman's Stage  Metaphor. The metaphor is that we have a front of stage and back of stage. The front of stage is the self that we present to others, the one that we show. Then the back of stage is the hidden self, the self that we only show to a select few or no one. For Gomez his scared side was something he chose to leave in his back stage. His reason was that he was expected to be brave by his mother, because it a norm for boys to be brave. In our society boys are not expected to be leaders, they need to be assertive, and not at all timid. These socially acceptable norms caused Gomez to experience anxiety and made him feel unworthy to be himself. Unfortunately these feeling that he was experiencing are far too common with many people.

When I read this article it reminded me of boys of the LDS faith. Many of them are expected to serve missions when they turn 18. The religion treats it like a right of passage and if you don't go on one you are seen as failure to the religious community. Growing up in Boise there are many Mormon people, and grow up with many boys who were Mormon. Some of them didn't want to go on missions or didn't feel ready. Many of those boys despite those doubts went, they also never told anyone that they didn't want to go, they keep that a part of their backstage. They are afraid to speak up against the norms of their community, because the backlash would be so powerful. Not only would it affect the individual who decides not to go, but also the family. Many other people apart of the LDS community then blame the  family. They believe the family didn't teach their child well enough to feel comfortable to go on a mission. The feeling of not only wanting to go on this mission would make everyone involved feeled lesser.

These norms constructed either by society as a whole or organizations cause individuals to feel ashamed of themselves. This means that people start to become afraid to share how they feel and push emotions and ideas to their backstage. I believe that society is moving to a more forward thinking place. Where we are more willing to accept those who are thinking against the social norm. Organizations like religion may not be moving at the pace of those who are not apart them. I hope though that we do come to place where we can accept people for who they are and how they are feeling.

September blog post- Lauren Abel

Just because you can hear doesn’t mean that you are listening.

Throughout the first month in the semester we have discussed that listening is a crucial and yet understudied part of communication.  We are constantly hearing things throughout our day to day life.  Anywhere you go we are able to hear things, whether we listen to those things or not is an entirely different topic. Hearing is the physical act of noise entering our ears and being processed by our brain.  Listening is our ability to hear that noise and genuinely understand or process.  Hearing is much more natural than listening and sometimes we have to remind ourselves to listen.  Hearing is something that we can always do but actually listening to what we hear is the real challenge. 

The example that is very prevalent in American’s lives right now is the presidential election.  I strongly believe that a huge part of the issues that America is facing and is going to face is everybody’s lack of ability to listen.  Something that is really big in the news right now is the presidential debate.  I didn’t watch the debate for very long because it was so argumentative and petty.  I think that there is something to be said for the people who have different view points and different stances on an issue yet are able to respect each other enough to listen to what the other one has to say.  If politicians and leaders of this country would not just hear each other but truly listen as oppose to just waiting for their turn to talk, I think that a lot more would get done. 

On a much smaller scale every individual would benefit from practicing this trait.  It is something that I believe needs to be a conscience decision. I do not think it comes naturally especially if we do not care what the other person is saying.  Somebody’s ability to listen can often be effected by context.  If we agree with what the person is saying or we are passionate about what they have to say we are much more likely to listen to them and focus on what they are saying.  The challenge comes when we are trying to listen to somebody that we might disagree with or not like what they have to say.  Our culture can be selfish in this way and communication can be effected by it.  As we have discussed, communication is something that is in all aspects of life and effective communication stems from effective listening.  There are lots of ways to be an effective listener but there are just as many ways to be an ineffective listener and people, especially political leaders, must consciously strive to be more effective listeners. 

Tim Parten Blog Sept

Voice is an important aspect of communication. According to the authors of Communication A Critical/Cultural Introduction, “how you share your ideas with a given group is shaped by how you think you can impress those ideas.” You have to judge the audience and chose the correct tone of voice. To be a good communicator you have to evaluate the best way to get your purpose across to the audience. When I was a coach for youth wrestling it was hard to get all the rowdy kids to listen to me. I would have to use a strong loud voice for them to listen to me. They needed to know who was the boss in the wrestling room and that I was the authoritative figure in the room. Using an authoritative tone of voice was the best way to get my audience to listen to what I was trying to say. But if my audience was my elderly grandparents I wouldn’t be using an authoritative tone of voice anymore. I would choose a much gentler and kinder tone because that is a more appropriate tone of voice to have them listen to me. A lot of times that people aren’t effective communicators or people don’t listen to them is because they don’t use the right tone of voice. When you want to be heard, you have to be loud. When you want to make peace with someone you need to be gentler and calmer.

            There are some public speakers in our history that are known for the voices. Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who speeches made everyone fight for what they believed in. He is known for his voice as being this loud booming voice. But when he spoke he brought peace also. He spoke loud but he also had this tone to him that was peaceful. In a website I found called Business Know How, it talks about how Martin had emotion in his tone of voice. His audience really felt he cared about what he was talking about and was invested into what he was saying. I think this is important because he was able to connect to his audience by using emotion during a time that was filled with emotion. Ronald Reagan is another example of a great public speaker who used the correct tone of voice to get the attention of his audience. He was known for being a loud powerful speaker but also he also knew what tone of voice to use for his audience. In New York Daily News they talk about how Ronald Reagan kept his speeches simple. He didn’t have this arrogant voice. He spoke to his audience about issues in a normal simple tone of voice. That is why so many people thought he was such an effective communicator. He didn’t try to sound smart and use terms people had no idea about. He spoke in a way that regular people would understand.                                                       

Tone of voice is one of the most important things when delivering in communication. Your audience can range from a five-year-old kid to an eighty-year-old grandma. You have to know the tone of voice that is going to be the most efficient to get your point across. Without the correct tone of voice there is a high chance your audience won’t listen to you and won’t be able to connect with you. That is why Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan are some of the best known communicators in history. They were able to identify the tone of voice needed to connect with their audience and to get their point across. It’s a skill that makes us effective communicators and is important in the process of communication.

           

Warren, J. T., & Fassett, D. L. (2011). Communication: A critical/cultural introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

The Courage to Live Consciously - Steve Pavlina. (2015). Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/10/the-courage-to-live-consciously/

Thompson, F. (2011). Thompson: Why Reagan was the Great Communicator. Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/made-ronald-reagan-great-communicator-u-s-senator-fred-thompson-reflects-article-1.133489

September post - Constantly Changing Identity

 By Emma Hyyppä

“Our selves, our identities, are always in process of becoming. Who we are is never fixed or static but always in motion.” (Warren, Fassett, 2011, p. 74). I think that this statement is very important, because it encourages the reader to not forcefully change who they are. The change will come over time, but nobody stays exactly the same for their whole life. First I thought this statement was strange: I thought that one’s identity is a pretty stable thing that doesn’t really change at all. I was very interested to find more information about the continuity of one’s identity.

Even though this sentence from our textbook surprised me a little bit, I totally agree with it. Personally, I have noticed that my identity and self-concept have changed over time, especially these past two years that I have been a student at Boise State University. I think that my self-concept depends a lot on the context, location and the people I spend time with. Identity is closely connected to one’s ethnicity and culture. My identity defines how I communicate verbally and nonverbally. Warren and Fassett discuss how power and culture affect on the formation of one’s identity. I identify as white, but as I’m not an United States citizen, and therefore don’t fall into the stereotypical perceptions of my race. By power, Warren and Fassett mean white male power that controls our culture. Textbook mentions a term ”two axes of power”, which means race and gender (p. 72).

An external link that I want to share with everyone is the Personal Identity episode of Crash Course series on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqDnLNRuSc). I enjoy watching this and other videos from this channel, because they make learning easier. In this video, I like a statement ”The thing that makes you you is the non-physical stuff – your consciousness”. However, we don’t maintain the same consciousness everyday in our lives. The video doesn’t dive into the cultural aspect of identity, but it has a good main point that identity is formed by several different factors and created in one’s head – and is going to change constantly.