The concept which I was very intrigued by in the book and in class was the idea of listening. On page 65 of the textbook, the authors explain, "if listening is a stance, then we can begin to move away from thinking of listening exclusively in terms of the physiological act of hearing and move toward thinking of listening as a way of fully engaging with others" (Warren and Fassett, 65). To me, this means listening is so much more than just hearing. Hearing is just the sounds your ears are picking up, where as listening requires action and diving into another person's dialogue and trying to understand another person's words to try to make a connection with them.
I took a class on listening last semester and it never fails to amaze me just how little we notice that we are listening and not actually retaining what we have heard. Listening is such a crucial and important portion of our lives; in words lies the key to connection and understanding. In this TedTalk that I really enjoy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saXfavo1OQo, and if you have the time you should take a look, William Ury says listening is, "absolutely necessary, but often overlooked." He goes in to talk about how in negotiations you have to be willing to listen in order to connect and come to a mutual consensus. What we sometimes tend to forget is in order to be heard, we have to be willing to fully engage and listen to others.
Listening is so important because without it how do we expect to ever create genuine and authentic connections with others and be able to come to an agreement? Think of all of the different things we can learn if we are willing to stop talking for a short period, and just listen. If we focus on actively participating in other people's words and ideas we could come across a huge breakthrough!
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