The Most important Sentence

One thing that I believe is generally misunderstood is the idea of listening. No I am not talking about the ability to hear noises around us, I am talking listening on a critical level. The art of listening and truly understanding is one that takes a lot of time to truly get a grip on. Most people would often overestimate their ability to actually listen. The sentence or passage that stood out to me was one from the beginning of chapter 4 in our textbook. The section of the book states “In general, hearing is a physiological experience in which sound waves bounce off our eardrums. We usually ignore these sounds or take them for granted. We therefore take hearing to be a passive act, contrasted with the more active practice of listening. In this way, listening is a practice that requires our active attention and focus”(McRae pg.64). A lot of the time I would say in our conversations we would actually just be using the art of hearing. Just listening to what we want to hear in order to sound engaged and have something to say in return. The art of listening requires much more. One must digest and reflect back on what is being said. Listening to understand before returning a rebuttal that is thought out and appropriate. In class we spoke about RASA, or Receiving, Appreciating, Summarizing, Asking Questions. These are all for things to focus on when listening to understand. Often times to truly understand someone we must peel back the layers and get past the barriers to listening. Whether those barriers be external or internal it takes effort to listen past and through those barriers. We must also listen to non verbals as they can tell a whole different side to the story. With all of these factors coming into play, the art of listening can be bogged down quickly. It takes a decent amount of practice to really get a handle on these outside factors. This chapter opened my eyes to how much I was missing myself in relation to listening as an act and a trainable skill. I know I have a lot of skill to gain, but know I know what to work on and how to get a batter wrap on the art of listening.