#PositiveStories #Motivation

Today, I will write about a skill and it's importance in life. This skill does change lives and I am writing out of personal experience.

I am referring to ACTIVE LISTENING

One might wonder what is this active listening. We always listen right..

Well, it turns out we miss a lot of information in active listening. Our emotions would be working overtime within us. We would be drafting our responses and preparing for the choice of words to be told.

In short, there is a commotion in our brains while we PRETEND to listen

ACTIVE LISTENING is all about giving a dedicated focus and attention to the other speaker. It needs one to be present in that place at that point of time. Key word is PRESENT. I would say this is again once more practical example of ICHIGO ICHIE , the Japanese concept

Active listening involves 3 simple concepts. After listening to the speaker,
1. Duplicate - Just repeat what the other person said
2. Understand - Interpret what you understood
3. Acknowledge - Check if your interpretation matches with what speaker wanted to convey

A simple experiment is to blind-fold 2 people and make them sit in front of each other. They are expected to converse. The fact that one of the senses is blocked, puts onus on the other major sense, hearing.

If one watches the conversation, the richness and depth of the conversation will be simply amazing. You would be surprised how much of this conversation is actually retained also.

For communication engineers, this is a classic case of good full duplex communication

In general, whether its personal life or professional one, active listening plays a major role in avoid misconceptions and can improve your productivity drastically.

I will share some examples in coming days. Hope you liked this.

/end

cc: @Prashanths05 Sir, as promised