7 Things You Will Lose if You Don’t Learn to Really Listen to Others

If we analyze our usual behavior, we see that our tendency is more to talk than to listen to others. This habit is harmful to us in several aspects, namely because it often takes us to situations of conflict and stress that can be avoided if we practice active listening.

On many occasions, we pretend, or think, we are listening to others. However, if we carefully analyze what we are doing, we will discover we are not really listening. Most of the time we are not listening to the things someone is telling us. Instead of doing that, we are just listening to our thoughts, we are lost in our mind.

We are not listening

Instead of listening to others, what we do sometimes (or most of the times?) — as soon as the other person begins to speak to us — is to:

• Start mentally judging what he is saying.
• Start thinking about arguments against what he is saying.
• Start looking for flaws in your reasoning.

When we speak more than we hear, that means we do not let the other person speak, and that is the same to say we are not really listening to him.

This is not just harmful for others — it is also bad for us.

What we lose by not listening

What do we lose when we don’t know how to listen?

1 — The message

If we do not learn to listen to others, if we do not practice active listening, we do not listen to what they are saying and therefore we do not learn from what is being communicated to us.

We will also not be in a position to receive what the other is transmitting to us. We will not capture all of your message that is transmitted through words, gestures, and expressions. Only if we adopt an attitude of active listening, we will be able to capture all the wealth of ideas and feelings that are trying to convey to us.

Only by listening carefully will we be able to receive everything that is being transmitted.

2 — The sharing

Without active listening, we will also not be able to achieve a state of true sharing of thoughts and emotions. We all remember some moments — probably rare — when we truly felt in perfect sync with someone.

Moments when we felt a perfect harmony and not because we were necessarily agreeing with what someone was saying to us, with his opinion. Because we felt that we were truly understanding what he wanted to say, we were managing to put ourselves in the position of others.

We probably think that these moments of true communion are rare and we cannot remember many. Why? Because we are not always able to adopt this attitude of openness towards others, of being available to listen and understand their point of view, to receive what they want to share.

If we adopt an open attitude towards the other, listening to the other, those moments of real communication will be more frequent.

3 — The assessment

Listening is different from agreeing. Knowing how to listen does not imply that we have to agree with what the other is saying. But it does require being available to the other and having the openness to understand what he wants to communicate to us.

As soon as we focus on fighting other people’s opinions, we enter into a loop of thoughts and we are no longer able to listen to others. We start to listen to just our thoughts and we create the perfect conditions for stressful situations to occur.

4 — The relationship

If we don’t listen, if we don’t keep our concentration on what the other is telling us, that person will feel that and we will also feel it. As a result, the time that was spent on that conversation will be lost, your relationship will not be stronger or better, both will feel that time was lost.

It may have exactly the opposite result. Would you trust more or less in someone you have just shared your problems with if you feel your voice was not heard?

If you are not feeling understood, how that makes you feel about that person?

5 — The details

If we are not practicing active listening, we will not pay attention to the details and, because of that, we may misunderstand what the other person is telling us.

As you may already have found out the hard way, a small detail can make all the difference in understanding a situation. If you are not listening to everything the other person is saying, you will miss some details and you may lose all the context.

The details are also one of the ways the other person will discover you are not paying attention. Even when she does not tell you that.

6 — The flexibility

If you don’t listen with attention when the other person stops talking and asks your opinion you will not have many chances to help her.

If you did not understand what she has been saying — because you were not truly listening — how can you offer a way out?

Many times people relate a problem and mention possible solutions even without even realizing it — if your focus was not in the conversation, you probably will miss that.

7 — The learning

Active listening it’s a win-win situation. The other person will feel better by being heard, but you will feel better for two reasons: by having learned something new and also because you were able to help your friend by listening to him.

These are all positive feelings. And these positive feelings will contribute to your higher self-esteem and to a higher self-image. Your relationship will become much stronger and that will have a positive impact also in you.

If you don’t listen, you are also losing opportunities to grow.

We can do better

We can greatly improve our lives if we learn to practice this new attitude of active listening if we practice being willing to listen and receive the ideas of others.

Only with this sincere openness will we be able to understand the ideas of others, only in this way will we be able to evaluate them completely and impartially.

Only with the practice of active listening, we can create the conditions to receive the complete message.

Only by learning to listen we can understand others — and feeling understood is one of the greatest satisfactions we all want to achieve.