Listening skills facts

Introduction

The video Ted Talks located on you tube describes how effective your listening skills can be if they are used correctly.  The very first message in Julian’s Treasure video is that many of us are losing our listening and that we only spend 60% of our time listening and we are not very good at it we only retain 25% of that information we hear.

Ways to listen better

Ted explains that listening means making meaning from sound and it is a process of extraction.  Techniques used to do this is pattern techniques that we us to distinguish noise from signals and then there are a range of filters down to what we actually pay attention.  Attention is very important in sound.

I agree with what he said in his main message because many of us do fail to listen to what the other person is saying and we tend to end up with a completely different meaning of what the speaker is trying to say and many tend to ignore crucial facts about what is going on around them.  By ignoring crucial facts when it comes to listening we are not only affecting our life, but also the life of everyone else around us.

Five Simple exercises to increase listening skills

1.       Silence- taking three minutes a day of silence to recalibrate in order to hear the quit again.

2.       The mixer-Go in a noisy environment listens and listen to see how many channels of sound you can hear.

3.       Savoring-enjoying mumbling sounds of one thing such as a dryer.

4.       Listening positions and filters- Move your listening position to different places using active and passive, reductive and expansive, and critical and empathetic listening positions. Filters- culture, language, values, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and intentions.

5.       Using the acronym RASA which stands for

Receive meaning pay attention to the person,

Appreciate making little noises like hm, oh, ok

Summarize using the word so is very important

Ask- ask questions after words to be sure you interpret the meaning of what is being said.

I used one of the five simple exercises in order to improve my listening skills.  I tried the mixer by listening in a noisy environment you can channel sounds you hear.  You can hear many of different sounds at once and we only take in so much of that sound at once.  So it all depends where we channel our brains.  I could hear machines and I could also hear others trying to tell me something from a distance.  I just kept on listening to what I was hearing and I then started to have many memories of life situations that I have not heard in a very long time.

Conclusion

I think that these listening habits could improve my life by getting a better understanding of what is expected of me, what others are telling me, and what needs to be done in the future.  I plan to do this by asking the appropriate questions needed in order to understand what is being said.