Seems to be a theme in my life these days - learning to listen well. Even when we do this well, we can always learn to listen better. \u00a0I have written about learning to be present in the moment in other posts but specifically I want to explore the aspect of listening.<\/p>\n
Listening, truly listening and being present to other people and actually hearing what they are trying to say is increasingly difficult in a very noisy world. \u00a0Not only is it noisy, specific noises constantly compete for our attention. \u00a0This forces us into a situation where we live in a constant posture of multi-tasking which inhibits our listening and our ability to do any of the many things we may be doing at once - well.<\/p>\n
According to recent research, cognitive scientist Dr. David E. Mayer suggests that multi-tasking actually slows us down not speeds us up and increases the likelihood of making mistakes. \u00a0The emerging research indicates we perform better - quantitatively and qualitatively - when we actually focus on one thing at a time.<\/p>\n
In this light, there are a number of new syndromes emerging to describe the unhealthy multi-tasking. \u00a0Continuous \u00a0Partial Attention<\/strong> (CPA) describes how people continue to text-message, facebook, and email while supposedly in a conversation with another person. \u00a0Surfer Voice<\/strong> is the tone we take while on the phone with another person and still continuing to surf the net, read and reply to emails. \u00a0 The tell-tale sign is the clack, clack, clack of the keyboard in the background. This seems so ironic because these tools all came with grand promises of helping us be better connected with people and more productive.<\/p>\n To learn to truly listen we need to cultivate three specific disciplines:<\/p>\n I encourage and equip my clients to cultivate these disciplines in deliberate, daily way. \u00a0I also have found these disciplines increase the qualitative aspects of my life. \u00a0There is no shortage of volume of things coming at me but to be able to experience many of them in a deeper way, to discover God in and through my day and to savour life instead of rush through it.<\/p>\n\n
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