Recently in Listening Category

Goldsmith writes:

"...listening requires the discipline to concentrate. So I've developed a simple exercise to test my clients' listening skills. Close your eyes. Count slowly to 50 with one simple goal: You can't let another thought intrude into your mind. You must concentrate on maintaining the count.

Sounds simple, but incredibly, more than half of my clients can't do it. Somewhere around 20 or 30, nagging thoughts invade their brain. They think about a problem at work, or their kids, or how much they ate for dinner the night before. This may sound like a concentration test, but it's really a listening exercise. After all, if you can't listen to yourself (someone you presumably like) as you count to 50, how will you ever be able to listen to another person?"

Read more here.

Author, Margaret J. Wheatley, give us her experiences with good listening in this article from one of my all-time favorite publications, The Institute of Noetic Science's' Shift Magazine (formerly called IONS).

When I experience good listening, I literally feel tingling in my body. A lot like the tingling I get when I eat a decadent chocolate eclair or great sushi. It's a phyiscal pleasure without the calories!

What have you experienced from good listening?

The Chinese character for "listening attentively" consists of five characters:
- the character for ear
- for standing still
- for ten
- for eye, and
- for heart and mind.

Chinese characters are really picturegrams: they are pictures that have evolved to describe a certain situation. Therefore, listening attentively means:

"When in stillness, one listens with the heart. The ear is worth ten eyes."

-- Zen Master Dae Gak, "The Practice of Listening"

I like the character and concept so much, I had it drawn by a Chinese calligrapher -- on the streets of New York City -- and had it framed. It hangs on the wall of my bedroom.

The Senses Boiled Down to One:

Seeing is really just the eyes listening
Smelling is really just the nose listening
Tasting is really just the tongue listening
Touching is really just the hands listening
That means all this listening provides input for the soul

When you listen, you pick up data from all over your environment. This data is a wealth of information for making decisions, learning, changing and more. Listen! If you believe in listening as much as I do, or at least want reminders of listening delivered to your email, I suggest subscribing to the following email newsletters. Listening resources:
1. ILA - International Listening Association. Click on "Qoutations about Listening" and then subscribe to their newsletter.
2. This guy is prolific.. Click on "E-mail News" from the left-hand side menu. He should be blogging.
3. This one's sporadic -- it's published only four times a year -- but can give some good tips and techniques. It's called Highgain.
4. Listening Leaders also has an ezine.

Please let me know if you enjoy them.