One concept from throughout the semester that I feel can be used in further discussion is to be mindful in terms of when it comes to guidelines for effective listening. It is central to effective listening. According to our text, "mindfulness is a choice to be wholly present in an experience. It requires that we put aside preoccupations and preconceptions to attend fully to what is happening in the moment"(Wood, 2010, pg.164). I feel and believe this concept is one I will use on a daily basis now and for the future because as we learned in the text, listening is just as important even more important than talking. I have always been the type of person who always likes to talk and I also like to listen, however I am not that great of a mindful listener. I feel there are times depending who I am talking to and who is talking to me, I may not be fully paying attention to everything they are saying. That can sometimes lead to conflict or confusion because that person may have said something really important and because I was not mindfully listening, completely paying attention to what they were saying, I missed out on something that either could have been helpful to know or something that was important to that person and it seemed as if I ignored them, which is not the case.
I want to become a more mindful listener because if I am not fully present in the moment, in the future if I am at a job and someone important is talking for example, I may end up missing an important point they made because I was not fully (mindfully) listening.
I think if maybe if this was emphasized more by doing an activity or assignment where we could test ourselves by conducting an experiment on if we listen to a conversation or a speech or lecture mindfully versus take part in certain nonlistening tactics, to see the difference and compare and contrast them, and to see what works and does work. Overall, I feel listening is a crucial element in any given relationship.
Dear little miss daisy,
ReplyDeleteThis topic really helped me out, as many others I presume. I agree, this would be a perfect one to elaborate further on. Your right, mindful listening is central to effective listening. Im not sure if it was in the text or somewhere else, but I read that "listening is a process." It is crazy to think that it takes so much to really listen, but it is true. We have to go through certain steps to mindfully listen to what someone says. An activity or assignment to test ourselves by how well of mindful listeners we are, would have been really helpful and cool. Then after the results, we could see what we did right, what was wrong, and improve.
Amazing post! Have a great Christmas!
-lead_succeed
Hi little miss daisy,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that mindful listening is definitely worth further discussing. Listening is a vital tool in not only communicating with others, but it is also useful in helping us communicate our own ideas to others. Being a mindful listener means that you are in tune with your audience and can pick up on useful cues. There have been many situations that I have witnessed and been a part of myself that leads to conflict because one or both parties are not listening to one another. Missing important information can completely transform the tone of a conversation and can lead to confusion and ineffective communication. Thanks for sharing this post!