How do Our Thoughts Impact Effective Listening?
How do Our Thoughts Impact Effective Listening?
What is effective listening?
It is imperative to understand that Effective Listening is not hearing, telling, or talking. This is probably opposite to what your experience has been.
According to Free Dictionary, listening is to give your attention to a sound or conversation. Effective means showing up in such a way as to produce a strong impression or result.
The impression that you want people to have as you communicate with them, is they feel safe and understood.
The result or outcome is that you build a bridge into their world. They bring down their walls of resistance, co-operation and productivity increases, and they give you their co-operation, productivity. They work out of passion instead of compliance. In the case of our loved ones, they give us their hearts and trust.
How do our thoughts impact this process?
Look at it this way. If you had glasses that reflected on the lens your thoughts, feelings, expectations, and agendas, and whomever you were talking with could see what was written, and feel the emotion behind it, how would it impact your communication?
This is exactly what happens. Each of us has what are called mirror neurons. These neurons are located in the Fight or Flight center of our minds and fire at twice the speed as other neurons.
I like to call them environmental detectors or in situations they may be referred to as BS detectors. They quickly pick up everything that is going on with what you see, feel and hear. Before you can blink these neurons, start sending chemical reactions that create feelings and emotions. People can feel weather or not you are genuine, truly interested in them, if you care, and if there are hidden agendas.
If you are packing around the negative emotions from past experiences, and having all kinds of mind chatter going on, it pulls you away from showing up as genuine, interested, empathetic and intuitive. Sensing this, the mirror neurons flip the button and their walls of resistance go up.
You also have these neurons and what you feel is the splash back of their resistance and rejection. We do not like this feeling. This happens, as an example, when someone approaches a potential client with thoughts of the money that will come from the sale, or when they act like they care but it is surface only.
