Listening

Watch out, I've been musing again.  This time I've been musing about listening and how it's become a lost art.  As I've been watching people interact, and in my own interactions, I've been trying to stay aware of being in the moment.  Not thinking but listening. Really trying to understand what the person speaking is saying and feeling.  What have I discovered?  Listening isn't easy. We are so programmed to finish other's thoughts or overlay their feelings with our own.  Seriously, how often have you asked someone a question and you get everything BUT the answer? I wonder how often I've done that myself!!  It's a simple example but start paying attention, I bet you'll be surprised how often people don't just answer without interjecting their opinion.

This listening exercise has been uncomfortable for me.  I've become painfully aware of how often ME, MY, MINE crops into my head while someone else is talking.  They'll be telling a story and when they are finished, instead of addressing what they've honestly said, I start with the 'well, when I experienced that'....fill in the blank here.  The point is that when I'm with friends/family and they are telling me something I want to retrain myself to address what they've shared and NOT what my experience was or even my opinion. To just listen and reflect back.  In a funny way it really is an exercise, my mind hasn't been used this way in a long time and I need to retrain it.  

I've finally updated by GoodReads account.  Next year I'm determined to enter books as I read them and not do it all at once at the end of the year.  Along those lines, I've finished the first two books in the Warriors of Poseidon series by Alyssa Day.  Although I've started reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I plan to continue reading the WoP series at the same time. The Power of Now is not a book to read in one fell swoop so it will probably take me a while to get through and digest it.  Meanwhile, there are so many other books to read!  I'll be multi tasking with books for a while!