Listening Challenge

During the course of this past week and a half or so that I have been at least aware of this assignment, I started to reflect to some degree on how much I actually listen to people as opposed to trying to get them to listen to me. I have felt for the longest time (anywhere between most of my life and several years, to be exact) that very few to no one at all really listens to me. But as I have been reflecting on this lesson on listening, perhaps I should be doing a whole lot more listening than I really do and in doing so, stop being so selfish and altogether stop thinking only about myself so many times.
Since I seem to be so horrible at listening to other people and try to get so many others listen to me without any good motive for them to do so anyways, I tried to not only focus on just one person. At the same time, I didn’t even know of just one person that was close or important to me in person here in Rexburg. I’ve only been here a couple months, so I couldn’t get too close to anyone in so little time other than a couple roommates and friends I just made recently.
Nevertheless, I pursued my goal to seek to listen much more to these fantastic individuals. However, as I sought to do so, many of them seemed to close up a lot more than they would normally do so, as if they had picked up on my trying to listen to them more and made things more difficult for me to understand what had happened to them, what they thought, etc. I found that people seemed to answer the questions I asked as a good listener to understand what they were saying didn’t lead to further discussion of their thoughts and feelings and to clarify the message they meant to get across. I found out instead that these people gave off short answers that cut the discussion much shorter than it usually would have and brought it altogether to a halt.
The majority of these negative side effects that I have discussed with Sister Embree have resulted in the conclusion that perhaps many of these individuals much prefer to keep to themselves and are more comfortable at being the listeners. Another factor I came to was that the things they have talked about in this past week weren’t all that important to them to go into such large detail other than normal day-to-day activities that in general aren’t too interesting to many people to discuss – no matter what conditions they went through or felt perhaps. I also figured that I simply make big deals of such small things or that I, compared to many other people, love to talk about every little thing in my day and how I feel just about all the time. Perhaps the people I have come to love around me have adapted to this and have accustomed somewhat to being the listener.
I especially do try to listen to people when the circumstance shows obvious seriousness. Very few opportunities gave way to my efforts at bettering my listening skills this week. On both short occasions with two different people, I would try out the listening methods taught in the video by asking clarifying questions, stop day dreaming (which I do all too often to the extent I seriously think I have A.D.D.), and make sure I didn’t hoard the conversation or make it about me like Brian Reagon’s “Me Monster.” I made sure the person was acknowledged, appreciated, valued, and understood. I made sure I understood what they had meant to get across and that I was sure I knew how to answer their questions they meant to ask – whether they were content or relational messages they meant to get across.
I found out that it was extremely hard to not to “hoard” the conversation and make it about myself. I found out that I have such a tendency to try to relate to the person with my own personal experiences to help them not feel alone in their circumstances and help them in their situations as I have been helped. I found out that I go off on many different tangents in doing so, telling stories, telling jokes to cheer them up and help them understand what happen and what to expect. I discovered that when I do that it helps sometimes, but that’s more when the person is just as well willing to listen, but it’s hardly ever the case when someone is distraught over something they just went through which is more often the case. I found I need to hold my tongue a lot more and listen much more than I actually do. I found people ask for my advice and help much more often when I do that and I understand much better their dilemma and how to better condense my answers to address their needs.