are you a good listener?

i just wanted everyone's take on this.

i don't think i am a particularly good listener. i hear what the other person is saying but my mind runs a million miles either trying to fix the problem, thinking about if i relate to it or how it affects me. i know this is selfish on my part and i'm certainly not proud of it. i would like to change it.

are you are good listener? do you have any tips on how i can get out of my head long enough to be in the moment with the person who is talking to me?

I would say I'm a flawless listener. But it might have to do with the fact that I'm immune to boredom and only get impatient with incompetence.

Posted by Sugarfoot
I'm not that great of a listener when I'm not in the mood to be talking. I can be listening, then I realize I've totally zoned out on the person and have no idea what they're talking about.

Only advice I have is to go in a room without TV, books, or anything else to distract you and be in the mood to be talking.

thanks sugarfoot. i know what you mean about zoning out (i've sometimes found myself literally walking away from someone while they were mid-sentence because my mind was elsewhere) but i can talk and have a conversation at the best of times. my problem is actually shutting up long enough to listen and when i do hear what they are saying, stop thinking about myself for a moment. i want to be able to almost leave my self (ego, id and super-ego) at the door and just concentrate on what the other person is telling me, especially if they are relating something that is meaningful to them.

now i think about it, i am a terrible listener.

Posted by tiziani
It's like day and night with me quite literally. In the night I am not in the mood objective. I like to either relax or try and relate my experience to get some kind of relatability out of it for me.

In the day I am able to remove myself from the equation, I learned this early on from my mother as it was also part of her job at work to be able to do this well.

thanks tiz, i'll try that. 🙂

Posted by tiziani
It's the opposite actually. To be able to listen without giving into the temptation to relate it to personal experiences of our own is key to being a good listener. It's really important to go without the temptation to put ourselves in another person's shoes as there's a whole world beyond our own limited experiences happening around us every day.

I was just saying I'm a terrible listener at night because I switch off and want to indulge in relating my own experiences to the conversation.

I unfortunately don't have any concise advice but here's another child of a therapist (like me!) Who wrote a decent article:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/molly-brodak/2014/01/the-myth-of-the-good-listener/

Hopefully that helps, Jeane.

bookmarked. that's brilliant. just what i needed. thank you.

thanks everyone for your comments. 🙂

I'm a bad listener. I tend to only remember the stuff I'm interested in.

If you ask too many questions, I'd just reply to the last one since that's the only thing I'd remember.

i'm surprised that most of us consider ourselves bad listeners. i would have guessed the opposite.

i'm not sure though if poor listening skills is a libra thing or a human thing.