Listening - do we really do it?

I've been reading a lot lately about listening. Really listening. Interesting topic that I read on today. It was about listening when you have emotional baggage. It's more about how we let our own issues interfere with our listening.

I've been sitting here and wondering if - and how - I have let my own emotional pain affect how I listen to others. Do I? I hope not, but yet, I'm sure that I have. Just as I am sure you have. Sometimes our 'listening' is affected by our indifference to the situation. Or to the person.

Can you think of a time when someone was talking to you and all you could think at the time was "would you hurry up and spit it out so that I can leave this conversation?" I know I have, unfortunately. Sometimes we have even family members we would like to turn a deaf ear to, especially when it's all about them.

But when it is a topic we are interested in, or a person we enjoy listening to, we could sit for hours and talk and share and listen. The thought just occurred to me that many bartenders - and hairdressers are the people who we tend to share the most with. Since I don't go to bars, my poor hairdresser gets to listen to me whine, rejoice, complain, or just be funny. I usually tease him that he knows more about me than I know myself. But then, how much is he really listening to me? How many times is he so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he doesn't really hear me? Yes, that happens too. Since I've been going to him for about 15 years, we both know a lot about each other.

This is from a book I'm reading about carrying emotional weight when sharing with others.....
Nearly everyone has emotional filters that prevent him or her from hearing certain things that other people say. Your past experiences, both positive and negative, color the way you look at life and shape your expectations. And particularly strong experiences, such as traumas or incidents from childhood, can make you tend to react strongly whenever you perceive you are in a similar situation. As Mark Twain once said, “A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. He’ll never sit on a cold stove either. From then on, that cat just won’t like stoves.”

If you’ve never worked through strong past emotional experiences, you may be filtering what others say through those experiences. If you’re preoccupied with certain topics, if a particular subject makes you defensive, or if you frequently project your point of view onto others, you may need to work through your issues before you can become an effective listener.

Sigmund Freud stated, “A man with a toothache cannot be in love,” meaning that the toothache doesn’t allow him to notice anything other than his pain. Similarly, anytime a person has an ax to grind, the words of others are drowned out by the sound of the grindstone.

So - I read that and I thought about how true it is. Especially about the 'man with a toothache cannot be in love' statement. When our pain is great, we aren't going to be truly listening.

And sometimes, we need to listen with the heart, versus with just our ears.

Hmmmmm..... I'm listening now with my ears and hear my boss just walk in so off I go! Hope you have a great day!

Blessings!