Listening

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Listening is important. It allows us to hear and understand what other people are telling us, and in doing so two things happen: we start learning what the other person is all about, and we enter into a meaningful interaction with another person.

And talking about ‘listening’, we often understand this as something we do with our ears... But there is a lot more to it!

Just in an interaction with another person the words that are said are only a very small part of the communication. As it turns out we get a lot more information from the intonation the words are spoken with and their body language ~ the manner in which they move, whether they make eye-contact or keep looking away... All these things turn out to be equally as, if not more important than the actual words spoken.

Of course the words are important as well, as they hold the content of the actual message.
And again, they can tell us a whole lot more than just that. There are people who approach everything they talk about from a negative. Recounting the things that don’t work, that cannot be done ~ rather than speaking about how they are going to make things work. On the other hand, there are people who approach things from a positive. Sometimes even to the point that when everything in their lives seems to break apart ~ they just look at you smiling and happily say: ‘What a wonderful learning opportunity have I been given on my path through life’.

Neither extreme ~ be it the negative approach or the overly positive approach ~ are entirely realistic.
Even when you cannot see it at that moment, there usually are things that are beautiful or positive in life next to the things that don’t work in your life. And it is okay to permit yourself to have a ‘bad-hair-day’ every once in a while when things are not working out the way you would want them to...

All of this means that perhaps the most important thing to listen to is ourselves.
When we listen how we put things into words; when we become aware of how we carry ourselves and move about when life happens ~ it can give us information on how we really feel about whatever is happening...
Sometimes it may show us that ~ while things that are happening are working out and our plans are coming together ~ we still have a slightly negative attitude about it. This can be because we are so busy that we are in an overload situation; or perhaps because we are not quite as certain about the plan as we thought we were.

Either way, that little voice inside of us can help us out.
And all we need to do is to listen to it...
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