I read an article recently and got inspired to share my thoughts on the topic. The article titles “Shut up and Listen” written by Dave Kerpen is available on LinkedIn. My current thoughts on silence included a poem by someone called “The Desiderata” ( Translated as Desired Things) starts “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” Followed by the all time repeated and overly used quote “Silence is Golden”. And of course lets not forget ” Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”.
Now that I have put out the quotes known to me …. may not be appropriate to the topic but those are the thoughts that passed my head anyway. What that out of the way, I shall move on. When we listen, we actually show respect to the other person that we are interested in what they are saying. At least superficially. What are we thinking on the back of the interested face ? Franklin Covey is quoted to have said something along the line that mostly we don’t listen with the intention to understand, but rather with the intention to reply. So there I felt is the answer. If we are listening but not understanding since our intention is to respond and not analyze and process WHAT & WHY the person is saying what he / she is saying …Kaputs. No use. So, I have learnt this formally today and I have started to make an active and planned intention to observe this principle going on. We have two eyes, two ears and ONE mouth for a reason 🙂
