(#Ad) You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy is a book about the importance of listening. The author argues that we are not listening as well as we should, and that this is having a negative impact on our relationships, our work, and our society. She provides a wealth of evidence to support her claims, including research from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology.
Murphy also offers practical advice on how to become a better listener. She suggests that we should focus on the speaker, avoid distractions, and ask questions. She also emphasizes the importance of being open-minded and non-judgmental.
You’re Not Listening is an engaging and informative book that will make you think about the way you listen. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to improve their communication skills.
Top 35 Best Quotes from “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters”
The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a journalist is that everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you. You’re not listening.
The truth is, we only become secure in our convictions by allowing them to be challenged. Confident people don’t get riled by opinions different from their own, nor do they spew bile online by way of refutation. Secure people don’t decide others are irredeemably stupid or malicious without knowing who they are as individuals.
To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know.
While people often say, “I can’t talk right now,” what they really mean is “I can’t listen right now.
People in long-term relationships tend to lose their curiosity for each other. Not necessarily in an unkind way; they just become convinced they know each other better than they do. They don’t listen because they think they already know what the other person will say.
Listening begets listening. Someone who has been listened to is far more likely to listen to you.
To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it.
A study by psychologists at the University of Essex found that the mere presence of a phone on the table—even if it’s silent—makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected and disinclined to talk about anything important or meaningful, knowing if they do, they will probably be interrupted.
Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction.
If people seem simple and devoid of feeling, that only means you don’t know them well enough.
If you start listening to everyone as you would scan headlines on a celebrity gossip website, you won’t discover the poetry and wisdom that is within people.
Listen to the opposing side as if they were going to have to write a newspaper or magazine article about them.
Hearing is passive. Listening is active. The best listeners focus their attention and recruit other senses to the effort.
To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth. Good listeners know understanding is not binary.
In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people.
People tend to regret not listening more than listening and tend to regret things they said more than things they didn’t say.
Social media has given everyone a virtual megaphone to broadcast every thought, along with the means to filter out any contrary view.
Evolution gave us eyelids so we can close our eyes but no corresponding structure to close off our ears. It suggests listening is essential to our survival.
What is love but listening to and wanting to be a part of another person’s evolving story?
Relying on the past to understand someone in the present is doomed to failure.
Not listening because you don’t agree with someone, you are self-absorbed, or you think you already know what someone will say makes you a bad listener. But not listening because you don’t have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human. At that point, it’s probably best to exit the conversation and circle back later.
Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.
Children whose parents were not dependably attentive typically grow up to be adults with an insecure anxious attachment style, which means they tend to worry and obsess about relationships. They do not listen well because they are so concerned about losing people’s attention and affection. This preoccupation can lead them to be overly dramatic, boastful, or clingy. They might also pester potential friends, colleagues, clients, or romantic interests instead of allowing people their space.
Good listeners are not born that way, they become that way
The more you listen to someone, such as a close friend or a family member, and the more that person listens to you, the more likely you two will be of like minds
In conversation, it’s important to pay attention to what words conceal and silences reveal.
People who are comfortable with silence elicit more information and don’t say too much out of discomfort.
J. Pierpont Morgan said, “A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one, and the real one.
Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak
We actually all tend to make assumptions when it comes to those we love. It’s called the closeness-communication bias. As wonderful as intimacy and familiarity are, they make us complacent, leading us to overestimate our ability to read those closest to us.”
Sometimes it takes more than one conversation to hear someone.
It often pays to first make the effort before you decide to pull the plug.
Good listeners have negative capability. They are able to cope with contradictory ideas and gray areas. Good listeners know there is usually more to the story than first appears and are not so eager for tidy reasoning and immediate answers, which is perhaps the opposite to being narrow-minded…In the psychological literature, negative capability is known as cognitive complexity, which research shows is positively related to self-compassion and negatively related to dogmatism.
Listening is often regarded as talking’s meek counterpart, but it is actually the more powerful position in communication.
Attention has become a commodity, bought and sold on sophisticated electronic exchanges where bidding occurs in real-time based on data provided by your cell phone or web browser.
Get The Book: You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy available now on Amazon.
