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One of the most cruel aspects of modern day stress filled urban lives is that no one has the time to listen. Children are left to become latch key kids and return home to cold lunch and no mother to share their days highs and lows with. I am sure our grandmothers had never imagined such a day would come.

For centuries listening is the cue to learning and communicating. If one is hard of hearing, chances are that they will be late in speaking too. We learn to speak primarily by copying what we hear. All Indians are familiar with the Mahabharat story of how Abhimanyu mastered the technique of warfare by listening to his fathers narration while in his mother’s womb. Now after so many years this is no longer a myth as research shows that stimulation while the baby is in the womb can lead to early speaking skills.

However, something happens as we grow older - we forget the natural habit of listening. We want to communicate, make a good impression and maybe even learn something new, but we do the exact opposite. We have quite clearly forgotten the art of listening. Here are a few simple ways to get back on track and to understand how important it is to listen well.

Thought control
Very often when someone else is speaking, we are preoccupied with our own thought process. Either we are busy on some other plane of thought and do not pay attention. Or we try to guess what the speaker is trying to say and go off on a tangent, at other times while listening we hit upon a really good idea and lose the train of thought that the speaker is expressing. In all these cases because we do not control our own thoughts we lose the thread of what the speaker is saying.

It is of great importance to control our thoughts and pay attention to what the speaker is saying with an open mind and no bias. All we need to do is imagine the irritation we feel when we are speaking and the listener is always trying to fill the sentences instead of letting us articulate our own thought process.

Maintaining eye and ear contact
We have all heard how important it is to look at the person who is speaking. This also reassures the speaker that he is being heard, equally important is that we keep our ears glued to the conversation and drown all other sounds - TV, traffic, kids yelling, and all other distractions.

Emotions under check
Sometimes if our colleague or mate begins a speech in a manner that flares our emotions we completely lose it. “Lara the one thing that really irritates me about you...” And before you know it you are off on a mud slinging competition. Of course if you had given a chance you would have got some valuable feedback on that irritating habit you might have developed recently. You will also be able to respond intelligently to what they are saying if you listen and then react.

Animated listening
We are all familiar with the annoying feeling of talking to a deadpan face. You might be relating a really interesting anecdote and the listener just stares at you with no expression. Or, when you instruct your child with the errands he needs to run for you and he keeps playing with his toys. Neither are you sure they are listening nor if they really comprehend what it is that you are saying.

What is he trying to convey
Very often we are listening but not really understanding what the other is trying to convey. A person who has just lost a lot of weight might go on about how the clothes in their wardrobe do not fit and that she has been trying stores for a good fit - what you really need to realise is that the person wants to be complimented about the weight loss. It is good to be very alert while listening

If we all found the time to listen intently there would be a lot of problems that we could over come.

Our children would be elated if we could recall the names of their best friends at school.

Our elders would be glad if we remembered their doctors appointment and volunteered to take them there.

Our spouse would be really glad if we remembered the bosses dinner invitation!!

But listening better is not all about getting you into the good book - it actually helps you to function in a more efficient manner. Managing your day also means that you need to manage yourself and by listening to what others have to say will help you organise yourself too.

Graphic done by Himani