Mindful Listening and Non-Listening

Listening A commonly forgotten communication skill.

Heather Kuhlman

University of Arkansas Grantham

CO120 – INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Melissa Weaver

Mindful Listening

Mindful Listening is an important tool in life. It is you listen in school, work, social situations, you even listen when you are alone. Not listening can have detrimental effects, cause misunderstandings and confusion and even hurt other people. Listening is more than just hearing the sounds echoed into your ears. To actually listen, you have to be paying attention and retaining the information you are listening to. Mindful Listening is even more important and more complex than just listening as it requires you to pay attention, retain the information. Listening has been characterized with elements.

The first of which is being Mindful. Being, physically receiving messages, if you’re not listening mindfully your unlikely to retain or understand the message, selecting and organizing the material, Listening and interpreting others communication, responding, and remembering. It is not always easy to perform all of the different tasks and becomes increasingly difficult if the person lacks general communication skills.

Non-Listening

Not listening or non-listening is a giant barrier in successful communication. There is more than one way to not listening. Ambushing, Monopolizing, Pseudo listening, Selective Listening, Defensive listening, time-oriented listening and Literal listening are all forms of not listening mindfully.

The incident that stands out the most when I think about non listening, happened about 6 years ago when I lived in Sacramento, Ca. My jeep had an issue with the neutral safety switch, which stops the vehicle from being able to start while not in park or neutral. It was getting late, and my boyfriend and I were downtown, we were in an argument when the switch failed completely. The method I had showed him to get it to start easily entailed slowly pushing the shifter into gear while turning they key. When he couldn’t start the vehicle, my irritation at him caused me to immediately jump to the conclusion that it was him doing it wrong, not the switch failing that was keeping the vehicle from starting. When I attempted to switch seats with him, he was defensive listening, and took my suggestion to mean that I thought he was stupid, or that I could do it better than him. I didn’t thin