Over the course of three weeks, I have learnt many things about myself, much of which we totally neglect. I shall begin with the most crucial yet often the most neglected one.
Listening- we are listening everyday and we listen to many different sounds and voices. Yet how we respond to these sounds are varied and sometimes can cause rise to misunderstandings. Who said that only SPEAKING will cause problems, surprisingly listening too! I was pretty appalled by my results upon completing my Listening Self-Assignment which was only an “AVERAGE” grade. Hmm...I thought I was a good listener till this little exercise actually brought to my concerns that I had so many flaws.
My flaws:
- I tend to not paraphrase what i believe the speaker is feeling
- I would always form a rebuttal in my head while the speaker is talking
- I would always help people to complete their sentence
These were my 3 major problems and yet I thought that they shouldn’t be. To me, I always thought that putting feelings especially negative ones into a conversation was wrong; however I never thought that a person would express most of their feelings through a simple conversation. Also, with a very dominant character by nature, I always wanted to win or to say something to impress people or get their attention thus resulting with a strong rebuttal in my mind every time someone else speaks. Lastly, my English used to be of a better standard than others and I always felt they my vocabulary bank was more profound than other, so again the ego-istic me would lend a helping hand in completing sentences for my peers however, not considering their feelings or bothering about if that was the real message my friends wanted to get across.
This was one situation which caught me in a spot due to the lack of my listening skills. One day, among my friends, we planned a trip to go on a shopping spree. On the way we had many small talks between ourselves. This friend of mine who was not very expressive by nature was trying to share with us her displeasure about another of my close friend. She was very expressive by then and I could see a lot of feelings being shown by her yet I choose to ignore her feelings because I felt that she was over-exaggerating and that she was talking about my close friend. I started to question her about why she had this displeasure and even before she could give me her reply, I was already telling her how good that friend actually was and that it was she herself who was causing problems. I was not very tactful when I spoke too and thus she stopped talking- she couldn’t even complete her sentence. Till date, we still have not spoken to each other even when we meet or happen to pass by one another.
I had actually forgotten about this whole incident until the lesson of Understanding You and Me- Effective Listening was brought about. When I was made to recall of this situation, I felt very regretful. Never would I think that just a small insensitivity on my part would result in me losing a good friend. This was a lesson learnt the hard way for me, to show me the importance of practising effective listening. Perhaps the sacrifice of a friendship was worth it, considering the many more people I would be interacting with through the next few decades of my life =)
Gracia Chua
+]tHe mAn[+**
Boy , I Love You .
5:07 PM
