Improve the quality of your listening

Listening to Julian Treasure made me realise that listening is actually a conscious thing to do. "Listen consciously in order to live fully".. I hear him say. It's such an important skill, but sadly very few of us do it well. He shares with us 5 ways for us to improve the quality of listening.

1. Stay silent.
Staying silent or quiet for 3 minutes helps us to settle down and recalibrate our hearing so we feel better.

2. Analyse the channels of sound.
We need to consciously get our brain to analyse how many sounds or things that create sounds are there when we are hearing something or when we are in a loud environment.

3. Enjoying the mundane sound.
The sound of the coffee mixer or the flush may no longer be an exciting thing for the ears however according to Julian, try to fix your ears on it and hear how the sounds are put together.

4. Change your listening strategy.
Julian says, you should consciously change your listening strategy or he calls it listening positions. If you are active, change to passive or if you are critical, change to empathetic. Notice what happens and see how you experience with it.

5. RASA when you are in a a particular role.
We live our lives in roles. We have roles such as being a leader, teacher, spouse, parent or friend. When we listen or communicate with someone, we can use this acronym "RASA", which refers to:
R- Receive, (Pay attention to that person so you can receive as much information as possible...)
A- Appreciate, (Make little noise like... hmmm, ok... to appreciate the person talking...)
S- Summarise, (Use words to summarise, like... so..)
A- Ask, (Ask question to know more..)

Try these methods and have fun experiencing it!