The Art of Listening 2: Are You a Serial Monologist?

In last week’s post we discussed why the ego is the single most important factor that limits how far you can go, how much you can achieve.

We talked about how most people don’t really listen to anyone other than themselves, but that if you do start listening then a wider reality will reveal itself to you.

This is also when your success barriers start to evaporate.

Chances are that my claims seem exaggerated; after all, we do kind of listen to others already.

Don’t we?

Don’t we?

My contention is: no, we don’t. Not really. Most of us are non-listeners.

Non-listening comes in various categories:

The first category of non-listening is the most obvious: it is the person who mainly talks about him or herself and will only allow subjects of conversation that he or she approves of. These topics are usually directly or indirectly about him or how he wishes to see himself. If you try to change the subject or interrupt his stream of words, he simply raises his voice and talks over you. Let’s call this person the Conversational Dictator.

The second category is the one that probably most of us belong to: this is the person who politely stays quiet while their conversation partner is talking; however they’re really only pretending to listen. What they are actually doing is thinking of what to say when it’s their turn. We will call this person the Serial Monologist, because if you break down what they say, you will find a monologue divided into little snippets.

The third category of non-listening is a bit more advanced: this person actually hears what is being said a lot of the time. However, the person often finds fault with what the other person is saying, whether they keep this fault-finding to themselves or declare it openly and frankly. The trouble is that they judge what the other person is saying based upon their own standards and conception of reality. So let’s call this person the Judge.

The Judge often feels that he is the only ones who listens.To an extent he is right, because most people don’t hear other people as much as the Judge does; however at the same time he is not right, because at the end of the day he too is self-directed; he may not talk as much as other people because he has realised – at least to a certain extent – that no one is listening anyway. However he is talking to himself most of the time, passing judgement silently. The Judge wishes that others would be more like him, because then finally he would be understood, and it would be possible to have a real conversation.

The trouble with this idea is that if indeed the Judge were surrounded by other Judges, they too would be judging him based on their standards and concepts of reality, which would probably be different from his.

So what does it take to actually listen? That’s for the next post. But here’s a hint:

It’s painful.