Lesson #1: The Power of Listening

[00:00] Hello, and welcome to my home!

[00:15] This is a course about reading, so why are we starting off with listening? Well, I would argue that it's impossible learn something you think you already know. If you develop as a listener, you will absolutely develop as a reader as well.

[00:44] Listening is one of greatest skills you will ever acquire in your entire life, and the sad truth is that it is almost entirely lacking in most of the people we meet. But, there are a variety of very simple-to-implement skills that will ensure that you will stand out in the crowd.

[01:40] Listening is enhanced when we practice "unconditional positive regard," in the Rogerian sense. Instead of trying to change people, or to force our wills and opinions on them, we accept them completely as they are. We don't have to agree with anything they say and do, but we do need to enable them to express their real selves. Then, and only then, is change possible.

[02:46] People today are starving for personal, interested attention. This is different from narcissism and craving for recognition generally. People desperately want to be seen as individuals of primary value, and when you do that for them, so much more becomes possible in our everyday relationships.

[03:17] Listening skills are so intimately tied up with reading, such that if you're having difficulty meeting people where they are, seeing them as "subjects of primary value," then you're going to have difficulty listening to what an author has to say as well.

[04:19] This is also your big opportunity to stand out as an excellent listener, and surpass all those other "readers" with poor listening skills, low empathy, and poor perception. If there's something that's important to do, but hardly anyone is doing it, then if you do it, you will be giving yourself a massive advantage. And it's so easy! So basic!

[04:38] Just to establish a little bit of credibility (because, hey, who I am to tell you that you're not a good enough listener?), I've been a bouncer for the last decade, and most of the success I've had in stopping fights, expelling drunks (and picking up girls), has been a function of my listening skills that I've developed over time. We're talking thousands of fights stopped before they've happened, violent drunks being convinced to leave peacefully, and aggressive persons wielding knives being convinced to put them away and leave without incident. And of course, you know, the girls too ;)

[06:21] So, developing these listening skills is a pretty big deal. You can do some pretty amazing things with your life if you take an interest in learning how to listen, how to relate to people, how to value them as individuals. And we can all get better at this!

[08:12]

One of the absolute best things you can do immediately is to learn how to "subjectify" people, instead of objectifying them. Objectification is usually done for some nefarious purpose, where you value someone purely for what they can do for you, etc. But when you subjectify someone, you try to inhabit their inner world as much as possible; you see them as someone with an interior life, an interior richness, some independent person with different thoughts, opinions, experiences, outlooks, ways of seeing, etc.

[09:17] People can feel when you're not giving them your full attention, and the reverse is true as well. You can feel, and even see, the change in them when they realize that you're actually listening to them.

[10:17] Reading can make you a better listener as well. And really, just a better person. In The

Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker details how, after the invention of the printing press, more people started becoming literate, and more people started gaining access to things like novels. People started developing empathy through reading, a book being one of the ways in which we learn about the inner lives of other people, and learn how to relate to those inner lives.

[12:36] Walt Whitman: "I do not ask how the wounded person feels. I myself become the wounded person."

[13:07] Look at politicians, and how well they listen to people. Through the quality of their attention, they could make a 3,000-person room disappear, leaving the person they were talking to (or listening to) feeling as if they were completely alone with the politician, being listened to completely. That is a powerful experience to create for another person, and people generally remember it.

[14:28] Jiddu Krishnamurti gave us some explosive ideas, and he was one of the best listeners too. I think of him almost like the Eastern Friedrich Nietzsche. Many of his talks are up on YouTube, and you can find some more about him in the links below this transcript.

[15:08] Erich Fromm was another excellent listener you could perhaps take on as a role model with respect to listening skills. One of his more powerful ideas is that "love is the only rational answer to the problem of human existence." I still remember where I was when I first read that line in his book, The Art of Loving. He's got another book, The Art of Listening, which I can also highly recommend. Links below.

[15:55] One of my favorite people ever is Simone Weil, who was quite possibly the best listener who ever lived. I can't recommend her enough, not just as a role model when it comes to listening, but generally, to anyone interested in becoming a more empathetic, moral person. Alfred Camus once called her "the only great spirit of our time."

[17:36] Another excellent person to imitate when it comes to listening is Dale Carnegie. There's an excellent story in his embarrassingly-titled book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, about the time when he went to this party, and talked to the hostess for about ten minutes or so, all while asking questions and listening intently to the answers. He only talked for about 10 percent of the time, but afterwards, what she told everyone about him was that he was a great conversationalist! Such is the power of listening!

[19:41] Yet another recommendation is the poetry of Hafiz, a Sufi poet writing around the same time

as Rumi. There's one poem by Hafiz, which goes: "How should I listen? As if my treasured master were speaking his very last words." Amazing advice for all of us as we go about our lives, talking and listening to people.

[21:44] The quality of your attention really matters when you're reading, and especially when you're reading something controversial, or something with which you might disagree.

[22:28] Alright, one last book recommendation! It's called Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss. He was the Lead International Hostage Negotiator for the FBI at one point. One of the best takeaways from the entire book was the fact that when kidnappers would phone in with their list of demands, Voss and his entire team would be on the other end of the line, listening. Strangely, though they were all listening to the same person, each and every team member would come away with something that the others missed, so that all of them, working together at full capacity, would be able to assimilate every piece of the information being conveyed. I mean the words of course, but also the tone, inflection, hints about whether the kidnapper was nervous or not, whether he was working alone, etc. What this says to me is that listening is so extraordinarily difficult! Imagine just one person trying to do all that at once! So think about it: if it takes an entire FBI team to get the full impact of what just one person is saying, do you think that you don't have any room for improvement?

[24:53] Luckily, you and I have lots of opportunities to practice these skills. We probably talk to at least 100 people a day. That's 100 opportunities to practice becoming a better listener!

Mentioned in This Module:

Book: On Becoming a Person, by Carl Rogers

Book: The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker

Book: Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker

Book: Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Book: The Revolution from Within, by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Book: The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm

Book: The Art of Listening, by Erich Fromm

Book: Late Philosophical Writings, by Simone Weil

Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

Book: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie

Book: The Gift, by Hafiz