Attention Every Bad Listener, (From One of Your Own!)

Like most husbands, when their wives ask them to read something, my heart rate instantly rose when my wife Susan suggested I read just three pages of a book – on listening.

I’m a terrible listener. But those three pages gave me hope and a specific plan to get better at a skill, scripture highly encourages.

“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” James 1:19

So, if you or someone you know is listening challenged as I am, just ask them to read this blog, which is edited from a wonderful book entitled The Listening Life, by Adam McHugh (Intervarsity Press). Then buy this book!

Pushing the Arrow
Good listening starts with the scandalous premise that this conversation is not about you. Allow me to repeat myself: this conversation is not about you. Yet everything in us wants to make it about ourselves. It is an ever-present temptation, even if we are not aware of it. Perhaps especially if we are not aware of it.

It is my aim to simplify the art of listening, the art of not making the conversation about you, as much as possible. Imagine that there is a big arrow hovering over the space between two people engaged in a conversation. It is a very smart, mind-reading arrow, and it swivels to point at whomever the attention in the conversation is focused on. To listen, we remind ourselves, is to pay focused and loving attention on another. So, as the listener in this conversation, your goal is to keep the arrow pointing at the other person. Encourage the other person to keep talking, to take an idea further, to go deeper into a story, memory or emotion. Then you’re listening. If you remember nothing else from this chapter remember this.