You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

Digital distraction keeps the mind occupied but does little to nurture it, much less cultivate depth of feeling, which requires the resonance of another’s voice within our very bones and psyches. To really listen is to be moved physically, chemically, emotionally, and intellectually by another person’s narrative.

is listening intensive; including spies, priests, psychotherapists, bartenders, hostage negotiators, hairdressers, air traffic controllers, radio producers, and focus group moderators.

It’s not about simply holding your peace while someone else holds forth. Quite the opposite. A lot of listening has to do with how you respond—the degree to which you elicit clear expression of another person’s thoughts and, in the process, crystallize your own.

It is how you develop wisdom and form meaningful relationships.

While you might take listening for granted, how well you listen, to whom, and under what circumstances determines your life’s course—

And to listen poorly, selectively, or not at all is to limit your understanding of the world and deprive yourself of becoming the best you can be.

the most memorable and meaningful interviews to me were not the ones that broke open or nailed the story but rather the ones that veered off topic and into the personal—maybe about a relationship,

closely held belief, phobia, or formative

Instead of front porches, today’s homes more likely have front-facing garages that swallow up residents’ cars at the end of a hectic day. Or people live compartmentalized in apartments and condominiums, ignoring one another in the elevator.

Whereas in the past, we caught up with friends and family individually and in person, now we are more likely to text, tweet, or post on social media.

Today, you can simultaneously ping tens, hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people, and yet, how often do you have the time or inclination to delve into a deep, extended, in-person conversation with any one of them?

In social situations, we pass around a phone to look at pictures instead of describing what...

If someone tells a story that takes longer than thirty seconds, heads bow, not in contemplation but to read texts, check sports scores, or see what’s trending online.

The ability to listen to anyone has been replaced by the capacity to shut out everyone, particularly those who disagree with us or don’t get to the point fast enough.

People get lonely for lack of listening.

Experts are calling it a public health crisis, as feeling isolated and disconnected increases the risk of premature death as much as obesity and alcoholism combined.

The negative health impact is worse than smoking fourteen cigarettes per day.

Indeed, epidemiological studies have found links between loneliness and heart disease, stroke, dement...

wrote. Lonely people have no one with whom to share their thoughts and feelings, and, equally important, they have no one who shares thoughts and feelings with them.

American life expectancy is now declining due to suicide, opioid addiction, alcoholism, and other so-called diseases of distress often associated with loneliness.

generation Z, the first generation raised on screens, are the most likely to feel lonely and self-report that they

Eighth graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of clinical depression by 27 percent and are 56 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than their peers who spend less time on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.

The most common feature of transcripts of congressional hearings is the all-caps insertion of the word CROSSTALK, which indicates everyone is talking over one another, and the transcriber, or recorder, of the debate can’t make sense of what anyone is saying.

Posts that are neutral, earnest, or measured don’t tend to go viral or get quoted in the media. This distorts dialogue and changes the tenor of conversations,

there were the people who told me that they were good listeners, though their claims were often undercut by the fact that they were talking to me on their mobile phones while driving. “I’m a better listener than most people,” said a trial lawyer in Houston returning my call in his car during rush-hour traffic. “Wait, hold on a second, I have another call.” Also unconvincing were the people who said that they were good listeners and then immediately pivoted to a wholly unrelated topic, in the vein of The New Yorker cartoon where a guy holding a glass of wine at a cocktail party says, “Behold, as I guide our conversation to my narrow area of expertise.” Other self-described good listeners repeated what I had just said as if it were an original thought.

direction. I could have interrupted and made him cut to the chase. Or, wanting to express myself and make an impression, I could have leapt in to share things about my life and experiences. But then I would have disrupted the natural flow of the conversation, halted the unfolding intimacy, and lost much of the joy of the interaction. I would not, to this day, carry his wisdom with me.

Interrupting Responding vaguely or illogically to what was just said Looking at a phone, watch, around the room, or otherwise away from the speaker Fidgeting (tapping on the table, frequently shifting position, clicking a pen, etc.) If you do these things, stop. But that alone is not going to make you a good listener.

Listening is more of a mind-set than a checklist of dos and don’ts.

Indeed, you begin to listen before you are even born. Fetuses respond to sound at just sixteen weeks’ gestation and, during the last trimester of pregnancy, can clearly distinguish between language and other sounds. An unborn child can be soothed by a friendly voice and startled by an angry outburst. Hearing is also one of the last senses you lose before you die.

Hunger and thirst are the first to go, then speech, followed by vision. Dying patients retain their senses of touch and hearing until the very end.

Understanding is the goal of listening, and it takes effort.

The more you listen to someone, such as a close friend or a family member, and the more that person listens to you, the more likely you two will be of like minds.

Thinking, Fast and Slow.

No psychological concept emphasizes this more than attachment theory. It’s the idea that our ability to listen and connect with people as adults is shaped by how well our parents listened and connected with us as children.

To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.

Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It’s when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you are doing.

What makes us feel most lonely and isolated in life is less often the result of a devastating traumatic event than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have.

It’s the missed opportunity to connect when you weren’t listening or someone wasn’t...

She paused and asked, “What is it about the crying that bothers you?”

listening first rather than jumping in prematurely to explain or reassure in a way that missed the point, the clinician was able to get on the mother’s wavelength so they could connect on a deeper level.

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

To listen is to be interested, and the result is more interesting conversations.

Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening,

It’s why at parties you might gravitate toward someone annoying whom you know, rather than introducing yourself to a stranger.

uncertainty that makes us feel most alive.

you get a greater surge of pleasure from chance encounters with people than planned

The only certainty you achieve by not listening to people is that you will be bored and you will be boring because you won’t learn anything new.

Listening for things you have in common and gradually building rapport is the way to engage with anyone.

people in long-term relationships tend to lose their curiosity for each other. Not necessarily in an unkind way; they just become convinced they know each other better than they do. They

called the closeness-communication bias. As wonderful as intimacy and familiarity are, they make us complacent, leading us to overestimate our ability to read those closest to us.