Listening between the lines

Listening between the lines

I never thought I was good at listening, I never grasped listening as I was always dreaming, staring, wondering, pondering or reading. How am I ever going to learn anything if I can’t listen?

You know when your reading a page in a book and before you know it your at the bottom of the page knowing that you have read each word but your completely emersed in another thought, usually about something irrelevant that happened that day only to snap out of it knowing you have read each and every word but none of it went in.

I have always thought and still do think that an old friend of mine is a genius at listening as she can literally listen to two conversations at once, but I will point out that she is a nosey mare too. If a familiar song comes on the television or maybe a quiz on the radio, she would know the year it was born including the artist and she could describe to me why she loved it and where she was at the time she heard it, drawing on an exact location and time, she might even go as far as telling me what she was wearing and who she was with at that time. Now that’s not to say her information is completely accurate, however, that memory she is replaying in her mind did happen and that I’m certain of. This memory could be at least twenty plus years old, she has the great ability to recall memories from years gone by in intricate detail and not to mention history or random weird facts, I always wondered why you would hold onto such facts and where the hell does she store this stuff !

Memory like a sponge, soaks it all in!

It is not until now, later in life that I realise what it really means to listen, and I don’t mean listening with your ears I mean listening with your eyes, ears, mind and body. I am a very intuitive person which helps me in many ways to listen using my body as a tool allowing me to pick up on social ques and being able to analyse and assess certain situations unfolding in front of me very quickly.

But the real listening is in between sentences, if you can draw information from a person a page or even a podcast, whatever it is that you want to understand or learn then you need to listen to what is in between the message that is being relayed not the message itself.

If you don’t understand that, read it again!!

It is important that if you want to retain information or knowledge then understanding the message first is listening.