ARE YOU LISTENING?

Many times you're hearing something doesn't necessarily mean you're listening!

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I was just teaching this topic during my Public Speaking tutorial this week and it got me thinking as I was sharing and delivering my points to the students. Let me enlighten you on some of the points that I taught from Stephen E. Lucas (2012) "The Art of Public Speaking".

Listening is Important!

• Absorbing information and idea given verbally
• Absorbing quickly and accurately
• Improves efficiency, sale, customer satisfaction, company morale etc

Listening & Critical Thinking

1. Appreciative Listening - listening for pleasure & enjoyment
2. Emphatic Listening - Provide emotional support to the speaker
3. Comprehensive Listening - Listening to understand the message of the speaker
4. Critical Listening - Listening to evaluate a message for a purpose of accepting or rejecting it

4 Causes of Poor Listening

1. Not concentrating
2. Listening too hard
3. Jumping to conclusions
4. Focusing on delivery and personal appearance

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SSSSHHHHH LISTEN!!

Apart from delivering the topic and coaching the students about listening, I touch on some touchy and real points.

You see, in life, there are many people who would like to talk talk talk or share share share in many different wants. But then there are those who do not speak and want to be listened to but you need to look a lil closer and pay more attention to them. This past week, we saw 2 very famous celebrities take their own life. Kate Spade the designer and Anthony Bourdain the traveling chef. These 2 celebs are just the few who took their own life and there are many others who go down that same path and do not get the same news coverage as Kate & Anthony due to their statuses.

What I told my students is that we all need to LISTEN to what's going on around us and not get sucked into our own world being oblivious to what is going on around us. LISTEN to what's going on in the government, society, community, environment, humanity etc. There are many things that needs our attention in order for action to be taken. We, individuals are contributors in many ways to the cosmos around us and that is where LISTENING comes in play.

The future of the city, nation and planet is in our hands! And with LISTENING, we get to channel our attention, energy and resources to make it a better place! Yes, I shared all these to my students and that is what I do all the time to instill good values and habit apart from just transmitting information to them. I get them to think and I am glad they were very participative and were able to connect with the lesson enhanced through this sharing as well.

So, start LISTENING and master the art of it. Rather than speaking negatively, complaining, whining or blabbling all the time, stop for awhile and LISTEN. You will start to hear stuff you never heard before. And maybe, JUST MAYBE.... your problems you're complaining and whining about isn't so big afterall! In fact you perhaps could channel it to helping and reaching out to those who are in dire need than you.

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