Author’s Note: This is the fifth post in my 12 Great Commandments series, inspired by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. In the last post, I shared with you the importance of being gentle in a bombastic world.
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway
We all know that listening is important. “Talk less, listen more.” I get it. You get it. We’ve heard it a thousand times before, this advice about listening, and while it’s great advice, I don’t want to beat a dead horse.
Instead, I want us to push the boundaries of what we consider “listening.”
For example, nearly everyone associates “listening” with spoken words. We listen to people when they speak. Or rant. Or apologize. This kind of listening is a large part of building strong relationships:
- Listening to a friend when she calls out of the blue
- Listening to your spouse when he talks about his day
- Listening to your employees when they stop in to chat
But that’s listening on a very limited scope.
Let’s think bigger. Let’s think outside the circle of people you see every day. Let’s think bigger and more diverse, because we talk in all kinds of ways. It’s not always with our mouths, and it’s not always face to face. Some of us speak through the pen; others through song; others through dance; still others through their daily lives.
There are so many channels … so many stories … so much to be learned.
The fifth Great Commandment is this:
Listen everywhere.
Leave No Stone Unheard
Do we really appreciate how much stuff is out there for us to learn? To understand? To discover? Have we grasped the sheer volume and diversity of all the knowledge floating around in books, online, and in people’s heads?
And just as important, do we get the fact that listening takes many different forms? Do we get that reading, for example, is one of the most effective ways to listen?
I don’t think we understand the magnitude of this. I really don’t. Because if we did – if we actually contemplated how much knowledge is out there, and in how many different places it can be found, we’d never stop listening. And we’d never stop finding new ways to listen.
We’d be:
- At the library or bookstore, reading all the things people have said and thought and discovered
- Online, devouring everything from Wikipedia to blogs to The Wall Street Journal Online.
- On Twitter and other social networks, listening to what people are saying right now
- Picking the brains of our teachers, our friends, their friends
- Constantly trying to connect with the great people we haven’t met yet
That’s what listening everywhere means. It means seeking out knowledge and conversations wherever they might be found. Online. Offline. In person and in print. Everywhere.
A Stockpile of Giants
“If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” – Sir Isaac Newton
Listening everywhere is what allows us to find giants’ shoulders on which to stand.
For a long time, I was consumed with the desire to be completely, independently original. I deliberately closed my eyes and ears, in order to show that my work was not built on someone else’s accomplishments.
But how silly is that, in retrospect? If we all shut ourselves off from the world and insisted on being “completely original,” the only thing we’d accomplish is a lot of duplicated, wasted effort.
As W.H. Auden said:
“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” – W.H. Auden
Listening helps us build a stockpile of knowledge and experience from which to draw. The more places and ways in which we listen, the better our stockpile gets. By listening and exploring, we can accumulate wisdom that would have taken us several lifetimes to learn by ourselves.
And effective listening, I think, lets you be authentic without being boring. Your stockpile of knowledge becomes part of you. You own it, and it shows.
But more on this idea in the next post of the series.
For now, I’d like to leave you with one last, simple reminder:
There’s an incredible amount of knowledge out there. So listen everywhere.
***
P.S. Speaking of listening, I really want to hear your stories. The little ones, the big ones, the inspiring ones, and everything in between. If you’d like to share, brag, or get support, please send me an email at jeffrey <at> artofgreatthings <dot> com.
I do my best to answer every email I get, so if you haven’t gotten a response after a few days, feel free to send me a gentle reminder!
11 Comments on “Listen Everywhere”
says:
True dat.
says:
Hey Jeffrey. This is a good topic.In a way, I can't agree more Jeffrey. Though I would say that this is only true in a sense that the information is useful for you. If you always try to take everything that you hear, you might end up having information overload and sooner or later, would be overwhelmed and start losing focus. At least that is the case for me.
says:
Thank you for sharing :))
says:
Hi Jeffrey – The quote from Auden is perfect. Like you, I used to believe I had to strive for originality, but I kept bumping up against the truth that my ideas were already out there in so many other shapes and forms. So I thought, “Well, that's that. I have nothing new.” But a dear friend explained that it wasn't about having new ideas, it was how I expressed those ideas through my own unique voice. My authenticity. And when I started exploring Jung and studying depth psychology, I really got it: the collective unconscious is alive and well, we're all linked in ways we don't fully understand. Oh, and I do appreciate what you say about listening. Your energy just shines through in this post. But since I listen for a living, and it is intense, there are times when I simply need silence.
says:
And thank you for reading :)
says:
I agree, Karlil. But although information overload is a problem, I don't think it's as serious as we sometimes believe. I think our information threshold is pretty high, especially if we let ourselves be curious.
In a way, true focus must emerge from a noisy environment. If you have a lot of information and experience to draw on, you'll be able to identify the things to focus on, whereas you might unwittingly straitjacket yourself otherwise. What do you think?
says:
I love that W.H. Auden quote too! It really hit me hard when I read it for the first time.
There are absolutely times when we need silence; some time to ourselves or to process all the information we've taken in. I just think it's important never to use silence as an excuse, because there's so much out there, and so little time …
says:
Nice post. Knowledge talks, wisdom listens. I still believe it.
says:
Absolutely. Besides, listening gets us a lot more knowledge than we would have had otherwise.
says:
The idea of the sheer volume of things to listen to… this is an idea I've been noticing lately, but hadn't put into words yet. I've always hated the fact that even if I started reading from the time I could until I die, I could never, ever read every book that has ever been written. Thousands or millions more would be written during my lifetime. And that doesn't even count magazines, newspapers, blogs, even movies. There is so much information out there.
I've been doing a lot of networking lately and watching/reading other blogs to see how other people are doing things. There are so many intriguing people out there. And I can never have enough time to know them all well and read every single thing they've written. It's frustrating! :) But I love it. I find inspiration in all kinds of things.
says:
Jeffrey, Listening seems almost to be a dying art. Just as we've having some incredibly imortant discussions in the U.S. aboout how we organize health care so that people get the care they need, many people seem to be collectiving holding their hands over their ears. They give an automatic response, such as “But that's socialized medicine.” No information is going in, and none is coming out. What are we so afraid of?