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Listening Is An Art ~ A Learned Behvior

By: Dr. Dennis Maness

Everyone can hear, few know how to listen.  There are times we need to listen to not only the words but listen to the way in which words are being said.  We can take a simple sentence such as “He didn't fall off his bike.”   This sentence can be interpreted six different ways, depending on where you place the emphasis.

Listening is an art; a learned art form.  We teach this in our ADHD and Productivity programs at BrainTek^tm Institute.  We offer live and remote programs, workshops and courses to help knock out the stress, depression, focus and attention challenges. 

In order to listen, we have to know what and who we are listening to.  Are you listening to a person or are you reading?  Are you listening to an authority or the village idiot?  Next, we realize we are listening to words that are either spoken or read.  Every word has a single meaning.  That single meaning combined with other adjectives, verbs, nouns, conjunctions become a single meaningful statement.  Every word has a direction.  The direction combines with the meaning of the combined words.  Now, we realize listening requires attention.

When you are listening to an authority or reading?  The principals of listening remain the same. 

Now, ask yourself the following question.  When you have something important to say to another person, would you want to talk at them, talk to them or communicate with them?  When given the choice to talk to someone or communicate with someone, of course you want to communicate. Talking is an exchange of words; communications is an exchange of thoughts.

Don't lose me on this one, remember, organized words lead to a meaning that is understandable and that makes sense to the person you are communicating with or the reader of your words.

When words impact your brain, they arrive at the dictionary in your brain so the words can be identified and their meaning in that group of words can be interpreted and extracted to meaning.  When a meaningful and understandable group of words hit your brain they enter as a thought and you are able to map or link them to memory chains.

Communication encapsulates the words into a meaningful thought the receiver understands.  I want to teach you to listen or read in groups of thoughts, not words.

Did you know you can see more words per second than you can hear? That is a fact you can take to the library !

A great writer can make words come alive on a page, and before we know it we are vacuumed into the story and are reading two or three times our average speed. Unfortunately, far too few textbooks and educational material are written with such passion, so we return to our old habits of reading from word to word.

Too many people read slowly because they are trying to read with their ears or for many, they feel the need to restate what the author is saying.

We can only hear about 250 words a minute. An average communications reader can see up to six pages or 2400 words in a minute. It is only when we communicate with the story that we are able to fly through the pages with comprehension and retention.

Reading in thoughts is a system of absorbing groups of words at a time as you scan a page. We have developed an exercise which you can do at our website.

Listening is a developed skill.  It is learning to tune out surrounding noises; it is learning to tune out surrounding movement and above all to tune out multiple competing thoughts.

Words have a life of their own.  When spoken, words can evoke emotions such as anger, fear and can cause hurt and pain; words can affect ones self esteem, motivation and productivity. 

Unfortunately, we have programmed ourselves to listen to negative words more so than positive words, to listen to negative stimuli versus positive stimuli.  Psychologically, we have entrained our brains to coast; function in neutral allowing our brains to go with the flow.  Far too many will work twice as hard to find the easier solution – not necessarily the best solution this solution may work to their determent. 

At BrainTek^tm Institute, we teach you to develop this skill of brain management.  It all starts by mapping your brain to determine the landscape.  Next we provide protocols that help balance your brain.  After only a few sessions, we teach you to manage your brain instead of your brain managing you.  We teach you to lower anxiety, increase mood and handle the tough times.  We teach you to accept positive stimuli and manage the negative stimuli.

We teach you to listen; not just hear.  We teach you to use your whole brain to apply your new knowledge to access memory, lower anxiety and how to stay well.

Our goal is to entrain your brain and teach you to manage it long after you have left our office.

Call us today to schedule your appointment.

Research
BrainTek Institute continues to stay at the cutting edge of brain / body research.  Our research has helped us become successful with  traumatic brain injury, stroke, Attention / Focus and other cognitive challenges.  We are also studying how early detection of irregular brainwave behavior is a valuable predictor of potential challenges.