A 7-step guide to becoming a lazy listener.

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Ravi Rade, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Here are the 7 things that lazy listeners don’t do that makes them super effective in listening.

They don’t look at their phone while listening. They keep the phone away, facing down.
They don’t start thinking about what smart things to say next. Until they listen and understand they don’t worry too much about what to say next or how to respond.
They don’t start telling their own comparable story. If someone is telling the story of Hawaii vacation, the lazy listeners don’t start telling about their own Florida vacation.
They don’t interrupt and change the topic suddenly. Lazy listeners don’t bother to interrupt the other person. They don’t take any effort to think of a totally different topic and change the subject.
They don’t start evaluating and judging the other person. Lazy listeners don’t tax their brain to make any judgments, opinions about the person who is speaking. And since they don’t have any judgment they don’t say anything.
They don’t start solving the problem and think about the advice. Lazy listeners don’t take the trouble to solve other’s problem and come up advice. They are very lazy, they don’t give any advice unless specifically asked for.
And they avoid all sort of creativity of mind wondering. They don’t start thinking about something totally different. They don’t bother going anywhere else. They just lazily lie around in the present moment, wherever they are, with the person who is speaking.
They stay where they are, just like a starfish, in the present moment.

Now think of your own listening behavior.

Are you lazy or working too hard? Doing many things while listening to people? What do you do while listening?

Take moment to ponder… think about what you do while listening.

Now, would you like to become a lazy listener? If yes, then let’s see what they do.

Lazy listeners don’t work hard at all.
All they do is just one thing …listen.
They don’t go in the past.
They don’t go in the future.
They just stay where they are, in the present moment.
Listening to the words, emotions, expressions to the person in front of them.
They don’t think of any of the other billions of people and things happening around them.
They just pay attention to one person, who is speaking.
Result?

Their gift of listening turns from gold to diamond.

Now you are smart enough to imagine the benefits of focused listening.

So let’s think when do you need to become a lazy listener?

While listening to your spouse.
While listening to your kids, your parents.
While listening to your boss.
While listening to a presentation.
During a meeting.
Taking an interview.
Receiving feedback.
Getting a status report from your team.
Learning a new thing from someone.
Give a moment to ponder.

What else comes to your mind? When do you need listening skills in your life?

Now, if listening is as easy as becoming lazy, why don’t we all do it? Because all of us don’t have strong mental muscles to keep the focus on one thing. Our mind is designed to wonder.

That’s where mindfulness comes in picture.

In mindfulness practice, we use breath as our anchor point. We bring attention to the breath. As mind wonders, we notice that mind has wondered and we gently bring attention back to the breath. As we practice mindfulness, our mental muscles get stronger. Several scientific studies are showing that mindfulness builds new neurons, the number of connections between neurons increases and the connections themselves become stronger.

So if your mental muscles are stronger, you notice sooner if you start doing any of the 7 don’t do steps we talked earlier. And that helps to bring our attention back to focused listening.

So, do you want to grow your neurons? Give it a try to the mindfulness audio.

Mindfulness audio: To complement this article, I have created accompanying guided mindfulness audio. So anytime you want to enhance your listening skills, find a quiet place, simply put on that audio using a headset, let your mind and brain work through the steps of becoming a lazy listener and convert your gift of listening from gold to diamond!

If you would like to get a copy of that audio, contact me and I will send the audio to you.