SHUT UP AND LISTEN!

Ok, now that I have your attention I’ll tell you why you should just “shut up and listen” to get lucky.  Listening is an art that is unfortunately not doing too well these days.  Most people hear what is going on but never truly listen to what is being said.  People like to talk, they like to give their opinions and they like to be heard.  Even when these people start listening, they hear one thing and then their mind starts wondering off.  If it doesn’t wonder off completely, it starts to put their personal argument or opinion for or against what they are hearing, and then they believe that is what the other person said.  There are many examples of miscommunication and broken telephone just because people do not pay 100% attention and really listen to what they are hearing.

The flip side is to actually listen to what people are saying.  When you listen, there are an infinite amount of new things you can learn.  Even more important is the chain reaction of ideas that can be created due to this listening.  Paying attention helps you read between the lines and understand the whole picture. 

It is unfortunate that so many arguments between friends, spouses and family members are due to not listening.  I heard a comedy routine this past week about a woman talking to her husband and the husband just answered “yes dear” to everything that she said.  Even when she started talking about flying to the moon and running off with some other guy, but the second she mentioned that she was about to spend money, he answered “you don’t need that”.  He heard only what he wanted to hear and not the rest of her rant. 

Dr. Larry Alan Nadig, Ph.D writes that there are three types or levels of listening and they are competitive listening, passive listening and active listening.  You can pretty much tell from the names of each of these modes what they are all about.  In fact, you can probably see yourself in each of them and are thinking of specific situations.

Competitive listening is when you are listening, not to what the person is saying but to an opening for you to give your opinion or argument.  You hear every word and can probably repeat a lot of it but overall, you don’t get the point.

Passive listening is when you want to hear what the other person says and at the end of it all, you assume that you understood everything that was said and you can be on your way.  You feel that you gained their opinion but in reality, that might not be the case.

Active listening is when you are interested in what the person has to say and you show interest.  You listen carefully and you summarize to make sure that you understood 100%.  It is the active listeners that get ahead in the world.  They communicate better with their spouse, boss, business associates and friends. They are able to take what they hear and repeat it and then add their own take and ideas to it and create new luckortunity.  The more exposure a person gets to new ideas, the greater the chance for luckortunity. 

Previous Posts in this Series: 10 Ways to Increase your Luck.

1. Increase Your Luck by Taking a Different Route to Work
2. Don’t listen to your Mother, Speak to Strangers!
3. StumbleUpon the Greatest Luckortunity, the Cure for Boredom
4. Blog to the Future
5. Luck is Risky Business
6. Get High on Conventions