Americans Need More Listening Practice
The big debate in America these days is over “Freedom of Speech.”
Some worry society is placing too steep a penalty on those who say controversial things. Others worry too many people are saying dangerous things.
But the real problem in America isn’t in how we speak; it’s in how we listen.
As someone who’s learned 6 languages fluently while helping thousands of others to do the same, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the art of listening.
In this post, I’d like to share the three practices I cultivate in myself to be a better listener. My hope is that it will inspire you to be a better listener, especially when listening to people you disagree with.
Practice #1: Quiet Your Inner Voice
If you haven’t noticed yet, there is a voice in your head, and it never shuts the hell up.
If my prose is compelling enough, it will monopolize your inner-voice for the rest of this post. But I won’t delude myself. It’s much more likely that your inner-voice will interject every few sentences with thoughts like these:
“Haha this guy is funny.”
“Ugh this guy sucks.”
“What kind of name is Idahosa? Is it ethnic, or is he just like…super into the state of Idaho?”
“Wait, how did I end up here? I feel like I opened my laptop just to check something, but now I can’t remember what it was. Damn you Facebook!”
“My butt itches”
Since the voice inside your head never shuts up, it’s always competing with the voices outside your head.
I like to think of it in terms of a volume slider on a stereo. When you slide the volume up on your inner voice, you listen less. When you slide the volume down on your inner-voice, you listen more.
In the image below, I show what this volume slider might look like, and map out a few familiar points on the scale:
Listening is like meditation — the goal is to quiet your inner voice.
In mindful meditation, you don’t resist your thoughts, you observe and detach from them until they fade into silence. If you apply this technique to your listening, you will create the mental space for the speaker’s words to resonate in your mind.
Next time you’re listening to someone, be mindful of your inner voice. Note each time the speaker’s words trigger a distracting thought in your head. But don’t dwell on that thought. Instead, just let the thought pass, then return your attention to the speaker.
Cultivate this practice, and you will be a good listener in most situations. But soon as the situation turns emotional, your inner-voice might slide right back up to max volume.
When this happens, you’ll need to resort to the second practice…
Practice #2: Channel Your Curiosity
We evolved the emotions of Fear, Anger and Disgust to help us survive a hostile world.
When our ancestors stumbled upon a grizzly bear in the woods, Fear drove them to sprint toward safety. Then when they got back to camp and caught a baboon stealing all the food, Anger drove them to whoop some monkey ass.
Meanwhile, Disgust kept them from getting poisoned. Those humans who smelled poop and thought “EW!” lived on to become our ancestors. Those humans who smelled poop and thought “Hmmm…tasty…” didn’t last very long.
Fear, Anger and Disgust served us well in the wild, but they’ve become our worst enemies in civil society. These three emotions are at the motivational core of all acts of human violence.
The only way to resolve human conflict without violence is through conversation. But when emotions enter a conversation, they amplify inner-voices like speakers at a heavy metal concert, and everyone stops listening.
Fortunately, our brains evolved a mechanism to short-circuit our emotions — Curiosity.
In ancient times, Curiosity kept our ancestors from stagnating by pushing them to try new things.
Take the emotion of Disgust for example. It protected our ancestors from poisonous food, but it also kept them from discovering new resources. That’s why curiosity had to kick in every once in a while to stir things up:
The elders say those mushroom are evil, but those monkeys over there eat them all the time no problem. Hmmm…I wonder what would happen if I just brewed a few of these in some hot water and took a sip. Holy crap! This mushroom tea just cured my migraines!
You can channel this same curiosity when listening to people who scare, anger or disgust you.
Next time you hear someone saying something you don’t like, and your inner-voice starts to crescendo with emotion, ask yourself this question:
“What would it be like to believe this?”
Consider this question seriously, and you will experience something powerful. Your emotions will recede to make space for the flood of questions that will follow:
- If I believed this, how might I interpret these events differently?
- If I believed this, what would my logic be?
- If I believed this, how would I feel about people who believed the opposite?
With each question you consider, your mind blossoms open like flower petals in sunlight. Your emotions melt away, and all that remains is true listening.
Do this, and you may even change your mind. At the very least, you will gain a deeper understanding of where the other side is coming from.
But perhaps you consider certain people so repulsive that you have no desire to listen to them. For these situations, I prescribe the third practice of listening.
Practice #3: Remember your Values
When it comes to our base emotions, we humans aren’t much different from other mammals. We get just as scared, angry and disgusted as goats, gorillas and grizzly bears. But what makes humans unique is our determination to overcome our base emotions.
You want to curse out the waitress for messing up your order, but you value Respect more than Rage, so you speak to her politely instead. You want to go home with the girl flirting with you at the bar, but you value Loyalty more than Lust, so you go home to your wife instead.
We always feel better when we overcome our base emotions and act in alignment with our values instead.
Do you want to live in a perpetual state of Fear, Anger and Disgust, or do you value something greater?”
While you consider the answer to that question, I encourage you to check out the story of Daryl Davis — the African American blues guitarist who inspired hundreds of Klansmen to leave the KKK.
In a recent Reddit AMA, Daryl had this to say:
Despite what you may have read in the numerous press articles about me converting KKK members, I NEVER set out to convert anyone. I simply set out to ask a question I had formed in my mind as a kid: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”
Growing up, we all are told, “A tiger doesn’t change its stripes, a leopard doesn’t change its spots,” etc. I believed that and I didn’t think anyone was going to change, so that wasn’t my initial goal. I just wanted the answer to my question.
But over time, though repeated interactions with various KKK members around the country, some of them began questioning their own beliefs as a result of their interactions and conversations with me. Then they began quitting, and I was astounded.
Exposure and one-on-one dialogue is the KEY to solving a lot of issues in this country, not just racial ones. We live in echo chambers in which we surround ourselves with people who will reflect back to us, the very same thing we say to them. Therefore we block out anything from the outside as being inferior to what we learn in our little bubbles.
I like traveling outside the bubble. Even people with good intentions, tend to shut out those who may hold different opinions. I am willing to listen all all.
What I find interesting about the “Freedom of Speech” debate is that both sides value the same thing — Peace.
One side promotes peace by defending the space for non-violent conversation. The other side promotes peace by defending against language that might lead to violence.
But both sides are forgetting that there are two sides to language — speaking AND listening.
Language learners often come to me with this frustration:
I can say a few things in the language, but I can’t understand native speakers when they speak fast. No matter how much I practice speaking, I still can’t keep up in a real conversation.
To these people, my advice is always the same:
Your problem isn’t with speaking, your problem is with listening. So close your mouth, unblock your ears, and cultivate a practice of good listening.
To my fellow Americans, I give the same advice.
If you’re learning a foreign language and need help unblocking your ears for better listening, download our free guides on the 39 Sounds of Spanish, 56 Sounds of German, 38 Sounds of French, or 55 Sounds of Portuguese.
