Listening involves silencing the pride that puts you higher in rank and forbids you from listening to individuals you may regard to be lower in rank. You have to improve other people through your advice. But when you let their advice improve you, yours can have a higher chance of improving them. It becomes a cycle of improving each other. At the centre of this cycle is listening.

“Listen than be heard.”No greater gift beats the one of appreciating what others think. Pride chases that gift away. It makes us believe that we should do the talking, give advice and not take it.

Jobless and stuck, I was trying to push the idea of blogging into an earning one. I needed $300+ of capital but not getting the money. My sister suggested a lot of ideas. She finally suggested that I write assignments for College students. The assignments business was not lucrative but it was going to be my escape route, and the quick source of capital I sought.

I had no money. But I had free access to WIFI at the place I stayed. An Archive library filled to the brim by primary sources was a forty-minute walk. My sister had a good idea. What made it bad was that it was coming from my sister. I had to be the source of ideas needed in the family and not otherwise. But this over-exaggeration of myself into a man in need of nothing proved to be a threat to my existence.

Listening effectively is opening your senses to what is communicated without being selective about who said it. It is swallowing whole what’s communicated, digesting it wholly and absorbing all you must, all in a bid to establish the best possible understanding. This understanding is on the self, the things we learn, on others and on what surrounds them and you. Effective listening is a gateway to inner growth, clarity and learning.

My best hopes of securing the funding from well-wishers could not materialise. My sister’s advice had to fight through that obstacle of my prior understanding and hopes of getting free money on the planet. Nothing comes free. Even the sunshine would want you to go outside to see it. Without limps, trees change their trajectory of growth and face where light is coming from.

Effective listeners also pick up negative communication, establish a positive understanding of what’s communicated and create a way forward or learn. Without being selective effective listeners activate methods that allow them to get the best out of the void; out of, for example, an offence directed at them.

Critics may be saying the right thing about you in a harsh tone. Effective listening eliminates the offence and absorbs the truth. Only through effective listening, what’s heard becomes understood, seen becomes discovered, felt becomes experienced and experienced becomes felt.

We rarely effectively listen. We sing when we must hear. We close our eyes when we must see. We shut off our hearts when we must feel. By choosing what to see, hear, and feel. we shut off our hearts too. In the end, we have a few things among plenty to uplift us.

The best you can tell your story is to listen to other people’s stories. The best way you can give a piece of advice is to listen when others advise you. Effective listeners hunt for what to listen to. They don’t hide from it.

Understanding, the way I see it.

Our lives evolve on an excel of understanding. It limits or enhances the distance it can cover. Deeper understanding is like creativity itself. It is how you trick your brains to achieve it. It is like cracking a code you haven’t before.

If impossible to understand. The best way is not to understand anything at all, and allow in the time, space, the incident and the possibilities that could lead to understanding. Before you seek to understand. Seek to have all the facts.

Most people won’t understand your story until your story becomes the main story they can’t live without. Why bother getting some pain out of what may seem to be irreversible human nature? Yet, so, we are inclined to waste a hefty effort on trying to be understood without first having created a main story others can’t live without; stories that are exceptional success stories that can only drive passion inside those who hear them.

It’s not important to be heard and be understood. It’s important to aim higher and achieve your wishes.

My vision or your vision is not something two or more people can have in common. You can explain to one that’s understandable. What’s understandable is something proven to exist, to work, to suffice, and is in common with a little bit of knowledge and beliefs the person who is the target of the explanations has.