The Art of Listening

Effective listening takes practice; it’s actually a discipline. It doesn’t come easily or naturally. Listening means more than just hearing what a person says.

A counselor once told me, "Hearing captures the words a person speaks; listening captures the meaning and the feeling beneath those words."

Listening is the mental step by which we become more aware of the other person than we are of ourselves.

The best definition of listening I have ever come across is that given by Norman H. Wright” “Listening is not thinking about what you are going to say when the other person has stopped talking." 

Stephen Goforth