Ralph Nichols wrote “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood” All of us feel at times a disconnection with the people around us, a feeling that we are constantly attempting to communicate but that no one is listening.
The truth is most of us know how to listen but not always how to hear, because to really hear we have to connect. Connecting can be risky it can require gifts we don’t want to give like time, empathy and emotion. Deep conversation can create a dependence we didn’t want and now cannot break, so we don’t connect we listen without really hearing
Peter Drucker said “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said “. Being listened to is about so much more than conversation it’s about respect and acceptance, it’s about a feeling of really being seen and recognised. It is self-perpetuating that the less we are listened to the less we have to say, so we never open up, we never grow and like a flower that shrivels in the bud we never blossom. We quickly learn that in order to be valuable our role is not to contribute to a conversation but to be the listener.
So many people have voices that are unheard, opinions that are never spoken; they become so good at listening that they forget how to speak.
”Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable”
David Augsburgh