As simple as it may seem, most of us do not have the courage to do it. “Let’s sit down and have a chat” can actually be quite a scary line when we’re trying to escape from a conflict. It’s like an official confrontation.

And yeah, most of us would just run away. We’ll keep quiet and run away from it, burying the issue deep into the darkest corner of our heart, and trying to forget it once and for all.

But will that actually fix the issue? No. It will not and there’s a high possibility that it will come back to haunt you.

That’s why I feel whenever we’re faced with issues or troubled by conflicts, it’s better to sit down to whoever is concerned and have a heart-to-heart chat. Leave your ego 100 miles away and solve the issue at hand. Respect what each other has to say and try to come out with a solution which will help everyone.

But even if there’s no solution, having a heart-to-heart chat and by just listening attentively to one another, I believe it’ll greatly help the relationship.

Because at the end of the day, I believe this world will be a better place if only everyone learns to take time to listen more, communicate more and respect each other more.

Asians are not well-known for being outspoken except for a small group of people. For most Asians, we prefer to remain quiet especially when it comes to discussions and meetings. But that’s not the only issue here. It seems like Asians are pretty bad when it comes to listening too!

Some people love to interrupt others in a conversation –>> poor listening skill.

And some people are there to listen, but only physically and not mentally –>> poor listening skill.

It seems like the longer I work in the hectic and stressful corporate world, the more I find people with poor listening skill. There are times when a peaceful team meeting ends up as a war (minus the flying chairs and maybe gunshots) just because there are more than 1 person talking and everyone wants to prove his/her point…. aka, forcing his/her point into the other person’s mind. It’s not pleasant and can be very frustrating at times (and it’s darn noisy too).

In my opinion, everyone should really learn to listen properly. When someone is talking, be there physically and mentally. Pay attention. The person could be your boss, your colleague, your parents, siblings, friends, etc. Whenever they talk, LISTEN. Don’t just stay there for the sake of staying there. Pretending to listen is as sinful as ignoring the person directly. If you cannot concentrate, just ask the person to repeat or pause for a moment but do remember you will only get few opportunities to do so…before becoming annoying.

Also, give others the opportunity to finish their sentence. Never ever finish a sentence for someone. It’s very rude. I understand that sometimes, we tend to get a lot of questions and ideas while someone is talking and we just want to speak out before we forget about them. Well, what you can do is to write down those ideas and questions in a piece of paper. And ask them or speak out AFTER the person has finished talking. Or at the very least, when the person pauses for a moment (this works for people who can talk non-stop).

Seriously, it’s not that difficult right? I personally feel that at the end of the day, everyone should be given a chance to speak and to finish their sentences. And as the listener, we should always respect the speaker. You would not want someone to finish your sentences for you, would you?

Last but not least, if you’re facing someone who just talk non-stop and you’re getting irritated, feel free to say “excuse me, i need to go to the restroom”. Do that before your mind becomes over-cluttered with BS. Oh, but if you’re the chairperson, feel free to exercise your authority.

p/s…. by the way, i just realized i wrote a similar article before this…albeit the shorter version. you can find it here – Talk less, listen more. Sorry for the redundancy. Only realized it after finishing the article. LOL. I’m getting old and my memory don serve me well anymore. crap.

p/s…. a lot of people claim that being outspoken is a difficult skill. I feel that listening skill is much harder…. and surprisingly, a lot of people cannot listen well (even those at the top of the corporate ladder cannot).

p/s…. there’s this thing called Toastmaster and they train you on speaking skill. Perhaps they should train people on listening skill as well since I feel listening is more important than speaking.

I always wonder, nowadays we can easily get the info we want anywhere, anytime and EASILY. Just go to Google and you can easily find anything! This is very useful for us because it helps us to gain more knowledge, learn more stuff, do more things, connect with more people.

But also it makes us listen too much to others.

• When we want to know about local news, we go to CNN, BBC or The Star (for Malaysia).
• When we want to find nice food to eat, we go search for food reviews.
• When we want to go for vacation, we Google for the interesting places in the world (within our budget).
• When we want to solve a problem, we Google for it and get the top 5 articles in the search result.
• And for some people, when there’s a problem they don’t know how to do, they go to YouTube (I actually have a friend who went to YouTube to learn how to fold clothes! Oh, and he ended up making a big mess).

..and others, just to name a few.

As a matter of fact, the amount of information that we get everyday is just enormous and I believe it has reached a stage that filtering the information becomes more tedious than receiving the information. Thus, we turn to the so-called professionals aka the media and the ‘expert reviewers’. We believe that they will do the proper filtering for us. After all, we do pay some of them for that!

Actually there’s nothing wrong with this but I do notice that as time goes by, these individuals might end up having a louder voice within us than our own voice. We become indecisive. We believe most of the things THEY say, right or wrong. Or when there’s only one solution in Google for the question we asked, we believe that should be the right one (especially if there are some idiots who claimed the solution is genuine without trying it). But is it really the right one?

Perhaps it’s time to really think about such things (I know some of you already do. So this is aimed at people who rather go with the ‘flow’). Forget about all the press, news, articles, reviews or even commercials. They are there to HELP you in making decision, not making the decision for you. Ask yourselves, what is it that you really want? You want to buy a car? Do you really think you need it? Do you have the money? Will you die without buying it? What about that game with superb review (sorry ya, I’m a video gamer), do you think you will really enjoy it? Can you imagine yourselves enjoying the game after reading the review? How long do you think it’s going to last you? Can’t you wait for 6 months and get from the secondary market?

Ask more questions! Fill up some blanks with those reviews, articles, etc but the final decision should come from you. Stop listening too much to others and start listening to yourselves.

p/s……. few years ago, all my friends told me to give up on a girl. But my heart told me to go on. The end result was not what I wanted but I have no regret at all. Because if I’ve listened to others, the issue might still be unresolved until now.

p/s…….. also, remember that listening is not a bad thing but listening without filtering is.