Conducting Entry 2

Habit 5 in Stephen Covey's book is my favorite: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Communication is the most important skill in life. It is how we relate to one another, understand or misunderstand each other, and build relationships. Covey writes, "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak. They're filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives."
How often I do this! I actually just did it the other evening when talking with a friend. She was explaining a very hard situation she was going through and I replied with how I had in a similar way encountered the same situation. My reasoning for doing this was trying to relate to her, but I see how I really wasn't. Instead I need to do more empathic listening.

When someone is speaking to us, we either ignore, pretend, use selective listening, or are being attentive. Few actually practice empathic listening, the listening with the intent to understand. Seeking first to understand, to really understand. It's an entirely different paradigm. We tend to probe, evaluate, advise, and interpret, instead we really need to focus on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.