You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy explores exactly how despite living in a world where technology allows constant digital communication and opportunities to connect, it seems no one is really listening or even knows how.
And it’s making us lonelier, more isolated, and less tolerant than ever before.
In this always illuminating and often humorous deep dive, Murphy explains why we’re not listening, what it’s doing to us, and how we can reverse the trend.
Scroll down to read 20 Quotes from You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy.
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20 Quotes from You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy
The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a journalist is that everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you. You’re not listening.
To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know.
While people often say, “I can’t talk right now,” what they really mean is “I can’t listen right now.
If you start listening to everyone as you would scan headlines on a celebrity gossip website, you won’t discover the poetry and wisdom that is within people.
Hearing is passive. Listening is active. The best listeners focus their attention and recruit other senses to the effort.
In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people.
Social media has given everyone a virtual megaphone to broadcast every thought, along with the means to filter out any contrary view.
Evolution gave us eyelids so we can close our eyes but no corresponding structure to close off our ears. It suggests listening is essential to our survival.
We are defined by our attachments in life, each relationship shaping how we are in the world and with one another.
Relying on the past to understand someone in the present is doomed to failure.
Listening is how we stay connected to one another as the pages turn in our lives.
Good listeners are not born that way, they become that way.
Listening begets listening. Someone who has been listened to is far more likely to listen to you.
To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it.
Attention has become a commodity, bought and sold on sophisticated electronic exchanges where bidding occurs in real-time based on data provided by your cell phone or web browser.
In conversation, it’s important to pay attention to what words conceal and silences reveal.
People who are comfortable with silence elicit more information and don’t say too much out of discomfort.
Sometimes it takes more than one conversation to hear someone.
It often pays to first make the effort before you decide to pull the plug.
Listening is often regarded as talking’s meek counterpart, but it is actually the more powerful position in communication.
Which quote from You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy is your favorite?