“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” - Andre Gide

A few thoughts on communication and listening...

It is said that when men listen to women they don't want to listen, they just want to solve. They are not particularly interested in listening to your problem and offering support, they want to cut you off mid sentence and offer solutions to your problems. I believe it doesn't matter whether you are a man or a woman - Sometimes you just need to allow a conversation to run its course before you interject.

“To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.”

One of the reasons that we are not great listeners in this day and age is because we have become accustomed to communicating over the Internet and we now feel that we need to respond to everything with words. One of my biggest pet pevees when talking to someone over FB chat is when they get offended if you don't respond to every message they send...even if the message doesn't include a question or a statement that requires a response. OR if they respond with LOL....LOL is NOT a response! The art of conversation is slowly dying and people are just retreating to their huts to live without human interaction. I'm not saying that I am better than anyone else when it comes to this. For me however, I would much rather get to know someone face to face - even if it means dealing with the occasional prolonged and somewhat "awkward silences". I am not a fan of internet lingo and I do prefer that you speak in complete sentences with proper grammar.

"The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate."

But I digress...another really interesting concept is non-verbal communications. It was the first way that people learned how to communicate at the beginning of time and it was also the first type of communication we learn as children. However, in school we are only taught how to interpret written or verbal communication and less than 1% of college graduates have been able to take a course that focuses on non-verbal communication...perhaps that is why we have to deal with so many misunderstandings every day. You also have to consider the fact that non-verbal communication is much more powerful than communication because it is harder to censor. We are always emoting non-verbally, in every situation!

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”