How to Become a Better Listener
There’s a gap in the rain, and I need to walk to clear my head. Ever been there? I leave my earbuds charging in their case in my pocket and listen to conversations amongst the birds and the swoosh of tires on drying pavement. The air is dense, heavy, like inhaling fog.
Out here I spend more time listening than I do thinking. Maybe that’s why words flow better—I stop forcing them and instead listen for them. Tune in to what God’s whispering and forget about everything else. Even my steps. These past few weeks I’ve walked as many miles a day as I usually do in a week.
Discovering that I write faster on my phone than when I have a full keyboard at my disposal has been a game changer for me. Makes me wonder what else I miss by getting stuck in my head. Recipes. Conversations. Relationships. Faith.
In the kitchen, I level before adding and use math to halve or double a recipe, as my mom taught me. But I often fall back on my dad’s method of measuring in pinches and handfuls. Without this pull to experiment, taste, and adjust, I’d never have discovered my favorite recipes—the ones I adapted, blended, or made up.
My background is in English, namely English Lit, but my undergrad minor is in Communications. That handful of classes taught me to listen to people rather than the text, watch nuances like face expression, tone, and body language. I learned to ask questions and paraphrase answers back to show I’m actively listening. But I wonder now if all our learning and trying to listen well gets in the way. Maybe we overthink more than engage, and it ruins something like literary criticism did for my love of fiction.
The Art of Listening
Listening is often touted as a lost art, which is why we expend so much effort learning to listen better. It takes intentionality because we like hearing ourselves talk, silence feels awkwardly vulnerable, and there’s a constant crisscross of thoughts in our brains, like in a busy airport.
Also, we like to be right. And for others to know it. Like to be the helper, not the helped. Like to be liked, so we try to say the right things in the right tone and the right time, yet worry we’ve said too much too soon.
But talking, I’ve found, isn’t the only antithesis of listening. The thoughts inside our heads can also inhibit our ability to be present.
For those of us more cautious and self-reserved, we choose our spoken-aloud words with care. Unless we’re really excited, our vice is saying nothing rather than too much. But silence and active listening are not synonymous.
I’m guilty of being quiet yet preoccupied. Tugging at my thoughts are dueling tensions. Detail-oriented perfectionist and spontaneous creative. I own both—and the effect they have on my relationships. Putting work aside is a struggle because there are things to finish well and ideas out of nowhere that I want to make happen right away. I can become a slave to both.
Your inner dialogue might look different. You worry about not making the right choice or that your words didn’t come across as you intended. Plot a risk-elimination plan. Barrage yourself with grace-less words you’d be ashamed to say out loud. Retrace mental steps. Recount yesterday. Dream up something grand enough to dazzle.
We want to focus our full attention on listening, but our thoughts are noisy. Intrusive. Persistent. We dive back into the solution we’re sorting out in our heads and realize we missed minutes of a conversation. We’re answering a lengthy dm in our heads at the expense of the right-in-front-of-us person. Brain dumping inside our heads then trying to hold onto all of it.
Become a Better Listener
We weren’t made to hold onto all of it. We need an exhale of all we’re trying to corral. Listening that looks like open hands and leaning in and forgetting about everything else.
That’s what God wants most—our attention. It gives Him access and honor. He responds with more of Himself than we could ever hold.
Isn’t that the point? Not us accounting for every detail, but trusting that He will. Not us fixing, pacifying, perfecting, but surrendering to His best, even when we don’t understand it yet. This way of living entails that we listen, not half-distracted, but fully engaged.
He’ll teach us His nature, if we’re interested. Grant us wisdom. Fill us with peace. Walk with us as we grow patience. Sift through what’s become lodged in our heads.
Then He’ll ask us to share it. Let what He gives ripple out beyond us. Lend hope to the people around us. But we’ll miss these opportunities unless we practice listening—first to Him and then to people in front of us.
It’s no accident that the more time we spend listening to Jesus the better we become at listening to others. We form a habit of quieting not only our talking but our overthinking next to Jesus, and it translates to our other conversations. We become more present. More in tune to where the person right in front of us needs Jesus and what Jesus is nudging us to do or say.
Let’s pray.
Jesus, we’re talkers and over-thinkers. Interruptors and self-fixers. But we’re feeling distant from You and our people. Show us Your way instead. Draw us to the secret place to practice listening to You. Tenderize the calloused places of our hearts. May we linger in the silence. Praise You with reverent attention. Hear and respond as You speak to us.
Just a friend over here in your corner,
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