I know I tend to over analyze situations and possibly look for solutions where they may not actually exist. To look for someones motivation. When really the answer could be quite simple.

1. They are an ass

2. They are Crazy and in need medication

3. They enjoy watching the vein in my head get ready to explode

4. All of the above.

So my thoughts last night were on listening and the ART of LISTENING. We are in a society where there is so much constant NOISE.

We have become really good at blocking things out.

We have become good at hearing but not listening.

We have become good at talking with out really saying anything.

I try very hard to be a good listener. I think it is what makes me an effective coach and a good boss. According to Dr. Joe and Sue Massimo’s book, “Gymnastics Psychology” not only does your gymnast need to have you listen and understand. They also need you to TALK LESS.  As a coach and boss I try to provide a forum for my gymnasts and coaches to come talk to me.

HERE’S a trick question. What do you hear right now?

If your gym is like mine, you hear floor music, coaches talking to be heard over the kids (and each other). The squeak of the bars, the thump of the vault board, the clank of the beams. It is crazy.
The slight trick in the question is that, by asking you what you were hearing, I prompted your brain to take control of the sensory experience — and made you listen rather than just hear. That, in effect, is what happens when an event jumps out of the background enough to be perceived consciously rather than just being part of your auditory surroundings. The difference between the sense of hearing and the skill of listening is ATTENTION.

Hearing is a vastly underrated sense.

We tend to think of the world as a place that we see, interacting with things and people based on how they look. Studies have shown that conscious thought takes place at about the same rate as visual recognition, requiring a significant fraction of a second per event. But hearing is a quantitatively faster sense. While it might take you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward it, recognize it and respond to it, the same reaction to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.
This is because hearing has evolved as our alarm system — it operates out of line of sight and works even while you are asleep. And because there is no place in the universe that is totally silent, your auditory system has evolved a complex and automatic “volume control,” fine-tuned by development and experience, to keep most sounds off your cognitive radar unless they might be of use as a signal that something dangerous or wonderful is somewhere within the kilometer or so that your ears can detect.

Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention, and they use different parts of the brain. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of five neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second — elevating your heart rate, hunching your shoulders and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going to pounce and eat you. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate.
More complex attention kicks in when you hear your name called from across a room or hear an unexpected birdcall from inside a subway station. This stimulus-directed attention is controlled by pathways through the temporoparietal and inferior frontal cortex regions, mostly in the right hemisphere — areas that process the raw, sensory input, but don’t concern themselves with what you should make of that sound. (Neuroscientists call this a “bottom-up” response.)
But when you actually pay attention to something you’re listening to, whether it is your favorite song or the cat meowing at dinnertime, a separate “top-down” pathway comes into play. Here, the signals are conveyed through a dorsal pathway in your cortex, part of the brain that does more computation, which lets you actively focus on what you’re hearing and tune out sights and sounds that aren’t as immediately important.
In this case, your brain works like a set of noise-suppressing headphones, with the bottom-up pathways acting as a switch to interrupt if something more urgent — say, an airplane engine dropping through your bathroom ceiling — grabs your attention.

Hearing, in short, is easy. You and every other vertebrate that hasn’t suffered some genetic, developmental or environmental accident have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. It’s your life line, your alarm system, your way to escape danger and pass on your genes. But listening, really listening, is hard when potential distractions are leaping into your ears every fifty-thousandth of a second — and pathways in your brain are just waiting to interrupt your focus to warn you of any potential dangers.

Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.
And yet we dare not lose it. Because listening tunes our brain to the patterns of our environment faster than any other sense, and paying attention to the nonvisual parts of our world feeds into everything from our intellectual sharpness to our dance skills.
Luckily, we can train our listening just as with any other skill. Listen to new music when jogging rather than familiar tunes. Listen to your dog’s whines and barks: he is trying to tell you something isn’t right. Listen to your significant other’s voice — not only to the words, which after a few years may repeat, but to the sounds under them, the emotions carried in the harmonics. You may save yourself a couple of fights.

“You never listen” is not just the complaint of a problematic relationship, it has also become an epidemic in a world that is exchanging convenience for content, speed for meaning. The richness of life doesn’t lie in the loudness and the beat, but in the timbres and the variations that you can discern if you simply pay attention.

A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird? – unknown author

In the first few years of life, we’re all taught to speak. In fact, it’s an important developmental milestone, a sign that a child is developing normally. However, listening is an equally, if not more important skill that is often overlooked by parents, educators, and bosses.
Yes, we were all taught (hopefully) to listen to our parents and to listen in school. However, few of us were taught good listening—the active, disciplined kind of listening that helps us examine and challenge the information we hear in order to improve its quality and quantity, and thereby improve our decision-making.

Good listening is the key to developing fresh insights and ideas that fuel success.

Blocks to Listening (Don’t)First is a list of 12 blocks to listening. Try to honestly think about these to see which ones you’ve used before. They are pretty natural to fall into, and just a little awareness goes a long way in keeping them in check. (I’ve done a bit of mind reading and placating myself.)Comparing – While the person is speaking, you’re trying to figure out which of you is better, has more or does less in any way imaginable.

Mind Reading – Assuming you already know what the person is going to say while ignoring him/her and without bothering to ask questions to confirm your belief.

Rehearsing – No way to hear when you are practicing your next lines in your head.

Filtering – The only thing you’re going to hear is what you want to hear, nothing else.

Judging – You’ve already determined that the person speaking has no value for you, so you don’t bother to pay attention to what he/she says.

Dreaming – Something half heard sends you off into your own little world to think about a similar aspect in your own life.

Identifying – As someone shares an experience, you relate it back to your own life.

Advising – Before someone can explain, you are offering advice. You completely miss the point, the feelings and the scope, and leave the person feeling misunderstood.

Sparring – You listen, but only for something to disagree with, argue over or debate.

Being Right – You will rationalize, make excuses, shout or accuse the speaker of anything you can think of just to avoid being wrong.

Derailing – Bored or uncomfortable about what is said, you change the subject.

Placating – No matter what is said, you agree. You listen just enough to catch the places where you can agree.

Effective Listening (Do)

Now, here is a short list of tips to effective or empathic listening. You probably already do a lot of these, especially when the person and the conversation are particularly interesting to you. See if you can ‘catch’ yourself using any of these. Then, see if you can use them at will.

Acknowledge the speaker by being attentive, genuinely interested, alert and positive. Be in the moment and focused.

Show you are listening with “uh-huh”, nod your head, lean forward in a relaxed way, make frequent eye contact, and invite more to explore with open-ended questions.

Be a sounding board and a mirror by restating what is said in your own words. Let the speaker dominate the conversation.