Listening is both a skill and a practice.

It’s a skill in the sense that, when people have never taken the time to truly learn to listen, most of us have all kinds of unconscious habits that make it hard to do so.

Hence, the cliché of the spouse yelling “you never listen to me!”

I don’t believe that people who are in love with each other genuinely choose not to listen (unless there are bigger issues).

What seems to be more likely is that we are limited in our ability to do so. Partially because of not having the bandwidth (more on that later).

And partially because our whole lives, everyone tells us to “listen” as if we assume what that means, but no one ever tells us how to do it or what’s the difference between “listening” and “hearing”.

Listening is also a practice in the sense that, even if you have the best listening skills, there will be times when you fall out of practice and notice you’re not listening as deeply or attentively as you used to.

Much as it is with things like a meditation practice, the depth of love you feel and express towards your partner, or the degree to which you honor your intuition.

If you want to become a better listener, I believe there are 3 aspects to tackling it, which all matter equally:

1) Minimizing existing habits that make it harder to listen.

2) Building the skill of listening itself.

3) Expanding your listening capacity.

Below is a list of short notes that can help you with each. I recommend you bookmark this somewhere so you can ​exploriment ​with them independently and continue where you left off.

6 Habits That Stop us From Truly Listening to Others — And How to Fix Them

Yes, I’m writing this clickbait because I’m nostalgic for the old internet, sue me. No, the quality of the content will not sink to the level of the title.

Also…I’m really ​ashamed​ to do this so blatantly…but numbers 3 and 5 will surprise you!

1. Competing Objects of Attention

The difference between listening and hearing is intentional focus on the speaker. So that starts with removing anything that you know will compete for your attention.

Put your phone away. Look up from your book. Turn down the music if needed.

Don’t be afraid to say “let me finish this text first so that it’s out of my brain and I can give you my full attention”. That 30 second delay is better than having someone stare at your face while mentally holding on to some words they want to send someone else.

Focus the majority of your attention on the other person you’re listening to, and find an amount of eye contact that feels comfortable to both of you.

2. Formulating Phrases in Your Mind

One of the most common habits that block us from fully listening to a person is thinking of our response while they are still speaking.

This is normal. I used to do it all the time. It feels logical too. Because what if by the time they finished speaking, you forget what they were going to say?

But if you think about it, whatever we’re thinking of saying next when we do this will probably not be all that great. Because it’s the equivalent of mentally writing a text, except the text is for them, and we didn’t even fully read the one they sent us yet.

The key to breaking this habit is separating those processes, the same way you’d do with texting:

Listen first, then formulate a response.

—”But won’t I forget important details I wanted to respond to?”—

That’s possible. Here’s a solution to that:

If someone is sharing a lot and you’re worried about forgetting details by the time you respond, you can either

A) Pause them: ( “Hey can we slow down a bit? I want to give each part of your story my full attention and right now there’s already a lot of information to process.” )

B) Just wait till the end, give your reply, then ask if you missed anything important.

Alternatively, if you find that the reason you want to already formulate a response reactivity or disagreement, what you can do is say: “Hey, before we continue. I’d love to respond to ___ already. Or is there still important context missing on that?”

3. Affirmative Listening Techniques

I often meet people who went to a communication training where they learned to nod and utter short, affirmative noises to signal active listening:

• “Mm-hmm.”
• “Uh-huh.”
• “Right.”
• “I see.”
• “Tell me more.”

It’s not uncommon for these habits to be the exact ones that get in the way of deeper listening.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad to nod along to show agreement, or to utter the sounds listed above. But sometimes, a much better way to signal you’re actively listening is to shut up and listen.

Now, affirmative listening techniques exist for a reason. Yes, people absolutely feel more listened to when someone is signaling they are still with them. It’s just that this works because the person is spontaneously doing so.

And having someone incessantly nod and interrupt with short phrases to signal they’re listening can demonstrate the opposite: that part of their attention is on making sure you perceive them as listening, rather than on what you’re saying.

So my point here is: Just make the affirmative noises you’d naturally make. Don’t worry about making too much or not enough. Just focus on the listening itself.

In rare cases when people truly think you’re not making enough affirmative sounds, I find that they’ll usually straight up tell you.

4. The “I Understand How You Feel” Trap

It’s quite common to listen to someone, match their words to our experience and decide that we know how they feel.

Sometimes that’s ​real empathy.​ More often, it’s our own interpretation or internal response. By thinking we fully get it, we then listen with a focus on our feeling instead of them.

(Side note: The ​Authentic Relating​ framework does a great job at separating these 2 things by making a distinction between sharing “reflection” and “impact”:

Sharing a reflection is a direct mirror of what the other person shared, with as little interpretation as possible.

Sharing impact is telling them what you felt, thought or experienced while listening.)

The problem with telling the person you know how they feel, when it’s possible that you don’t, is that it can create the sensation of not being listened to. Of being misunderstood.

If you want to get better at understanding the other without projecting your own interpretations, ​here’s an article on 5 different levels of empathy.​

Speaking of understanding…

5. Overfocusing On Understanding

One of the habits that, oddly enough, can make you a worse listener, is seeking to understand while you’re listening.

Remember the example of replying to a text before having read it?

A similar thing is at play here:

It’s unlikely that we’ll get the full context of a message before having received every part of it.

But if we try to understand the other person from the first phrase on, that tends to become our context.

This can lead us to jump to conclusions, which cause you to interpret every next word within that context.

But a conclusion made while they were still speaking is premature. Listen first. Understand later (through dialogue if needed).

(Exceptions apply here, such as when the other person explicitly tells you the context first. Which is another practice taught in​ Authentic Relating​ .)

In my experience, I feel most misunderstood when people are trying hard to understand me.

A great example of this is when people have a background in psychology/coaching/self-help and I notice them trying to pattern match everything we’re experiencing to a known theory.

Nothing kills my appetite as a speaker like sharing a genuine experience and having the listener say something like “oh so you’re basically dealing with a limiting belief there” or “Right! What you’re sharing is what Wilhelm Grausbach referred to as ‘Ontogenesis of the negative’ “.

It’s also a mere assumption—albeit a safe one—that people want us to understand them in the first place. Sometimes they just want to be heard.

The pattern continues here: The more we separate the act of listening from all the other things that come with it, the less we block our ability to listen.

6. Hearing Our Interpretation More Loudly Than Their Words

It can take some practice to fully get how deep this rabbit hole goes, but by default, when people listen to each other, they don’t hear the words of the other person but the meaning they attribute to them.

Decoupling this act of translation will—let me put on my marketing hat for a second—10x your listening skills without having to do anything else.

​Here’s an article on how to learn this skill (separating facts from stories).​

Now that we got the hindrances out of the way, let’s have a look at what you can actually do to improve the listening itself:

12 Ways to Become a Better Listener

This list will progress from technical to intuitive.

Some of the early tips involve using conversational crutches that teach you to listen more deeply and show others that you’re hearing them.

Do note that, at some point, these same crutches will become conversational handicaps. (Just like walking with real crutches would be a handicap for a healthy person.)

They are useful initially, like training wheels on a bike. But eventually, you have to learn to listen without them.

If that’s the case, I will label them as such.

1. Wait Longer to Respond

One of the easiest habits that can help improve your listening is waiting longer to respond:

It’s common for people to still be thinking of something they want to add.

Waiting just a tad longer gives them the space to do so.

It also gives you the space to let their words sink in. And to respond rather than react.

(Here’s an article on ​practicing pausing​.)

2. Verifying That You Got It Right

After listening, tell them what you think you heard them say and ask if you got it right. If there’s anything you missed, anything they want to add or clarify. Then respond.

This is a great example of a crutch habit:

It helps you become a much better listener short-term (because you’re also getting constant ​feedback​).

But if you cling to the habit, it creates distance: It can feel rigid or performative and stop the conversational flow.

One thing you can always do if you worry about that is simply revealing that you’re trying to improve your listening. Who wouldn’t respect that?

As a teenager, I used to do this with flirting.

I’d say something, and if I was worried it didn’t land well. I’d just say “By the way, I’m trying to improve my flirting. How’s it going so far?”

This was accidentally a great strategy, because it would:

• Clearly reveal my attraction for the person (I’m flirting with you)
• Create a space where making mistakes was okay and they knew clear feedback was okay
• If someone wasn’t into me, they’d often still be delighted at the idea of helping me flirt better

Little side tangent there, but the point is, if you’re worried about being a bit robotic or weird when you suddenly say:

“What I think I heard you say is ___ , did I get that fully?” , you can fix that by explaining you’re practicing listening better.

With time, you’ll simply be a good listener and you’ll notice you don’t have to do this anymore. Your response will usually already demonstrate your understanding. And you’ll still have the habit on hand for when you’re genuinely not sure you fully got it.

3. Practice the 3 Levels of Listening

The 3 levels of listening is a framework learned from ART International, which refers to listening at different dimensions simultaneously:

What are they saying verbally?

How are they saying it? (Vocal tonality, energy, body language…)

Why is this important for them to communicate?

While you’re listening, try to get all 3, and ask additional questions if one of them isn’t clear to you.

(This can be another crutch. Once you’re ready, it’s good to let go of this framework and just listen holistically.)

4. Shift from “Truth-Seeking” to “Intimacy-Seeking”

A habit that changed my life:

When I meet someone who is passionate about something I think is nonsensical (or bad) I ask what they love about it and listen for hours.

It has blown my mind and opened my heart many times and I live in a more beautiful world knowing these perspectives. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. I often don’t.

But in the past, I’d never get the chance to know the wide variety of things people experienced because the moment I noticed some bullshit I would start debating it.

In the end, it doesn’t matter unless debating is the specific context: A person is sharing their worldview with us, and it’s an honor that we get to witness. It’s a form of intimacy, regardless of truth.

(Also, you’ll often find out that you were simply missing something by looking at their perspective as something to be debated rather than something to be understood. ​It took me 2 decades to realize I was wrong about sports fans​. I still don’t vibe with them. But I have to concede that what they’re doing isn’t stupid. I just didn’t understand.)

5. Listen to Remember

Approach it like a game or an exam.

How much of their story can you remember without taking mental notes?

Approach it like an act of hoarding. Gathering information and storing it.

Approach it like an act love-making, letting their voice enter your ears and your attention penetrate their psyche.

Approach it from whatever frame motivates you to listen more and maximize absorption of each word they speak.

My friend Elle put this into words better than I ever could:

6. To Fail at Your Practice Is to Win at Your Practice

Whenever you think you’re failing at meditation, you’re winning at meditation.

Because the practice of meditation is to be present, and every time you notice yourself not being present, that means you’re present. You noticed. Yay!

You can apply this to listening too. Because listening is simply meditating upon the contents of another person’s mind.

Make the speaker the object of your focus. Every time somebody talks to you is an opportunity to practice mindfulness.

When you notice yourself getting distracted, forgive yourself and re-apply your focus.

Don’t be afraid to say “sorry, I wasn’t listening…can you repeat?”

In the short-term, this can seem rude. In reality it’s a lot of good things:

• It’s an act of care.
• It helps others hold you accountable (you no longer have to do it all alone)
• It builds trust over time that whenever you don’t say this, you are in fact listening

As with meditation, some days it will be easy to focus. Some days it won’t.

Don’t get wrapped up in your identity as a good listener. That’s as useful as getting wrapped up in your identity as good meditator.

I have great listening skills, and sometimes I’m the worst listener. Maybe I slept bad. Maybe I’m stressed. Maybe I’m pre-occupied. Who knows! Michael Jordan misses goals. And he was better at basketball than we are at listening.

Just keep showing up and doing the best you can with the capacity you have (more on that in a bit).

7. Listen Like You Have Amnesia

Listen like you don’t know anything.

Listen like you’ve never met this person before.

Listen like you were both just born.

Listen like you’re dumb.

Listen like it’s the last time you’ll ever hear them speak.

Listen like they are your favorite song.

8. Postpone the Advice

Sometimes advice can send the implicit message that what they’re sharing is not OK.

Here’s a typical example of that:

Person: “How’s it going with ___?”

Me: (shares how it’s going)

Person: “Ah well, you should do (generic advice)”

Me: “Oh, but I know where I’m going with this. No advice needed. Just a bit of patience. “

Person: “But you presented a problem?”

Me: “Oh, not at all, my dear sir. You presented a question and it appears that you perceived my answer to be a problem. “

Person: “Why present me with a problem when you don’t want to fix it?”

Me: “For me, this isn’t a problem. It’s just the current state. It’s a challenging state. I don’t want it to be a permanent state, but it isn’t. And I can handle it. So all good. “

Person: “Well if you don’t want it to be permanent, why don’t you take my advice?”

Me: “Because I’m not in a situation where I feel stuck, helpless or in need of advice. I know the situation. I have clarity on what to do, and I’m doing it. “

Person: “It sounds like you’re too proud to take my advice.”

I run into this pattern often. There’s really 2 things going on here:

1) The other person comes from the frame that people only talk about problems when they want advice.

2) My capacity for being with unresolved tension is higher than theirs. Which means that as a listener, they try to empathize and feel a sense of discomfort they want to resolve (presumably for me, but more likely for themselves as a listener).

There are many reasons why people would share things other than advice. Sometimes they just want to be in it together with someone. To talk about their day.

When that’s met with advice, they’ll usually feel misunderstood or unmet. This actually happens a lot, and people usually won’t tell you because they can tell you meant well.

The fact that rushing to give advice is often a worse response than no response at all doesn’t mean advice is bad.

The way to avoid this is to practice only giving advice when prompted.

When in doubt, you can always say you have some advice and ask if they want it.

When you don’t have advice, but find yourself trying to find some, you can always ask them if they were looking for a specific response or just sharing something

9. Listen to Perceive the Person, Not Just the Words

Listen with all your senses and feel the essence that is being expressed.

Trust that it doesn’t need to make verbal sense. We’ve done this for millions of years. We know how to do it.

(Here’s an old video ​on why this matters more than words​.)

10. Become Well-versed In Symbolism and Semiotics

This is one of those things that’s slightly harder to explain.

It definitely won’t benefit your listening to think about these things while listening.

But if you learn to speak the language of the symbolic in general, it can take your listening to another level.

Present-day society is strange because we structured it as if we are rational and literal but our behavior is usually metaphorical, symbolic and archetypal.

The movies we watch, the songs we enjoy, the way we treat each other, the way we present ourselves. It’s often easier to get the essence of someone by interpreting them semiotically than factually.

…in fact, that’s how we relate to each other too! Our relationship to each other gets created by abstract things like “trust” and “vibes”, which we then backwards rationalize with ambiguous evidence.

Poets know this. Romantics know this. Artists know this. In general, people dislike when a movie is too on-the-nose. And the most acclaimed movies make use of the symbolic.

Studying metaphor, art & symbolism can make you a much better listener, too. Because it intuitively allows you grok things the speaker might not have even been aware they were expressing.

One of the main reasons for this is that language has limitations, but art and aesthetics doesn’t abide by them. So our deepest feelings are often not expressed through words but through our being itself.

11. Listen as an Act of Love

I once tweeted that “being a good communicator is mostly about being a good listener” and the responses shocked me:

Common trends in the replies were things like: “People love talking about themselves, let them do so and they’ll like you.”

Maybe so, mister ​Madoff​, but why not listen just to honor that they’re sharing something with you?

Listen as an act of love.

What makes a good listener is only partially about how well you listen.

The other part is what your intention for listening is.

Are you listening to fish for leverage?

Or listening to hold them in reverence?

(As a footnote: This reveals something I’m sort of shocked I didn’t mention earlier. Nothing will help you listen to something you don’t care about. If you genuinely don’t want to hear it, you are working against the very nature of your system.

For the life of me, I could never listen in school. Of course not! I was forced to sit and listen for 8 hours a day to stuff I never signed up for voluntarily. It’s only after dropping out of high school that I found out I was deeply passionate about learning. Because I learned things I cared about. Like the things I’m writing to you now.)

12. Become a Space for the Words to Pass Through

I’m not sure how to explain this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it:

What improved my listening skills most is something I’d best describe as “removing myself from the my body”.

Not as in dissociating, but as in staying embodied but removing “the person that inhabits it”.

My best bet at explaining this process:

1) Feel as much of the body as you can

2) Feel the space inside it

3) Feel the sense of self that permeates the space

4) Imagine a hand above you, “picking” up your personality and pulling it out through your crown

5) Keep feeling the space

6) Let their message pass through it

7) Taste what they’re sharing with you. Savor it. Feel it in every cell of your (now empty) body. Feel their joy, pain, awe and excitement. Breathe slowly. Keep your body open and relaxed. Stay grounded. Let it all pass through without contracting or holding.

8) Share what it was like for you to feel.

Such listening can sometimes even be a healing experience for people.

The reason this makes such a difference:

When my body is “full of myself”, I’m often judgmental. My attractions and aversions color the words I’m hearing.

When I allow my self to leave, I become a space for the other’s words to be felt. There is no judgment. Only spaciousness. The words are experienced and witnessed without a person interacting with them, changing them or impacting them. The listening is pure. It can be almost psychedelic.

To me, this is what listening ultimately is about, and it’s also the part that trips us up the most:

While I’m istening, what is relevant to me is the speaker and their words.

How I relate to those is a separate thing and as long as I’m listening, it’s none of my business.

(It only becomes my business if or when I choose to respond, at which point I’m sharing my own experience.)

I believe listening is a sacred act and therefore best done devotionally.

Sometimes, such devotion may not feel desirable. That’s fine.

In fact, ​you’re under no obligation to listen to anyone ever.​ Honoring whether you want to listen or not is step 0 of being a good listener.

A Final Note on Capacity

If you consistently practice even a few of the things we just went over, I have little doubt that the quality of your listening will improve.

That said, there’s still something else at play here, and it’s that the degree to which we can listen will be limited by certain capacities.

One obvious one is our attention span. If we spend most of our day on TikTok, or multitasking between project, that’s what we train our mind to do. As a result, that’s what it will do when we are with people, too.

The more we train our attention span to focus for longer periods of time, the better we can listen. The good news is that listening in itself is a way to practice this.

Another limitation is the current capacity of our nervous system. To listen and empathize with an other person means to receive impact, to feel things.

So like with many other things, our listening skills will ​fall to the level of our capacity to feel​.

In that sense, ​building nervous system resilience​ will make you a better listener too.

But the main reason I’m sharing this, is as a reminder to not be too hard on yourself with this.

If you’re going through a period of heavy personal or professional stress, it’s normal that your capacity for listening might diminish.

If you’re going through a period of intense grief, it’s normal that this will consume large amounts of your energy.

If you’re wrapped up in an intense emotional or psychological process of your own, you might not have much bandwidth left to give others your full attention.

All of this is normal, it will happen to all of us and it’s a reminder that the basics (like sleeping enough, having your social needs met, eating healthy, doing things you enjoy) actually contribute a lot to your listening.

And sometimes all you need to do if you want to be there for others, is to lean into living in a way that nourishes you.