Styles of Listening

When I read chapter 6, I immediately knew that I was a context centered listener. I definitely consider myself a people person, but when it comes to my listening, I only like to hear facts. Many people often come to me for advice and I am always trying to help them find solutions to problems or help them work through a situation, so I have adapted this style of listening and unfortunately for me it has become a terrible habit.

I know that I 100% get this habit from my mother because she would do this all the time and it would make me so mad. It is clear that she has developed a habit of doing it also, because when my siblings and I would get into an argument she would always have to be a judge and listen to all the facts of the case to determine who was at fault and who was going to be punished. In doing this, she would listen to our stories and repeat different facts and ask us different questions about what took place. This would make me mad because I never liked when she played detective, I just wanted her to put the blame on my siblings and let me continue playing haha….

Now, whenever I hear a story I am always trying to listen to the facts to make judgment about how to act accordingly based on what I heard. This is not a good thing for me because when I am listening to my friends and they are just gossiping about regular everyday things, I zone out.  If it’s not a story where I need to pay attention in order to get the most important facts and give my opinion, I begin thinking about something important and what they have to say is no longer relevant. I feel like I don’t need to be listening because my help is not needed. I do this a lot with my brother; he tends to tell a lot of stories, and I hear him talking, but I’m actually in my own world thinking about something different. Once he is done with his story he is expecting me to laugh or comment about it, but instead I just change the subject (which my mother also does) and this makes him so upset. I don’t do this on purpose it’s just a habit that I can’t shake.  I think that we should be able to adapt to different listening styles because different styles are needed all the time. There’s a time and place for everything, clearly.