5 ways to improve your listening skills

In our louder and louder world, says sound expert and Ted Talk speaker Julian Treasure, “We are losing our listening.” Describing the word listening, he says that listening is just making meaning from sound.

Delivering the Ted Talk on the 5 ways to retune your ears for conscious listening to other people and the world around you, Julian said, “We need to teach listening as a skill in our schools”

Five simple tools according to Treasure, in order to improve your own conscious listening

1) Silence – Just a three minute of silence is a wonderful exercise to reset your ears and to recalibrate so that you can hear the quiet again. If you cannot go for silence then go for being quiet.

2) Mixer – When you are in a noisy environment, try to listen to all possible channels of sound, it is a great exercise for improving the quality of listening.

3) Savoring – or hidden choir. It means to enjoy mundane sounds, they are very interesting if one pays proper attention.

4) Listening positions – it is one of the most important exercise; the idea is to move your listening positions to what is appropriate.

5) Acronym – One can use this in listening and communication, the acronym is RASA which is a Sanskrit word for juice or essence. RASA means –
R – RECEIVE (Pay attention to the person who is speaking)
A – APPRECIATE (make sounds like hmmm, oh, okay)
S – SUMMARISE
A -Ask (ask questions afterwards)

Julian says, “Every human being needs to listen consciously in order to live fully connected in space and time to the physical world around us, connected in understanding each other not to mention connected spiritually because every spiritual path I know has listening and contemplation at its heart.”

Note: This blogpost is based on a Ted Talk delivered by Julian Treasure. You can access the full talk at-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A