Listening'sAntecedents

Becoming a better listener has been a focus of my own personal growth for several years now.  Listening well does not come naturally to me. 

I have learned to leverage three prompts to assist me in being a more attentive listener.

Here are those three conditioners:

1. Curiosity - I try to go into each conversation/encounter with a curious mind, in search of hearing/seeing/feeling/learning something I didn't know previously.  Engaging with curiosity also helps me ask better questions.
2. Suspend assumptions - I try to put any presuppositions or assumptions I have about a situation or a person "on the shelf" in order to minimize my biases while hearing the other person out.
3. What if I’m wrong? - I try to go into each conversation/dialogue with the understanding that I may be proven wrong, or mis-informed, or un-enlightened.  Adopting an I-may-be-proven-wrong mindset seems to help me be more transparent in the discourse, and it seems to help me accept more freely the perspective of others.

I've written about listening before in Listening and in The Gift of Attention.  

I think I'm getting better at it......................just not as fast as I'd like.