Better Relationships - Four Tips to Active Listening

Life is very precious and has many benefits and gifts. The most important benefit of life is the opportunity to share in a loving relationship with one or more people. If a loving relationship is the chief benefit of life, the greatest gift in life is a close friend or two with whom you can share your most intimate thoughts and feelings. Still, effective relationships include both give and take; both talking and listening. Unfortunately, just about everyone is an expert at speaking, but only a few are good at listening. This article will discuss the basic fundamentals of active listening.

Four tips of active listening are:

Maintain eye contact - In the American culture, we value eye contact. When someone else is speaking, it is polite to maintain eye contact to show that you are listening. However, it should be noted that sometimes the listener can get so fixated on keeping eye contact that he or she fails to hear what the person is really saying.

Eliminate distractions. In order to have an intimate conversation, you must eliminate all distractions in order that you might listen intently to what the other person is saying. This means turning off the television, stereo or video game and setting aside the latest novel in order to give your spouse or friend your undivided attention.

Validate the person's words. The person's thoughts can be validated by summarizing what they share and feeding it back to them. For this to be effective, the feedback should be given without an air of judgment or commentary. When you state back to the person what you think she is attempting to say, she will feel treasured and will be open to share more of her life with you.

Ask relevant open-ended questions. Closed-ended questions are conversation killers. They are questions (e.g. yes or no questions) that are limited to one word answers. Open-ended questions that are relevant to the conversation will encourage the other person to discuss the matter more thoroughly. Good questions help to clarify what the other person is attempting to say.

Friendship is one the most precious gifts of life. Conversation is one important aspect of building meaningful friendships. Listening is a very important part of an intimate conversation. This article has discussed four tips of active listening.

Eric Coggins is the founder of Freedom of the Heart Group which seeks to promote the best possible life for all everywhere on the planet. Freedom of the Heart is a Christian faith-based organization that is attempting to elevate the value of human life around the world. For more information about Freedom of the Heart, please visit http://www.freedomoftheheart.org/ and its sister site http://www.thebestyou.org/

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