A good
listening habit is one of the indications of good breeding. Since the mental
faculty, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the body can only retain and
process the message or information inputted into it - as well as be enriched by
it – it behoves every individual to cultivate a good listening habit by:
§ Paying
attention and showing interest in the message being transmitted
§ Indicate
to the speaker if he is understanding the message or not, and
§ Showing
how he is reacting to the message by non-verbal cues (Beck et al, 2002).
The first way
to use the listening skill to enhance your mental faculty and ensure a
wholesome being is by being selective about what you listen to. There is no better way to keep your mind
healthy than to choose what you listen to. Knowledge is the food of the soul,
just as the body thrives on viands and adornments. However, it is not all the information that
one is exposed to that he should listen to, for as the saying
goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. What
you feed your brain is what you will express in speech or behaviour.
So, the first
rule for using listening to achieve mental and emotional development is to
choose what you listen to. Platitudes
and other forms of debased communication do nothing good to the soul. They must therefore not be entertained,
otherwise, the mind will process them, deposit them in the mental and emotion
realm, and the man will live them eventually.
Capturing this
phenomenon in another words, Allen (1902:4-5), in his timeless classic, says:
‘Men
themselves are makers of themselves’ by virtue of the thoughts which they
choose and encourage…(The) mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment
of character and the outer garment of circumstance...
As
the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man
springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without
them. This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and
“unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed
Another way to
enhance your mental and emotional capacity through listening is by attending
seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences, and other intellect-simulating
fora. By so doing, you will continually cultivate your mind, widen your horizon,
and school your emotion, which is at best erratic.
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