Lately I have been wondering why people tell me I am a poor listener.

I read an article on ThriveGlobal.com by Jonathan Alpert called “7 Ways to Become a Better Listener.” The tips are pretty good, and the article got me thinking. I must have read dozens of write-ups like this over my life. I wish I could say that they have helped me. That would be a lie.

At work, in my relationships, and on the podcast, I struggle to listen to people. Every habit that poor listeners can have? I have it. I interrupt, I jump to conclusions, and I talk about myself too much. While the other person is making their point, I am often thinking up my response instead of seeking to understand theirs.

My listening skills are not because I don’t see the problem. I know I am a poor listener, and I do try to improve. I don’t get better at listening, at least not much. So I started to wonder why? I started to read about what makes someone a lousy listener, and I found a lot of scary articles. Auditory processing disorder, Adult ADHD, and other disorders were listed. I read more and decided that this wasn’t the problem.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Dr. Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I am a bit of a neuroscience nerd. I do not, for a second, pretend to understand how the brain works. I feel how we perceive and relate to the world around us is fascinating. Part of what makes it so fascinating is that there is little proven knowledge about how a brain works. What motivates us and why we “do” things; who are we? A lot of the big answers are just theories now.

I can’t go into the entirety of why I am a poor listener. I did make an observation. I don’t enjoy listening.

Often I get excited about what I want to say, and I assume you do too. From the time I was a child, through my formative years and into adulthood; people liked me more if I spoke up. When I was funny, they laughed, and that made me feel good. When people told me I was smart, I felt proud. Even if I was arguing with someone, at least they were paying attention to me. I learned that speaking is a behaviour that earns a reward. That reward is a little shot of dopamine.

Nobody praises you for being quiet and listening. A lot of people reading this will say that this is nonsense. How many of us have begged a group of people to get someone to start talking in a meeting? How many have said, “this is wonderful, everyone is listening, and not a single one of you is talking.” How relieved are you when someone starts to speak up?

When a student sits quietly and never speaks up, the teacher starts to call on them to get them to speak. If you never speak up in class, the teacher tells your Mom.

Talking brings you into the group. Just listening can set you outside of it.

I know I am attention-seeking, and this makes my tendency not to want to listen worse. Over time, I developed neural pathways that create an automated response. When I am in a discussion, there is a reward attached to talking. I know I should be a better listener, but that is not how my brain is programmed. Talking gives me an intrinsic reward, or at least my brain believes it will.

Listening well, for me, takes intention. It takes a lot of hard work to modify well established neural pathways. I have been a poor listener my whole life, after all. Talking is related to a dopamine reward, whereas listening is just something the other person wants me to do.

As much as blogs and articles can tell me what a good listener does, they will not help me if I do not tackle this issue. They say that you can not teach an old dog new tricks. The truth is, we have a degree of neural plasticity, the ability to learn a new trick, throughout our lives. However, your brain will unconsciously fire your old neural pathways without consulting you.

When a conversation starts, my brain encourages me to start talking, not to listen. The only way to change this is to start to create new neural pathways and reinforce them. I need to recognize when a conversation begins. Then, I need to force myself, against my nature, to listen. I need to do this over and over and over again. Creating robust neural pathways is not an easy task.

I am trying. I know I need to get better. I know that those special people who grew up knowing the reward of being a good listener have the advantage. I want to be more like them.

Take the advice you get on the Internet with a grain of salt. If perfection was as easy as bloggers make it seem, with their top five lists and 800-word essays about how to fix all your problems, wouldn’t we all be perfect? Changing your behaviour is a difficult task. Even eliminating an old habit or creating a new one is hard. So be patient. Get to know you, and be honest with yourself.

As always, stay loose everyone,

J. David