Most People Never Listen...

If you read nothing else here, read the quote below from Ernest Hemingway. It’s a passage that has singlehandedly changed the way I go through life.

Ever since I read this, it has become my “daily prayer”, and it does wonders for helping me be more aware from moment to moment.

And although this was meant as advice to writers, it’s useful for all of us.

After all, writing is just an exercise in mindfulness and tolerance, which are important skills for everyone to practice.

Mindfulness allows you to experience every moment of your life more deeply, while tolerance keeps you sane and benevolent in this often strange, cruel world.

Another legendary writer, Haruki Murakami, once observed how spending his 20s running a jazz club exposed him to a wide variety of people who helped inform his writing and non-judgmental nature:

We would all benefit from treating people this way.

“No matter who comes in, unless they're really awful, you have to greet them with a friendly smile on your face,” Murakami said sometime later.

If you don’t run a jazz club, this may mean getting to know the person at work you despise or your neighbor who you never seem to get along with. Knowing more about someone won’t always make you like them — it may even justify your dislike for them — but at least you will have some context that explains their behavior.

And eventually, when you pay attention to people long enough, you’ll improve your intuition to the point where you can truly “trust your gut” more quickly with each person you meet.

It’s like the girl who is convinced that she attracts “bad men” for no fault of her own — it’s almost always her own fault for being blind to (or simply ignoring) the patterns that arise in all of these people she chooses to date.

Another added benefit of this kind of thinking is that it places your attention on others.

When you listen and observe others completely, you aren’t in your own head about what you should say or think or do. You will naturally communicate more clearly because instead of trying to find places to fit in rehearsed lines or actions, you will be responding appropriately to what someone is saying or doing in real-time.

Most people’s version of “listening” involves collecting their thoughts while the other person speaks, only half-listening to what is being said to them.

This could hardly be called a conversation. It’s two people taking turns talking at each other, and it is an easy way for no one to be heard.

Instead, enter the conversation “disinterestedly”, or without an agenda or point to prove. Only by really listening to others and absorbing what they’re saying and why can you give yourself the best chance to be heard.

It’s why I think the most important part of Hemingway’s quote is the last sentence:

“Always think of other people.”

When you pay complete attention to others, you free yourself up to act more intuitively and experience life as it is, not how you wish it to be.