🎧 Better Listening

🍎 Sol Bites: 4 Habits to Drop

🔮 This One Skill Will Transform Your Relationships

📜 Words of Wisdom

1) Stop Wanting to ‘Win’ Conversations

Many people struggle with listening because they’re emotionally insecure. However, if you’re chatting with someone, you can’t be a good listener if your goal is to outshine the other person and boost your ego. Before you enter a conversation where you want to listen well, ask yourself: Is this about being helpful and supportive or just making myself feel good? Your listening will improve big time when you stop treating conversations as battles to win and start seeing them as opportunities to serve others.

2) Quit Prioritizing the Problem Over the Person

Having a problem doesn’t make someone a problem. Many of us are natural problem solvers, constantly identifying issues and creating creative solutions. But when someone tells you they “want to talk,” they’re not always looking for solutions—they often just want to be heard and understood.

Great conversations are about connection, not just information. To improve your listening skills, focus on the person, not the problem. Pay attention to how they feel and try to see the world from their point of view. This way, they’ll know that they’re okay no matter what they’re going through.

By not giving advice or jumping into solution mode, you’re giving them something much more valuable: Helping them see they are more than their problem. And sometimes, that’s as simple as saying nothing and listening.

3) Quit Invalidating Someone's Feelings

A quick way to kill a conversation and get labeled a lousy listener is to be judgmental about the other person’s feelings. It’s natural to empathize when someone tells you they’re feeling sad, frustrated, anxious, or ashamed—especially if it’s someone you love, like a spouse or child. Still, many people often respond, “You don’t have to feel that way.”

Even if you come from a good place, that response judges and invalidates their feelings. Whether or not you think their feelings are justified, their experience of those feelings is always valid. Good listeners know feelings aren’t problems to be solved.

A better thing to say? “That must have been tough for you.” As a good listener, your primary role is to be empathetic rather than purely rational.

4) Don't Lose Sight of Your Own Emotions

You won’t be a good listener if you’re unaware of your emotions. How can you focus on someone else if your reactions are about your emotional needs?  For example, you may jump to offer advice to a loved one about their anxiety without realizing that the real reason you’re trying to help is because you have a problem with their anxiety. Your emotional awareness greatly influences your listening capacity.

The best listeners are selfless in conversations, and being selfless requires self-awareness. Good listeners are kind to themselves as much as to others.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening.