Everyone likes to have someone to listen to their problems. But do good listening skills help improve self-awareness? Let’s find out.
We like to have someone by our side to listen to our problems. Most of the time, we find such people in our family or friends who are almost available whenever we need them.
The best part about listening is that it calms us and makes us a good counselor without a degree. Besides, listening to people has always been good for our mental health.
After all these years of seriously listening to people and their problems, I can confidently say that listening has improved my life to a great extent. Even without helping someone, I have always felt I helped people by lending an ear to them.
However, in this continuous process of listening, I have come across some good stuff about knowledge. Most importantly, self-knowledge or self-awareness that made me curious and excited to address this topic.
Now, I am not saying that self-awareness can only be attained through listening skills, but it does possess a relationship with it. When we listen to people or just a friend, we are engaged in a sort of psychological connection of feelings and thoughts.
This connection helps us to understand their thought processes and we could easily help out with our solutions.
But this is just a basic knowledge we have of listening, which doesn’t prove the existing relation between it and self-awareness.
So, “ do good listening skills help improve self-awareness?”
Let’s discuss it in the next section.
Why good listening skills are important?
Good listening skills are important.
For instance, a young studious boy who gets good grades and performs well in all the extracurricular activities is confused and depressed over some unknown problem. He knows what those problems are.
However, he is too afraid to deal with them because he doesn’t want to face disappointment if he fails. Here, another boy who happens to be his friend comes to his rescue by lending an ear to him. He understands his problems without judging him and makes our studious boy feel better and refreshed.
But, this is a normal example, right.
“What should we assume from it?”
Well, the fact is hidden in the last line, where he feels better and refreshed. The truth is that after listening to someone’s problems, we form a better idea of their emotions to help us empathize with them.
However, our studious boy feeling better, and refreshed is the result of the intense emotions that were unburdened at that moment. It made him less self-absorbed and more accepting and open-minded. Therefore, good listening skills are important for enhancing self-development.
What is the relation between good listening skills and self-awareness?
Exactly.
“How are they related?”
“How does listening to someone helps in self-awareness?”
This is the important question that we will address here.
To describe their relationship, we have to take a look at the prerequisites of self-awareness. Self-awareness depends on things that help us influence our identity. When one comes to terms with the inner workings of thought processes, it results in the acceptance and validation of these.
Moreover, good listening skills help refine our thinking and attitude towards the arrival of new information, which indirectly influences our sense of self.
In other words, the more we listen to people, the better we will be able to absorb new information and influence our self-awareness. Hence, our listening skills have a significant role to play in influencing our self-awareness.
Now, let’s take a look at how good listening skills help improve self-awareness.
How good listening skills help improve self-awareness?
Until now, we have discussed a lot about good listening skills and self-awareness. We have seen how they influence us and the relation between them.
Now, let’s find out how it improves our self-awareness.
So, here are 5 ways for good listening skills to improve self-awareness.
Good listening skills:
1. Help us understand our problems:
Is it so?
“Do good listening skills help us understand our problems?”
Yes, they do.
To be precise, good listening skills are essential to get an insight into the feelings of other people. These skills help us identify other’s problems. However, after listening to theirs, we are tempted to pay heed to our own hidden problems, which we had not solved till now.
In other words, empathy plays a role here when we try to resonate with their problems to identify with self-knowledge.
Hence, it helps to understand our issues leading to self-awareness.
2. Make us self-reflect a lot:
We are social animals who need a lot of interactions with others to get a good sense of self. Now, when we listen to someone talking about themselves, we get an idea of how much they know about their individuality.
It makes us dive into the reflective mode to contemplate our own circumstances, where past experiences influence it to get a better understanding of our own self, thereby leading to self-awareness. However, too much self-reflection can be bad.
Therefore, good listening skills help us self-reflect a lot.
3. Brings insights into our motivations and goals:
Our motivation and goals decide the course of our life. We want to make them a reality and achieve them no matter the cost. But to do that, we have to first understand how to reach our goal without losing the inspiration.
It is where good listening skills come into play, as most of us are unaware of our motivations or goals. But, after listening to people through counseling, we realize the lack of these and connect dots to identify what matters for us personally and professionally.
Therefore, good listening skills bring insights into our motivations and goals.
4. Makes us attentive towards our limitations:
If good listening skills influence goals and motivations, it can also influence our limits. The more attentive we are to our own limitations or drawbacks, the more self-awareness we gain.
Good listening skills help us navigate and find our weak spots, which hinder us from realizing our potential and actively working on it.
Therefore, good listening skills make us highly attentive to our limitations.
5. Guides us to positive and healthy self-talking:
Self-talking is a phenomenon of talking to oneself without necessarily implying it in the external environment. Positive self-talking helps us take better decisions and resolutions.
Moreover, it also helps in influencing a person’s identity and self-esteem. Through good listening skills, we can solve complex problems that can’t be solved otherwise. Most importantly, good listening skills can trigger self-talking as we decide to take our own survey without bearing the responsibilities.
Hence, good listening skills help us incorporate positive and healthy self-talking.
Final Words:
To sum up, it seems unlikely that listening skills can also influence self-awareness. But the truth is that it does, and in many ways that we do not notice in our day to day lives.
Nevertheless, the above-mentioned ways can help us incorporate good listening skills to improve self-awareness and self-image.