The Mindful Listener

I personally don’t think it’s possible to perceive others without any sort of judgment. I believe that as we grow we develop pre-judgments about places, things, and “types” of people over time which we can’t seem to avoid. Of course at no fault of our own, we would rather think in one consistent way instead of taking the time to analyze thoughtfully. In the book it is explained as “cognitive misers” or saving our conscious attention for important situations and spend much of our time being mindless. (Trenholm, 2011). Although we can be mindless, we can definitely re-program ourselves to be mindful when need be. Trenholm goes onto explain that “effective listeners know when to rely on familiar scripts, but they also know how and when to switch from mindless to mindful…”. I agree with Trenholm that effective listeners can adapt to be more self-conscious, other aware, and able to shed pre-conceived perceptions to conduct a fair listening environment.