I’m listening to audio book named “The
Strange Power”. It’s a X-men kind of story, one of my favorites. It starts with
a high school girl living in a small town, who has a very special talent: she
can draw the picture of the future. Personally, I think it’s a pretty cool
power but obviously her class mates, teachers and neighbors don’t think so. She
became an outcast, she was called as witch and no one would invite her to any
social event. Then one day a woman showed up and brought her to a lab where
there are several other special kids, all with this or that superpower. I didn’t
have text of this book, so if I want to know about this story, there’s only one
option: listening to the audios. If I stay focused, I could get the most part
of the story. The problem is when I am listening, my mind is so easy to wander
around. So I have to listen to it again and again.

Believe it or not, we are losing our
listening, and here I’m not just talking about English learning. Study shows
that we spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we
retain just 25 percent of what we hear.

And every day, there is someone in this
world committing suicide because of depression, and almost all of them sent their
cry for help before they made that fatal decision, however, no one truly and
really listened, no one received their messages for help.

When it comes to communication skills, many
of us have already heard advice like look, nod, and smile to show that you’re
paying attention during the conversation. That’s crap because if you really are
paying attention, you are paying attention and you don’t need to show it. If
you try to pretend that you are paying attention, you really think that people
would not know it?

Listening might be the single most
overlooked skill we fail to cultivate. And do you know how much you can possibly
earn by simply listening carefully? I can give you a rough answer: probably 400
yuan per hour.

Seriously, that’s what I paid an online
psychologist, for listening to my headaches with an understanding ear, without judges
and prejudices. Sounds quite simple, doesn’t it? But I assure you many of us
can’t do that.