Kunsten at lytte til andre – Sådan får du bedre relationer gennem bedre samtaler

Depending on my mood, I read nonfiction to varying degrees. Sometimes, I'll read like 3 or 4 nonfiction books in a month, and other times I won't touch one for almost a year. I was in the latter category and hadn't read a nonfiction in like, 4 months, but decided that I should try out #nonfictionnovember. While I had lofty goals to read a lot of nonfiction, I only read one. This one.

The premise of You're Not Listening is pretty simple— we, as humans, are a LOT worse at listening than we are at talking. Especially as we become increasingly politically, economically, socially, and physically divided, it is ever obvious just how BAD we are at listening (pretty much 2020 could be a use-case for this entire book). We interrupt each other, our minds wander, and we often project our own problems on other people; our inability to listen prevents us from creating truly meaningful and robust relationships.

So noted, we're horrible listeners, but how exactly can we become BETTER listeners? Well, that's kind of what the book is about. Murphy does an excellent job of dividing this topic into digestible chunks, balancing anecdotes, interviews, and (arguably) most importantly, methods to improve your listening.

To be candid, unless you REALLY lack basic self-awareness, I doubt that anything you read in this book is going to really be something you've NEVER heard before. Like sure, don't cut someone off in the middle of a conversation, don't raise your voice, don't ask biased questions— but isn't that kind of obvious? (Rhetorical question, because yes, it should be kind of obvious). But what I think this book does incredibly well is it consistently highlights numerous (and I mean, pretty much like 70% of the book) examples in which better listening = better outcomes. People are happier, closer, and more trusting than ever after improving their listening! So that, for me, is why I loved this one— it inspired me to WANT to really work on my listening, so that I can really improve my relationships.