How do you teach empathetic listening? It is not something that you can lecture about. You have to experience it. At a recent developmental seminar, we went through several paired exercises to improve our deep listening skills.

However, sometimes a well crafted video just says it all:

Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life captures the deeper essence of listening without the motor running:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”

How will you spend your life today?