LISTENING

How old !!!

I wasn't best pleased to hear the small Japanese animated creator of Nintendo DS Brain Training announce that I had a 57 year old brain earlier this afternoon....

My younger boy had just bought it and we were trying it out. Load of rubbish I thought, blaming my slow test-time on the poor quality of the voice recognition software.
"Yes it's a known glitch, doesn't always recognise the word blue. They said so on the Gadget Show", announced my older son later. Must be a mistake then I thought, already feeling a little better, my bruised ego beginning to heal.

My sons love the Gadget Show. I can't decide whether it's because of the gadgets themselves or the fact that the presenter Jason Bradbury is an absolute dead ringer for our friend, also called Jason. Spooky that..... mind you've I've never actually seen them together, so....

I had another go later on and got an excellent score on the timed maths tests. Of course this time, I put that down to me!

Made me think, it's funny how we sometimes only hear what we want to hear. The ability to listen well to others, not just to let the sounds enter your ears, but to really hear what others are saying, is a precious skill. We could all improve our listening skills. Next time you have a conversation, really make an effort to hear what the other person is saying, without interrupting.

In his excellent book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey lists one of the habits as - "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." We all have one mouth and two ears. The world might be a better place if we all tried to use them in that proportion.