The power of LISTENING

What You Hear Is What You Get.*

How many of you remember the art of LISTENING?

It’s where you allow your brain to absorb what’s going on around you — and also fully absorb the activity you’ve chosen to engage in.

LISTENING means concentrating. It means paying attention. It means not expecting to multitask when you actually need to hear and understand what is being said.

Watching a favourite series — or that long-awaited film — in another language is always a challenge.

Many people see this as a chance to practise their language-learning skills. So they listen to the original dialogue, and then, for good measure, add subtitles to help them understand.

Little do they realise: they’ve stopped listening. They’re only reading.

We like to think we can multitask. But we can’t. Most of the time, we divide our senses into small packets — where we see, or read, or smell, or taste, or hear. These fragments of concentration leave gaps in the information we process.

It’s like blinking. That fraction of a second with your eyes closed could mean something has changed — and you’ve missed it. F1 drivers, for example, have been studied during races and shown to barely blink at all when fully focused. The risk of missing a vital visual cue is simply too high.

So just as seeing is important, so too is LISTENING.

In fact, we can often learn more with our eyes closed. In Japan, you’ll see this: people sitting with eyes shut, apparently asleep — but in reality, listening. Deeply. Is it because their language is so layered and nuanced? Or is it a mark of respect for the speaker? Perhaps both. And when the language isn’t your own, the importance of listening rises even more.

Yep, Fogy has a story here too.

Working as part of an IT development team, we were once called into a meeting where the company’s next steps were being shared with all departments. The meeting was in Portuguese, and Fogy had to concentrate fully, just to keep up.

Afterwards, walking out of the meeting, Fogy asked the team, “What did you think about the second item?”

Blank faces.

Eventually, one of them said, “Oh... I wasn’t really listening.”

When asked about items 3, 4, and 5? Same answer.

Apparently, the content hadn’t seemed relevant at the time — so why bother? They’d figure it out later, through the usual drip-feed of repetition and follow-up questions over the next few weeks.

But if they’d LISTENED — really listened — that step wouldn’t have been needed at all.

Fogy also loves music. But not just listening for pleasure — studying it. Music is a rich blend of beats and sounds that have to be listened to with care to really appreciate how they’re put together. You begin to understand the role of each instrument, the logic of the rhythm, and the brilliance of a well-crafted composition. It’s something only the discerning LISTENER picks up.

And yes, LISTENING can even mean the difference between peace and war.

When language is used with precision, every part of a phrase can help bridge communication gaps — if people are actually LISTENING.

“You’re not LISTENING to me” is a common complaint. But why does it come up so often? It’s usually because you’ve had to repeat yourself again and again. Yet if the listener wasn’t really paying attention the first time, how would they notice the subtle shifts — the change in cadence, the stress, the tense, the emotion?

Underneath every phrase lies a deeper meaning — but only the truly attentive can hear it.

And even when you think you’re not listening, so much is still happening around you. The brain registers all of it. But a lazy thinker will throw this input away, like a conversation that seems unimportant — and is discarded too soon.

The Power of LISTENING is, ultimately, about training yourself.

It’s about letting the irrelevant pass through, focusing on what matters, and giving yourself space to digest what you’ve heard. Not rush to react. But to understand.

A seemingly clear drop of water in a Petri dish holds more life than we imagine.
And the sound of silence can speak volumes —
—to the practised LISTENER.

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