Loneliness has become an epidemic, and it’s no wonder. Technology has completely changed our way of communicating with one another, and our capacity for active listening is nearly extinct. What is active listening? It’s when you are fully engaged and present with the person speaking, you’re making an effort to understand what they’re saying without judgment, while demonstrating empathy and asking questions to make sure you are understanding them. You put aside your own needs and viewpoint to truly perceive them and be there from a place of attentive caring.

What it doesn’t include is a forcing of opinion, the need to be right, or projections toward the speaker. You aren’t distracted or simply waiting for them to stop talking so you can make your point, and you don’t interrupt.

Active listening creates intimacy, connection, trust, and safety. It makes a person feel seen and heard and it leaves an impact. As a spiritual counselor and former hospice volunteer, I have become quite practiced as a professional listener and have witnessed the amazing results.

In the context of humanity’s polarization, heightened stress levels, elevated fears, and increased anxieties, it takes a conscious effort to cultivate the art of listening. You have to prioritize its importance, recognize the value of human life, and desire the experience of giving someone your full attention in a way that creates deeper connectivity. What an incredible gift to give your friends, partner, children, and those in your day.

We are rapidly losing core values we held dearly as Americans. We speak carelessly and hostilely, generating further disconnect and increasing suffering and reactivity. We are an addicted culture, expecting instant gratification and fulfillment so we have little patience for others. Isolation and separation are the results.

You won’t have to look hard to find someone who is lonely. What if you joined the person on the bench at the park, knocked on the door of your neighbor, or called your lonely friend and offered words of kindness? And as they opened up, you just listened without trying to solve anything for them. You gave them your full attention and actively listened, maintaining eye contact if in person, and perhaps taking their hand.

You would witness transformation, and the return of energy would fill your spirit with joy and upliftment. You have the power to change a life with active listening, especially because so few take the time to offer it. It heals neglect, restores our inherent value, and creates the connectivity that’s longed for.

We can also become active listeners in nature and our environment. Have you ever experienced a power outage and after hours of sitting in the candlelight listening to the silence, you perceive a sense of magic? And are unpleasantly shocked when the electricity comes on and the noise returns, even feeling regret? Or taken a walk in silence, actively listening to nature’s communications? The sense of fullness and wholeness that results is undeniable.

It’s easy to feel helpless and hopeless in the midst of the world we are living in, but you CAN make a difference actively listening to someone today.

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