Be a Good Listener

You may seem to be one unless you introspect and understand the real meaning of what is actual ‘Listening’. You may have done many things in life, you may have experienced many adventures and may have been the reason and single person responsible for lot of achievements, but until and unless we give a patient hearing to others when they share their successes and failures, we never enjoy ours!

I am hereby laying the foundation for my discussion via this post on what it means and takes to be a ‘Lay Counselor’. At some point it time you may have realized in your life through experience that your happiness inevitably lies in relationships with people, your near and dear ones, your colleagues, your friends, in-laws, spouse, your neighbor and the list goes on and on. I know you may be finding it slightly difficult to connect to what I am trying to put forth here, but I will help you to connect the dots very shortly in the following lines.

Today everybody is under stress, and our society is not an exception. Technological advances, higher literacy rates, ambitions to achieve more and more, materialistic outlook of a society with equates success to wealth and status, higher expectations from others, coupled with a breakdown in the traditional family system – are the contributors to stress. The increase in the number of mental health professionals has not kept pace with the increase in mental health problems. Awareness about mental health is definitely much lower in our country.

In this busy society very few people have time to listen to others problems, leave alone sharing them. Consulting a psychiatrist or mental health professional is considered a stigma. There is thus a bottling up of emotions and feelings, leading to anxiety, depression, neurosis and eventually even mental illnesses. At this juncture, the ‘Counselor’ thus has a very important role in improving the quality of life. All of us have acted as counselors at one time or another and have at times felt good about it or have had doubts as to whether we did the right thing or not. When we are approachable, understanding and sensitive to others feelings, we find that more people tend to come to us with their problems.

The basic traits of a good counselor must possess are sensitivity, an ability to empathize, a non-judgemental character that respects all humans irrespective of their failures and fallacies, and a genuine desire to reach out to those who are in distress.

Knowledge of counseling and human dynamics is necessary for parents to understand their children, spouses for a greater harmony between each other, employers to get more efficient work output from their employees, teachers to facilitate their students grow into more accomplished adults, and for anyone who wishes to improve his understanding of fellow human beings.

To achieve all this and to ensure the real purpose of this noble cause is served, is to first be a ‘Good Listener’.