Title: How Self-Awareness Leads to Effective Communication | Psychology Today
Headings: How Self-Awareness Leads to Effective Communication
Aldo Civico Ph.D.
How Self-Awareness Leads to Effective Communication
The art of listening begins with the ability to listen to oneself.
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Self-Awareness and Deep Listening

Content: Whenever we listen to something, we evaluate what we are hearing and this, in turn, triggers our emotional reactions and our judgment. If we hear something that contradicts our values or our interests, we tend to react, by becoming defensive; our ability to be effective listeners is a hostage of our own filters. As a consequence, our capacity to build meaningful relations, even with the people we love, our ability to lead effectively, to be a catalyst of change, to make a positive contribution, is negatively affected. article continues after advertisement
To become aware of the barriers to effective communication that lay deep within ourselves is therefore a first and necessary step to becoming great listeners. We need to become aware of how our life experiences, our gender, our race, our social status, our education, our religion, our failures, our fears can affect our ability to listening deeply to the other party. Self-Awareness and Deep Listening
Self-awareness allows for listening that is free of assumptions and judgments that compromise healthy communication. Before we are able to listen deeply to others, we need to learn how to listen deeply to ourselves. It is this self-awareness that helps us to understand the other’s frame of reference. Deep listening is transformative, but transformation begins with the development of self-awareness, that is with the capacity to listen to ourselves.