5 ways to listen better | Julian Treasure | TED

Translator: Amantia Gjikondi Reviewer: Helena Bedalli We are losing our hearing. We spend about 60 percent of our communication time

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ing, but we don't do it very well. We retain only 25 percent of what we hear. It's not you, it's not this speech, but this is a general truth. Let's define hearing as giving meaning to sound. It is a mental process and it is a process of extraction. We use some good techniques to do this. One of them is the recognition of the structure. (Crowd noise) So at a cocktail party like this, if I say, "David, Sara, pay attention," some of you are going to freeze.

We know the patterns to separate noise from signals, and especially our names. Differentiation is another technique we use. If you let this pink noise continue for more than a few minutes, you will actually stop hearing it. We

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to the differences, we subtract the sound that remains the same. And then there is a whole range of filters. These filters take us away from all these sounds about what we should pay attention to. Many people are completely unaware of these filters. But in fact, in a way they create our reality, because they show us that we are paying attention to the present.

I will give you an example of this: Purpose is very important in sounds, in what is heard. When I married my wife, I promised her that she would listen to her every day as if it were the first time. Now, I can't keep this promise every day. (Laughs) But it's a great goal in a relationship. But this is not all. Sound places us in space and time. If you close your eyes now in this room, you will be aware of the size of the room by the echoes and voices reflecting off the surfaces. And you are aware of the number of people around you, because of the micronoises you are receiving.

And sound moves us in time, because sounds al

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have time captured in them. In fact, I would suggest that listening is the primary way we experience the flow of time from the past to the future. So “Sound is time and meaning”, a great quote. I said it at the beginning, we are losing our hearing. Why did you say that? Well, there are many reasons to say this. The first is that we invent

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to record: first by writing, then by recording audio, and now by recording video. The price for accurate and attentive listening has simply disappeared.

Secondly, today's world is so noisy, (Noise) with this constant cacophony on the visual and auditory level, that it is simply difficult to hear; It's tiring to listen. Many people take refuge in headphones, but they turn large public spaces like this, shared soundscapes, into millions of noises in small personal bubbles. In this scenario, no one listens. We become impatient. We don't want oratories, we want sonorous sounds. And the art of conversation is being replaced (I think dangerously) by personal broadcasts. I don't know how much is heard in this conversation, which is unfortunately very common, especially in England.

We are becoming insensitive. Our media should shout at us with these types of headlines to get our attention. And this means that it is more difficult to pay attention to calm, delicacy, understanding. This is a serious problem: we are losing audiences. This is still important. Because listening is our gateway to understanding. Mindful listening always creates understanding. And only in the absence of conscious listening can these things happen: a world in which we don't listen to each other at all is a truly terrifying place. That's why I want to share with you five simple exercises, tools that you can take with you to improve your conscious listening.

Will you like this? (Audience: Yes.) Good. The first is tranquility. Just three minutes a day in silence is a wonderful exercise to restore working ears and level them again so you can hear the silence again. If you cannot have absolute peace, go towards peace, it is absolutely okay. Secondly, I call this mixer. (Noise) So if you are in a noisy environment like this, and we all spend a lot of time in those places, try listening in the cafeteria, how many sound channels can you listen to? How many channels of sound in that mix am I hearing?

You can also do it in a beautiful place, for example at the lake. How many birds am I hearing? Where are they? Where are these gurgles? It is a good exercise to improve the quality of your listening. Thirdly, I call this exercise enjoying, and it is a beautiful exercise. It's about enjoying everyday sounds. This, for example, is drying clothes. (Sigh) It's a waltz. One two three. One two three. One two three. I love this. Or just try this on one for each size. (Grinding coffee) Wow, this everyday noise if you pay attention is very interesting. I call this the hidden chorus.

It is around us all the time. The following exercise is perhaps the most important of all, if we take it only from a distant point of view. This is the listening position: the idea that you can change your listening position to whatever is appropriate based on what you are listening to. This is playing with these filters. Remember, I gave you these filters at the beginning. It's time to start playing with them as a lever, to be aware of them and to move towards different places. These are just a few listening positions, or degrees of listening positions, that you can use.

They are many. Have fun with them. It's very exciting. And finally, an acronym. You can use this for listening, in communication. If you are in one of those roles, and I think you probably are anyone listening to this talk, the acronym is RASA, which is the Sanskrit word for foundation or essence. And RASA means Reception, which means paying attention to the person. Appreciate it, make sounds like "hmm", "oh", "okay"; In short, the word "so" in communication is very important; and ask, ask questions later. Now sound is my passion, it is my life. I've written an entire book about this.

I live to hear you. There are many things to ask of many people. But I believe that every human being needs to listen consciously in order to live fully - related to space and time with the physical world around us, related to mutual understanding, not to mention spiritual connection, because every spiritual path I know has listening. and think about its basis. That's why we have to teach listening as a skill in our schools. Why isn't this learned? It's crazy. And if we can teach listening in our schools, we can take our listening off that slippery slope of that dangerous, scary world that I mentioned and move it to a place where every conscious person is listening at the same time, or at the same time. less is able to do it.

Now I know how to do this, but this is TED and I believe the TED community is capable of anything. So I invite you to connect with me, connect with each other, implement this mission and make listening a lesson through schools, and transform the world in a generation, in a more conscious world for listeners, in a world contact. , in a world of understanding and towards a world of peace. Thanks for listening to me today. (Applause)