It’s common for people to want the often unattainable abilities of superheroes. However, being a good listener is an incredibly valuable and obtainable superpower.

Here’s what I’m doing, and you can too, to attain this superpower:

1. Gaining Knowledge. It’s no secret that I’m a huge advocate of reading. So what better way to learn more about listening than to read about it. In my consumption of information about becoming a better listener, I’ve learned about the different types of listening, active and passive. I’ve learned how to gain mental control over your own thoughts so you can more closely perceive what someone else is communicating. And I’ve learned about the science behind why it’s advantageous to be a good listener. In the book “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It” by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz I learned how important a mastery of negotiation is to daily life, which brings us to point two.
2. Real life application. Applying the knowledge I’ve gained about becoming a better listener has been the most rewarding part of this study. I’ve learned to listen actively when someone is speaking to be solely focused on what they are saying and the perspective they are coming from. I’ve learned to pick out the key points of what someone is saying and gain more information through inquiry, a practice known as mirroring. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with these exercises. For the first time on Thursday, I purposefully used the mirroring strategy. I was listening to someone recall their move to the area and saw my chance to repeat back the keywords to gain more insight. I had some fear that they were going to see right through and that I had just repeated back what they said in a question format. However, the mirroring went undetected and it was smooth sailing.

The journey to developing listening as a superpower has begun but is not close to over. However, I am excited about where this journey will continue to take me and how I can develop other superpowers off of this one.