I’m listening to audio book named “The Strange Power”. It’s a X-men kind of story, one of my favorites. It starts with a high school girl living in a small town, who has a very special talent: she can draw the picture of the future. Personally, I think it’s a pretty cool power but obviously her class mates, teachers and neighbors don’t think so. She became an outcast, she was called as witch and no one would invite her to any social event. Then one day a woman showed up and brought her to a lab where there are several other special kids, all with this or that superpower. I didn’t have text of this book, so if I want to know about this story, there’s only one option: listening to the audios. If I stay focused, I could get the most part of the story. The problem is when I am listening, my mind is so easy to wander around. So I have to listen to it again and again.

Believe it or not, we are losing our listening, and here I’m not just talking about English learning. Study shows that we spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we retain just 25 percent of what we hear.

And every day, there is someone in this world committing suicide because of depression, and almost all of them sent their cry for help before they made that fatal decision, however, no one truly and really listened, no one received their messages for help.

When it comes to communication skills, many of us have already heard advice like look, nod, and smile to show that you’re paying attention during the conversation. That’s crap because if you really are paying attention, you are paying attention and you don’t need to show it. If you try to pretend that you are paying attention, you really think that people would not know it?

Listening might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to cultivate. And do you know how much you can possibly earn by simply listening carefully? I can give you a rough answer: probably 400 yuan per hour.

Seriously, that’s what I paid an online psychologist, for listening to my headaches with an understanding ear, without judges and prejudices. Sounds quite simple, doesn’t it? But I assure you many of us can’t do that.