Empathic listening

I went to a couple of sessions at work listening to a guy who had recently been on a 3 day course on the 7 habits of highly effective people. It was really interesting and hopefully I can implement some of the principles mentioned. One thing that really struct me though was about empathic listening - something that most people are really bad at but which is so important.

It said the following:

Listen Empathically
Empathic listening is reflecting what a person feels and says in your own words. It is not listening to advise, counsel, reply, refute, solve, fix, change, judge, agree, disagree, question, analyse, or figure out.

So if you want to try something different today then try practising empathic listening - at home with your kids, parther, with your friends and even at work with your colleagues. It's definitely worth it!!

Bounce Bounce

Yay I am very excited at the moment because Paul, Theresa and I are planning on going camping finally this weekend. Yay!!! The current plan is to go to Binna Burra which I guess is in the Gold Coast hinterland (very pretty) near Lamington National Park. Very exciting!! It's just under 2 hours drive from the city so we'll be leaving about 4pm on Friday to hopefully get there and be able to pitch our tent before it's too dark. Yay!! We have lots of new camping stuff that we will be using for the first time like our new gas stove, our grunty camping lamp and our little camping table :-)

http://www.binnaburralodge.com.au/index.php

We'll probably do a walk or 2 while we're up there as well so I can start walking off my winter butt ;-) lol
http://www.binnaburralodge.com.au/exploring/index.php