Listening Now Blog

This is the last in our series on listening currency from Birdy Diamond.   Here Here to Birdy for such a beautifully drawn quartet of posts!!

Listening Currency: Your Contribution to the Listening Economy

Previously in this series, we’ve spoken about what Listening Currency is , when to spend it, and when to save it.  And now we come to the flip side of the coin: what are your contributions to the Listening Economy?

Are You Being an Asset or Just an Ass?

Charity begins at home they say, and the Listening Economy is no different. An excellent place to start looking at your contributions to the listening economy is by examining what comes out of your mouth.

Is it something someone would want to listen to?

Does it improve the world in some way for its having been said?

If not, is it truly necessary to be said? (Sometimes it is. More often, it is not.)

What Are You Supporting by Listening?

The corollary to that is: what are YOU listening to?

As we discussed in the first post in this series, your listening currency is a valuable thing.

Just as you spend money on the things you support in whatever way, so do you support the things you listen to by spending your listening currency on them.

So the question becomes: do you really want to support these things?

And if not – why are you listening to them?

What to Do

When you find yourself in a space of supporting something by your listening that turns out not to be something you want to support, the first and most important thing to do is to stop and take a breath.

Literally. Stop, take a few deep breaths, decide if you really want to be in that space, listening to what you’re listening to.

Then act accordingly.

If you decide to stay, then stay. That’s a valid choice.

But also be strong enough and willing enough to walk away.

Whether that means suddenly saying “You know, I don’t want to listen to this any more – can we find something else to talk about?” or physically walking away, have the strength of mind and character it takes to back up your words with action.

It’s good for you, it’s good for them, it’s good for the World.

Removing the Pollution

There’s a lot of pollution in the world today, and the world of sound is no different.

From literal noise pollution of the sounds of modern living to the less literal but no less deadly pollution of negativity in all its myriad forms, there is a lot of it out there these days.

So what can you do about it?

The biggest thing to stem the tide of listening pollution is to be careful about what you add to the mix yourself.

This isn’t about judgment, it’s about determining what’s best for you and then following through on those determinations.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect either. If you like horror films or CSI, then by all means, keep watching them.

Just be aware of the listening you are doing, and do your best to strike a balance between the negative and the positive.

The World Revolves Around the Sun, not You

Be aware of what your words do to others.

My husband speaks all the time of people coming into the bookstore where he works, full of whining, full of complaints, full of unreasonable demands.

He does the best he can with them, but their words and the fact that to keep his job he has to listen to them, make it very hard sometimes for him to treat the next person as well as he would like.

What would happen if those customers thought about the effect their words would have before they said them?

This isn’t about stuffing things that are harmful. This is about realizing that you are only the center of your own universe, not the larger one.

One Person’s Meat Is Another’s Poison

We are a world of individuals, with individual tastes, likes and dislikes. This is not the forum to discuss whether a particular one is right or wrong.

What is important here is that you remember to support what you love with your time, your listening, and your dollars. And that you also understand and remember that you have the right, some would say even the obligation, to vote with those forms of attention.

We don’t need censorship in this world so much as we need people willing to take a stand and only support the listening they want to support and simply release the rest.

Are you one of those people?  What can you do to become more of that kind of listener you want to be?  To add something positive to the  listening economy?

And with that, we come to a pause in the series. There is more to come – stay tuned here!

What would you like to see in this series? What questions do you have? Come visit us in the comments and let us know.

And finally – thank you so much for your time and attention!  I look forward to speaking with you again.

About the author: Birdy Diamond , aka ‘Question Lady’, blogs about Play, Story, Encouragement, and other such words of a feather over at An Encouraging Bird . Together with her husband, Mike Diamond, aka ‘Explorer Man’, they have created An Encouraging Diploma Kit , a tool for Giving Yourself Permission