I’ve always been a firm believer that your attitude not only affects your listening effectiveness, but also your communication competence. In my opinion, there are two ways to approach life: the optimistic way, which is grinning ear-to-ear whilst life punches you in the face, and the pessimistic way, which is punching yourself in the face before life can get a chance to. Despite considering myself to be a relatively pessimistic person, I always attempt to enter any new situation with a positive mindset. Even if it’s something that I don’t enjoy or even believe, in my personal experience, if I can trick myself into thinking I’m enjoying myself, I can be a better listener and communicator.
For example, math has always been my weakest subject. Ever since first grade, I’ve always hated math. It gives me anxiety, it feels useless, and it’s tedious beyond belief. I’m a language and writing person, not math. All throughout my elementary and middle school life, I acted the way I felt toward this subject. Dreading every class, texting under the table, rolling my eyes at everything the teacher would say. As a result of this, when I would get home to do my homework, I’d have little to no idea how to complete it. This, of course, caused my grade to suffer a massive blow.
Now, as a college student, I decided to take another course of action when I found out I had more math to complete. Instead of acting like math was worse than death, even if I believe that, I pretended like I was interested in it. I read the text and took notes before doing assignments, asked for help whenever I needed it, and watched all the videos my instructor provided to me multiple times. When I did my homework, I understood what I was doing and why I was doing it. This simple act of pretending to be interested helped me get through three back-to-back terms of math with good grades because I felt more invested in my work. Does this mean I began to enjoy doing math? Of course not. Math is awful. It does mean, though, I can trick my brain into becoming more invested, solely based on my mindset about the subject.
Attitude, in some aspects, can be considered psychological noise. Noise, according to our text, is “Factors that interfere with the accurate exchange of messages.” (Brownell, 40) Psychological noise, as stated in our lecture, are all cognitive factors. This includes our personal beliefs and biases, which attitude very much contributes to. Going into a situation assuming you’re going to hate it and have a terrible time doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a terrible time, but it makes you focus on the negative of any situation much more than the positive. Furthermore, our text also states “Your personal style does affect your listening ability.” (49) A good listener would be open minded, not critical or closed to new ideas or insights. Not to mention, a positive attitude and disposition simply puts people at ease, thus more likely to share information freely with you.
As someone who’s leant toward pessimism my whole life, my take on pessimism is this; If someone goes into a situation expecting it to be mediocre at best, but puts genuine effort into improving that set idea and the situation goes better than that, that person is able to be pleasantly surprised. Going into any situation positive you’re going to despise it isn’t helpful for you as a competent communicator and listener, or the people around you.
