Communication begins with understanding, so stop talking and start listening. Philosophers, psychologists and business professionals have all written endlessly about the power of listening. Your ability to listen determines your ability to influence and communicate.

For one thing, when you fail to listen effectively, you often respond to situations with inaccurate information.

I once went to McDonald’s with a friend. We were racing to grab our dinner before watching a movie at his house. As we began pulling out of his drive, we realized that my car was blocking the way. So I jumped from his car, re-parked my car down the road a bit, and scrambled back into his passenger seat. We tore off together, ordered our food and headed back to his place. At the edge of his driveway, he stopped and pointed to my car.

“Do you want to move it back?”

“Nah, I’ll just leave (it).”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

The next thing I knew, he was driving me to my car and saying, “Okay, then good night.”

“How weird,” I thought. “What happened?” I figured that he wanted me to leave, so I got out of his car in a daze and said, “Good night.” I drove home, still confused, wondering why he’d suddenly decided to turn me out; when a few blocks from my house, I suddenly realized that he’d not heard me say the word “it”.

I had said, “I’ll just leave it.”

He had heard, “I’ll just leave.”

Our evening ended with confusion and hurt feelings, simply because I had slurred the word “it,” and neither of us had stopped to clarify our confusion. Instead, we chose our actions based upon inaccurate information, and we reaped the benefits of cold food eaten alone.

Too often, we respond to opinions, misunderstandings and hearsay, instead of facts. But when you learn to listen effectively, you’ll remember to verify any information that you receive before you react.

Moreover, gathering accurate information is only the first benefit of effective listening.

How about a second benefit?

Effective listening enables you to satisfy what William James called the deepest principle in human nature, “the craving to be appreciated.” It’s true that people need appreciation as much as they need food, but too often people stuff their bellies when it’s their craving to be appreciated that’s been gnawing at them. What’s more, people have been known to do some crazy stunts in order to feed their craving to be appreciated.

When kids only receive attention for being bad, they start purposely breaking the rules in order to be noticed. People crave attention; therefore any attention is a form of reward—even when that attention comes from negative or criminal behavior. Why else would someone brag about committing murderer? Perhaps even a murderer feels validated by attention. Perhaps nobody paid attention until the killing spree began. And any attention, good or bad, feeds our internal craving to feel important.

People will eat anything when they’re starving, and too many people are starving for attention. However, once people feel full, they begin to eat selectively. Once our cravings are satisfied, our cravings stop influencing our actions.

As far as communication is concerned, people tend to be incapable of logical discussion unless they feel emotionally understood and validated. When people don’t feel understood, they have a hard time listening to opposing points of view. However, when you sincerely listen to people, you satisfy their need to be understood, and you feed their confidence. More importantly, you make them capable of listening to you.

Here’s a third, purely selfish, benefit of effective listening.

Listening is one of the best tools for improving your attention and retraining your focus. We discussed the importance of focus during rule four. Well, if you can keep silent and focus your attention on what someone else is communicating when you are dying to put in your own two cents, then you are well on your way to mastering the art of focus.

Here’s a fourth, also purely selfish, benefit of listening.

Listening improves your intelligence. I’ve been teaching for over twenty years, and I’ve noticed that my “A” students are always the most effective listeners. Listening is really a three-step process. It requires that you first hear what the speaker said. Second, you interpret what you believe they intended into your own words. Third, you restate what you understood so that you can assure yourself, and the speaker, that you understood correctly.

Every so often, I ask my students to repeat what I’ve said to see if I’m making myself clear. Invariably, my “A” students can repeat my points back using their own words. Sometimes, they even express my points better than I did. My “A” students have perfected the skills of listening. But, just as invariably, my “C” students get a panicked look in their eye and say, “Huh?” My struggling students can never repeat back what I’ve said because they find listening difficult. I’ve seen the same response so often that I’ve come to believe that intelligence has little to do with IQ and everything to do with listening.

Finally, here’s a fifth, and not so purely selfish benefit.

Listening can help you to navigate emotional riptides.

Beneath every choice you make, you’ll find two forces at work: reasonable forces and emotional forces. Reasonable forces are all the logical, positive, economic and conscious reasons why you should quit smoking, give up drinking, eat right, exercise, pay attention to people, learn to listen and develop a worthwhile life. On the other hand, emotional forces are all the illogical, social, negative, unreasonable and unconscious reasons why you fail to quit smoking, fail to give up drinking, fail to eat right, fail to exercise, fail to pay attention to people, fail to listen and fail to develop a worthwhile life.

You get caught in a riptide whenever you try to turn your life around by putting all of your energy behind the reasonable forces, without considering how the emotional forces might be causing you to fail. If you’re not careful, you can actually feel worse after you’ve attempted to change; because now, in addition to not getting where you wanted to go, you’re disillusioned with your ability to navigate at all.

Suppose, for example, that you’re trying to lose weight. You know all the logical, positive, economic and conscious reasons why you want to loose weight. You set up a plan, and you do everything right. You follow your diet, and you begin to lose weight. You’re feeling pretty good. Until one day, you happen to wake up feeling like a toad and head to the refrigerator.

You don’t know why you suddenly need to eat everything in sight, but you eat everything anyway, and hate yourself later. You’ve been caught off guard by all the illogical, negative, unreasonable, and unconscious feelings that sneak up on you and make you feel like a toad when you least expect it.

Listening is the best tool for dealing with life’s emotional riptides. Whenever you listen to the emotional forces behind a situation, you bring those forces into the open, where you can look at them with understanding, reflect upon them, loosen them up, and deal with them strategically.