I’m a firm believer in taking a step back and listening.

I know it can be hard when it’s in our human nature to automatically say what we think or give our opinion on something, but sometimes listening is more important than anything that could be spoken.

Listening comes in handy for so many situations in all aspects of life. In the professional world, listening could help you learn more about a topic you thought you were already an expert on, or it could help you catch an error that others missed because they were too focused on preconceived notions.

In your personal life, listening is a skill that never becomes outdated. How many times have you had to repeat yourself because your friend is staring at their phone? In other cases, a friend going through a crisis may not be looking for advice, but just for someone to sit and listen to them, and maybe empathize with their situation. The amount of love someone can feel just because someone actually listened to them is priceless.

In a world where everyone seems to have an extremely strong opinion on everything, it is such a valuable and underrated skill to be able to listen to both sides of an issue and form your own opinion. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve seen fights on social media that could’ve been easily resolved if both people were more informed and just listened to the points of the other.

Our society is based around freedom of speech, which is such an amazing thing to have, but that doesn’t mean that an opinion has to be voiced for every single topic. There are always going to be people who hold prejudices and opinions that won’t ever change, but it is up to the listeners of the world to observe and make a difference.

Listening has always been a strong skill for me, since I am an introvert and can be on the quiet side at times. I also have friends who are super extroverted and sometimes need to be reminded to just take a breath and listen to what’s going on around them. It’s these two types of people that balance each other out. The extroverts encourage their introvert friends to speak their minds, and the introverts encourage the extroverts to observe and learn.

So many things can come from listening and learning, rather than pretending to listen while you are actually forming a counter-argument in your head (we’ve all done it). Everyone has their own backgrounds and stories, so taking the time to hear someone else’s point of view can completely shift your ideas and beliefs.

Listeners can be seen as weak or cast aside because they don’t always choose to insert themselves in conversations, but really, they are just learning and processing in order to form a more educated and well-rounded opinion. This makes listeners some of the strongest-minded people in the world, and we need more of them.

It can never hurt to take a step back and hear multiple points of view, so the next time you feel the need to strongly defend your opinion, take the time and make the effort to truly hear what is going on around you.