Kate Murphy > Quotes

“The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a journalist is that everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.
Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done (“Here, let me show you.” “Don’t be shy.” “That’s awesome!” “Smile for Daddy.”). Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It’s when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you are doing. The lack of being known and accepted in this way leads to feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. What makes us feel most lonely and isolated in life is less often the result of a devastating traumatic event than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have. It’s the missed opportunity to connect when you weren’t listening or someone wasn’t really listening to you.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The truth is, we only become secure in our convictions by allowing them to be challenged. Confident people don’t get riled by opinions different from their own, nor do they spew bile online by way of refutation. Secure people don’t decide others are irredeemably stupid or malicious without knowing who they are as individuals.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“people in long-term relationships tend to lose their curiosity for each other. Not necessarily in an unkind way; they just become convinced they know each other better than they do. They don’t listen because they think they already know what the other person will say.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“While people often say, “I can’t talk right now,” what they really mean is “I can’t listen right now.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“If you start listening to everyone as you would scan headlines on a celebrity gossip website, you won't discover the poetry and wisdom that is within people.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Research indicates that people who have a higher degree of self-awareness, and a related concept known as self-monitoring, are better listeners in part because they know the sorts of things that lead them to jump to the wrong conclusions and thus are less likely to do so. Cultivating self-awareness is a matter of paying attention to your emotions while in conversation and recognizing when your fears and sensitivities—or perhaps your desires and dreams—hijack your ability to listen well.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Hearing is passive. Listening is active. The best listeners focus their attention and recruit other senses to the effort. Their brains work hard to process all that incoming information and find meaning, which opens the door to creativity, empathy, insight, and knowledge. Understanding is the goal of listening, and it takes effort.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Studies show that children and adults who are securely attached tend to be more curious and open to new information
than people who are not. It’s another tenet of attachment theory that if you have someone in your life who listens to you and who you feel connected to, then the safer you feel stepping out in the world and interacting with others. You know you will be okay if you hear something or find out things that upset you because you have someone, somewhere, you can confide in and
who will relieve your distress. It’s called having a secure base, and it’s a bulwark against loneliness.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Not listening because you don’t agree with someone, you are self-absorbed, or you think you already know what someone will say makes you a bad listener. But not listening because you don’t have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human. At that point, it’s probably best to exit the conversation and circle back later.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Take first introductions. We often miss what people are saying—including their names—because we are distracted sizing them up, thinking about how we are coming across and what we are going to say. Not so when you meet a dog, which is why you can more easily remember a dog’s name than its owner’s. But if you marshal your mental resources so you fully listen to someone’s opening gambit and nonverbal presentation, it’s enormously interesting and can quickly clue you in to that person’s insecurities and values. And you will be more likely to remember names.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“We can readily accept the fact that we can be wrong,” the Polish-born social psychologist Robert Zajonc wrote, “but we are never wrong about what we like or dislike.” Better to listen to how people feel than try to convince them to feel differently. You can’t argue your way into affection, but truly listening is the surest way to form a bond.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“A study by psychologists at the University of Essex found that the mere presence of a phone on the table—even if it’s silent—makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected and disinclined to talk about anything important or meaningful, knowing if they do, they will probably be interrupted.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Anyone who has shared something personal and received a thoughtless or uncomprehending response knows how it makes your soul want to crawl back in its hiding place. Whether someone is confessing a misdeed, proposing an idea, sharing a dream, revealing an anxiety, or recalling a significant event—that person is giving up a piece of him or herself. And if you don’t handle it with care, the person will start to edit future conversations with you, knowing, “I can’t be real with this person.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“On the other hand, children whose parents were not dependably attentive typically grow up to be adults with an insecure anxious attachment style, which means they tend to worry and obsess about relationships. They do not listen well because they are so concerned about losing people’s attention and affection. This preoccupation can lead them to be overly dramatic, boastful, or clingy. They might also pester potential friends, colleagues, clients, or romantic interests instead of allowing people their space.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“J. Pierpont Morgan said, “A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one, and the real one.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The more you listen to someone, such as a close friend or a family member, and the more that person listens to you, the more likely you two will be of like minds.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Say your son or daughter jumps into the car after soccer practice and says, “I hate it. I’m never going back. I quit.” This always strikes a nerve with parents who are likely to respond with: “You can’t quit. Where’s your team spirit?” or “Oh my God, what happened? I’m going to call the coach!” or “Are you hungry? Let’s go eat. You’ll feel better.” None of that is listening. Grilling them about what happened is interrogating. Telling them they shouldn’t feel how they feel is minimizing. And changing the subject is just maddening. Kids, like all of us, just want to be heard. Try instead, “Have you always felt this way?” or “What would quitting mean?” Look at it as an invitation to have a conversation, not as something to be fixed or get upset about.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“People tend to regret not listening more than listening and tend to regret things they said more than things they didn’t say.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“during many conversations, you get just 7 percent of the meaning from the actual words, which could be typed.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Not listening to one another diminishes what we can achieve and in that way, too, can be seen as a moral failing. We not only fail one another as individuals, we also fail to thrive as a society.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Sometimes you need to make the call to stop listening. While you can learn something from everyone, that doesn't mean you have to listen to everyone until they run out of breath.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Even if your inner voice is friendlier, the dialogues you have with yourself often have to do with what’s weighing on you—things like relationship problems, professional disappointments, health concerns, and the like. Human beings are by nature problem solvers, so in quiet moments, this is where our minds go. Our fixation on what needs to be fixed is why some people can’t abide downtime and always have to have something to do so they won’t think about what’s wrong. However, trying to suppress your inner voice only gives it more power. It gets louder and more insistent, which makes some people get even busier and overscheduled to drown it out. It never works, though. Your inner voice is always there and, if it can’t get your attention during the day, it will roust you at 4:00 a.m. Hello! Remember me?”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“In Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“In unedited versions of Fresh Air interviews, you frequently hear Terry Gross stopping her guests to get them to explain what they meant. But in everyday conversations, people more often shrug and move on because it doesn’t seem worth the trouble or they think they can guess what the other person meant.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The truth is, we only become secure in our convictions by allowing them to be challenged.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“One of her greatest talents is asking questions that don’t rob people of their stories. For example, when moderating a focus group for a grocery store chain that wanted to find out what motivates people to shop late at night, she didn’t ask participants what would seem like the most obvious questions: “Do you shop late at night because you didn’t get around to it during the day?” “Is it because stores are less crowded at night?” “Do you like to shop late because that’s when stores restock their shelves?” All are logical reasons to shop at night and likely would have gotten affirmative responses had she asked.

Nor did Naomi simply ask why they shopped late at night because, she told me, “Why?” tends to make people defensive—like they have to justify themselves. Instead, Naomi turned her question into an invitation: “Tell me about the last time you went to the store after 11:00 p.m.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters