Some things that I noticed when I was listening "empathetically" was that it is really really hard to do. One of the big things that you need to do is to "be non-judgmental" or to "suspend our own agenda's". I sort of struggled with this a bit because if I heard something that was wrong or something that I disagreed with I would want to have comment/rebut what was said. Other than that I think I did pretty well with the whole "listening empathetically" thing. I was able to let them speak, maintain eye contact(well not really since this was through the internet), give my friend my full attention, ask good questions, and try on their shoes. Something that I think is different between communicating live and online is that it is much easier to formulate good questions or understand what they are saying when you are talking online. It feels like you have more time if you are talking online rather than offline. I'm not sure why but thats what I think. What I think I would need to work on is not trying to use examples from my life to solve any problems my friends might have. If they wanted it they would have asked me. It isn't really a empathetic thing to do. Something that I learned from empathetic listening is that most of the time people just want to be heard, they don't need anything from me.
