Daily Thoughs 1/12/2010

Panoramic view of the library of Guimet museum, ParisFeatured Picture of the Day, Wikimedia, January11, 2010 Taken 17 June, 2008 by Athoune Gnu Free Documentation License 1.2

Daily Thoughts 1/12/2010

Right Listening by Mark Brady, Ph.D. is turning out to be a practical little book. It is a set of suggestions on how to listen better to other people. It reminds us to be quiet sometimes, stop automatically criticizing, and stop talking at the right moments. There are one paragraph practice suggestions at the end of many of the pages to help you listen better.

Today we had the city in for Sexual Harassment and Violence In The Workplace training. It was a refresher. We watched two videos and filled in a worksheet and had the question and answer session. We do this every year. It is a necessary thing.

The staff also toasted the new year for success with sparkling cider, fruitcake and cookies. It was a brief reminder that the last year had been very successful.

Today I had a chance to finish looking up author websites for Westchester. We have a little over eleven pages of people to check on for events and other things. It is a first step. I also did a bit more weeding in the literary criticism section. Things are moving along.

I joined Librarything today. I was invited to try it out by the New York Lirbarians Meetup group. It is worth a try. I like looking at social networking sites. http://www.librarything.com/

On the way home from work, I finished reading Right Listening by Mark Brady Ph.D.. It is a short focused book on how to listen better. This is more than listening, it is listening with compassion, trying to listen without creating conflict, as well as attempting to understand the person being listened to.

Although it is not specifically a religious text, it does use some buddhist philosophical metaphors like mindfulness, an example of nonviolence from aikido, as well as quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Greek philosophy. There are exercises at the end of each section which ask you to practice a specific listening exercise so you will understand other people better. With 52 suggestions on how to listen better it means there are a lot of exercises.

The book has a few breaks between sections where you are asked to reflect on what you have read. Many of the exercises are meant to be done over several weeks. The book opens with a poem by John Fox, When Someone Deeply Listens to You that is touching. There is a lot of material in the 100 pages of the book including a bibliography. It is worth reading.