In our Blog pursuit of sharing mastered and sought-after skills, Alyna spotlights a skill essential to every adolescent: How to Master Selective Hearing.

By Junior Alyna Rei

I am generally a silent person. I like to hear rather than talk. But, there are some times when I just choose to not listen to my surroundings. This is what I call selective hearing. For the people that don’t know, selective hearing is when a person only listens to the things that they feel  are important. In my case, I only listen to the things that I want to hear. 90% of the time, I actually listen to important topics, but when I can pass through and not listen to useless information, I tune my ears out of the conversation.

Why hear selectively?

This certain skill can be seen as rude and inconsiderate. I only do this when necessary. Would you listen to something that sounds boring and unnecessary? Probably not. For the people that do, I envy you. I have not the tolerance. Again, I only listen to the things that I know are important. But, when I hear a topic that doesn’t involve or interest me, my ears will naturally muffle whatever someone is saying.

How do you hear selectively?

I feel like this skill comes to a person naturally. I have never had to “learn” how to listen to things that I only needed to, but I did perfect the skill. The key to doing this involves finding something else to focus your attention on.

I also use headphones a lot. This is a big distraction to my ears. When I can, I put headphones on all the time. I know that is a bad habit for my poor ears, but, oh well.

Where can you hear selectively?

I use this skill when I need to. This can be anywhere: office, school, the car. It can even be in your own home. 

Here’s the process.

When I feel the need to tune out, I focus my brain on a memory, a fantasy, a song, a favorite image, or a Wordle. If I have the chance, I put on my headphones and focus on music, a podcast, or an audio book that excites me.

Keep in mind, I always show a straight face doing this. It’s important to not make a face that is obviously showing zero interest in a topic. That’s what makes a person know that I have no interest in what they are talking about. Note: I have heard that my straight face can be scary, so you may want to perfect your own resting faux interest face.

Here’s how it works: when a classmate is very loud for no reason, and I feel I don’t need to hear that person, I go into the zone of blocking everything out. Many people call this spacing out. When I space out, I look at a certain thing, such as something that is not moving. When I do this, my ears tend to block everything out. My face is rested and frozen. If I really want to block everything out, I put on my headphones (specifically noise canceling) and maybe put on music that has lyrics. When music has lyrics, I tend to focus on the lyrics, thus blocking out everything else. Spacing out and having selective hearing happens to be a habit now for me, but I call it a skill.

The face to use when performing selective hearing is just a straight relaxed face. Sort of like the 😐 emoji.