1 . When you are communicating, you spend nearly 60% of your time listening to other people, but most people only remember 25% of what they hear.     1    

Do you find yourself looking at your phone or following a TV show during a conversation with a family member or a friend? These little distractions can have much bigger consequences than you might think and you should try to limit them completely. When you are listening to someone, put everything else aside and give your full attention to the person.

When you are listening to another person, try to think what they might be feeling or going through at that very moment. Empathy towards other people can be improved by imagining yourself in different situations, as well as by learning more about people and different cultures.     3     Before you give your own opinion, try to look at the situation from the person’s angle and see what you can learn from the discussion.

Being a good listener doesn’t just mean that you sit quietly and let the other person speak, you also need to ask meaningful questions. Try to find an answer to questions “why” and “what”.     4    

The way you are able to manage your own emotions influences your ability to listen to other people.     5     Learn to understand your own emotions, both the negative and positive feelings and be aware of your reactions when you are listening to someone.

3 . All relationships require work, though it may not always feel like work.     1     Professional relationships require work too. Here are some tips to improve your relationships and get along better with others in both your personal and your professional lives.

Listen to others. The most important skill in communication is the ability to listen to others. Rather than doing all the talking, take time to stop and hear what others have to say.     2    

Be polite and positive. When you are the one speaking, do it in a way that considers others’ feelings and leaves a positive impact. Think about what you want to say before you say it.       3     If you’re responding to someone, say something positive if you agree and offer an encouraging word. Doing this early in your relationship sets a healthy example for future interactions.

Be honest and sincere. Another communication skill is to make sure you speak with honesty and sincerity.     4     When we trust people, we know that “they say what they mean, and they mean what they say. ”

    5     Listen with respect for other people’s experiences. Look for chances to listen to them, even if you disagree with what they are saying. Be open to changing your mind or understanding things in a different way. You may also want to ask for and receive feedback on your own business. A different view provides you with the chance to grow and learn.

8 . Bad judgments are meant to feed our own personal ego (自我意识) and put others down, which is not the healthiest thing to do. Here are five reasons why you should stop it now.

You start finding faults in everyone. Judging quickly moves on to more private areas of your life.     1     You fail to appreciate them and start getting dissatisfied with them. You become critical of even those who matter to you.

Judging becomes a habit. If you judge people, sooner or later, it becomes a habit, and you start judging everyone around you for the tiniest of things.     2     And you might dismiss even the best of people through these microscopic judgments.

People begin to distrust you. If you pass judgments about other people in front of your audience, you will lose their trust. As they will begin to feel that if you can judge others in front of them, you can talk about them behind their back.     3    

Judgment is a sign of unhappiness. If you are 100% happy with who you are, you are a lot less likely to feel the need to judge others. If you are self-assured, you will not feel the need to cast a downward glance at others.     4     Either way, it is a negative attitude.

    5     If you’re judging others, you’re probably judging yourself pretty harshly as well. You often tend to think that if you are judging people by what they wear, someone might in turn judge you, which, as a consequence, makes you extremely concerned with your appearance.

10 . Young children are always watching-including when people swap spit through actions like food sharing. Such behavior helps babies infer who is in close relationships with one another, a study suggests.

Typically, people are more likely to engage in activities that can lead to an exchange of saliva (唾液), such as kissing or sharing an ice cream, with family members or close friends than with an acquaintance. So saliva sharing can be a marker of “thick relationships, “ or people with strong attachments, says MIT developmental psychologist Ashley Thomas.

To see if young children might use saliva sharing as a social cue for close bonds, Thomas and colleagues ran experiments of people engaging with puppets(木偶). When shown a puppet seemingly crying, kids of 8 months old were more likely to look at an adult who had previously shared saliva with the puppet than an adult who hadn’t, the team reports.

Scientists, of course, can’t know exactly babies’ thought. But tracking where they look offers hints. The team used where the kids looked first when a puppet showed distress as an indicator of their understanding of the relationship.

In some experiments, the team showed 8- to 10-month-olds or 16- to 18-month-olds videos of a woman sharing an orange slice with a puppet. A second video depicted another woman and the puppet playing with a ball. During a final video, which showed the puppet crying while seated between the two women, the kids’ eyes were more often drawn to the woman who had shared the orange.

The team saw similar results in another experiment. One woman stuck her finger in her mouth and then in one puppet’s mouth to share saliva. For the other, she touched only her forehead and then the puppet’s forehead. After the woman showed distress, kids spent more time looking at the puppet that had seemingly swapped saliva.

It’s unclear how the findings relate to children’s daily lives. Future studies could switch out actresses for family members to better understand the role saliva may play in distinguishing relationships. Other cues, such as hugging, may also play a role, Thomas says.