We're becoming impatient. We don't want oratory anymore, we want sound bites. And the art of conversation is being replaced; dangerously, I think; by personal broadcasting. I don't know how much listening there is in this conversation, which is sadly very common, especially in the UK. We're becoming desensitized. Our media have to scream at us with these kinds of headlines in order to get our attention. And that means it's harder for us to pay attention to the quiet, the subtle, the understated. This is a serious problem that we're losing our listening. This is not trivial. Because listening is our access to understanding. Conscious listening always creates understanding. I'd like to share with you five simple exercises, tools you can take away with you, to improve your own conscious listening. Would you like that? The first one is silence. Just three minutes a day of silence is a wonderful exercise to reset your ears and to recalibrate so that you can hear the quiet again. If you can't get absolute silence, go for quiet, that's absolutely fine. Second, I call this the mixer.