Create the future #1 - Learning the forgotten art of listening
Wanna talk?
I am all EAR for you! 👂🤗
Hello lovely beings! ☀️🌿🌈 How are we feeling on this wonderful Tuesday? I am sending lots of good vibes, happiness and health your way - you are truly amazing. 💖
Welcome to the ‘Create the future’ article series.
The last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a lot about how each of us can play a role in steering the world we live in towards a better, more equal, healthy and happier direction. We need to empower ourselves to become active agents of change. It seems that over the last months, the existing gaps in our social fabric have continued to crack open wider, and all of our attempts to create new shared realities (protests, get-togethers, new ideas) got lost in the dark spaces the current Covid-19 scenario brings with it. So how can we begin to cross these divides, and heal as a human community - starting with us as individual beings? 🙏
Don’t get me wrong: I am optimistically hopeful that if we all do our part, we can turn this ship around, and sail together, maybe with less individual wealth but more communal health, into brighter days. We humans are amazing and have SO MUCH POTENTIAL to do good, and be even better. In order to break out of the shackles of modern living, we need to learn new skills, re-discover old wisdom, and once again embrace the power of communal living, working and healing. We are all one, and maybe this time of ‘Coronaisance’ is here to teach us exactly that - it seems we just would not listen any other way. 🙈
‘Create the future’ is a series that stems from this hope. Together, we will explore skills and ideas over the next couple of weeks to get a step closer to uncovering wonderful truths and capabilities that are deep within all of us. 💖
“When you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Let’s start with something we have all forgotten how to do: Listen.
Wait, what? “I am an excellent listener!” you will say. There is, however, a big difference between active listening and hearing. While hearing is a passive sense involving a physical process (sound hits the ear, and gets transformed into meaning through the brain), listening, on the other hand, is an action we consciously choose to do. When we listen, we go beyond simply hearing the words being spoken by giving our attention to what is actually being said. Actually the art of listening leads straight to the hEARt.💖 No wonder, the term ‘ear’ is at the centre of it!
Two ears together shape a heart… thus, listening is a way of love.
So what makes you a good listener?
Modern living, constant information overload and a general ‘around-the-clock-busyness’ has created the alarming sense of not having enough time, and an urgent desire for efficiency leads us to reply instantly to things as soon as we hear them. Good listening, however, requires more than just hearing and quickly reacting to what someone says, it involves thinking about it, and feeling it too. Besides requiring bandwidth, time, and undivided attention, the genuine intent to ACTUALLY listen is the key difference between a good and a bad listener.
A good listener:
1. is attentive, and encourages the other person to share their issue, problem or confusion
2. doesn't take a moral position, pass judgement or mock the other person’s genuine problem, emotional honesty or belittle their situation
3. is genuinely motivated to help resolve the issue at hand, and not just swap anecdotes or gossip over coffee or wine
4. never highjacks the conversation so that their own problems become the focus of the discussion instead
5. knows when to stop a conversation and support by helping to find a trained psychologist or psychotherapist
A terrible listener, however,
1. will already think about a reply while the other person is still speaking (instead of actually listening)
2. brings the conversation constantly back to themselves (“Oh yes, when I was 15, this happened to me, I have to tell you about…”)
3. constantly plays with the phone, zones out, or starts speaking to others (“Darling, one second, I just say hi to …”)
4. does not empathise with the other person’s feeling (“oh, you will feel better soon” - yeah, right)
5. can’t stand a second of silence, and will fill it with gossip and other unnecessary words
Don’t we all know people like this? More important: Haven’t we all been like this at a point in our lives? 🙈 The good news is: We can change. 🙏🌿🤗
We learn a lot about how to speak in public, but very little about how to listen to others.
The School of Life beautifully summaries why being a good listener is crucial for our social well-being. Go, and give it a watch - it’s only 5 minutes long! 💖
Five steps for a good, listening-oriented conversation
In my personal as well as in my professional life, the following five steps helped me a lot in talking about issues or problems in an empathetic, goal-oriented, yet calm way:
1. Create a safe environment for a good chat. For some it might be the privacy of a loud bar, for others the safety of a living room, what matters is that both parties chose the environment in which they feel free to open up, cry if necessary, and be able to be their most honest, vulnerable, authentic selves. State that the nature of the conversation is confidential - and then stick to it. A good listener keeps information to themselves! Creating a safe space also means removing all distractions (cats and dogs are an exception), but there is no place for mobile phones, laptops or nosy room mates. —> Expert Tip: If you have to put a time limit on a chat, use a kitchen clock and create an alarm.
2. Chose the main topic, and make sure you are really talking about the same thing. Really get into the details. Who was mean to whom? What did the boss say exactly? When and where did this happen? What actually happened before and what after? Being a good listener involves understanding the substance of what the other person has to say. Through asking questions, and by restating phrases to confirm that their understanding is correct, a good listener, like a detective, makes sure they really see the whole picture from the other person’s point of view.
3. While you listen, and understand the topic, observe the other person’s body language. It is estimated that 80% of what we communicate comes from the way we sit, we gesticulate, how and where we look while we speak, if we sweat or move around on our chair… so practise to listen with your eyes as well as your ears. Does he or she feel comfortable talking about it? Is he or she breaking a sweat? Does your gut tell you this is the full truth? While you observe body language, share your observations in a kind manner (“I can see you are breathing heavily. Are you that upset about person xyz?”).
4. Allow silence. Think. Even when it feels awkward. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with silence during any conversation. We are simply not used to it! And yet, as practitioners of good listening, it is important to let words and emotions settle, like dust from a heavy storm, and see the sky in clarity, before one continues to walk ahead. Thus, create space for moments of silence (nope, checking the phone is not part of this), and allow yourself to think about the input you just received. Take it easy, take it slow - and get comfortable with silently being uncomfortable. Trust me: It will change the game.
5. Help to see a new perspective. You don’t have to give concrete advise, or take out a pre-written To-Do-list. You can simply help your friend, colleague or partner by making them see the problem at hand from a totally different perspective. Together, debate questions such as: 1) How could the problem be solved if no anger, revenge, sadness, betrayal, or guilt were involved? 2) What would be the best-case-scenario for everyone involved? Play each scenario through and discuss overlapping similarities. 3) Is it REALLY such a big deal? Or will you laugh in five years / months /days about it? Often, the act of verbalising potential solutions already blows away many of the underlying anxieties that come with a worry or a problem - and two glasses of wine might do the rest. #two-two-ti-ti 🌟
“We have two ears and one mouth
so we can listen twice as much as we speak."
- Epictetus
Like all skills, the art of listening takes practise and time.
Why don’t you try to up your listening-game-skills today? Find a lovely person of your choice, ask them if they want to chat, and then dive all the way in. Don’t forget to tell me how it goes! I will be back on Thursday with the second edition of ‘Create your future’. 💖
With love from Goa,
Isabelle 🌿
