In almost every situation we encounter, listening is an essential skill. However, for the most part, we are left to our devices to understand what it means to be a capable listener. Most of our learning unfolds within the family, where the models of communication and listening are often burdened with the same confusion and misunderstandings of the previous generations' struggles. Eventually, we may reach an impasse in our adult lives where the standards of the past fall short in helping us to better understand our needs. In order to create strong and lasting relationships, we must grow and change - which becomes harder to do when we're unable to truly listen to ourselves and those we value most. Our relationships are everything in providing the fuel that helps us grow. This is the understanding that guides us in laying a new foundation for being a better listener.
We use the concept of listening every day; however, it's obvious that we all have different associations and expectations around listening. I'd like to explore some of the assumptions that we make in our understanding of what listening means. The simplest place to start is to ask yourself, "What does it mean to listen?" Listening is a process of paying attention – to focus your attention in a concentrated way. Your attention is always focused in some way, which means that if you are not listening to what is being said, you are paying attention to something else. Listening involves making a conscious effort to hear something. We've all learned to rely upon multiple cues to know if someone is listening. Ultimately, being heard is something that we feel. It's important to know what signals you use to help you know when someone is listening to you. Do you rely on eye contact, verbal responses or silence, body stillness or physical gestures, or facial expressions? How do you know when your listener has gone beyond listening to your words and is understanding you? Think about how it feels when someone who's listening asks you a question to clarify a point you made, or repeats back what you said, or shares a story from their own life that reflects the meaning of your experience. It's helpful to know what makes you feel heard. The feedback from these cues translates as a valuable awareness that we are being "received" by another. Listening offers a way to not only transfer information, but to also transmit our appreciation, acceptance, love and gratitude for one another.
A common way of relating to the concept of listening is to view it as the passive side of a "one-sided" conversation. This concept of being a good listener implies that you will quietly listen while focusing intently on what the other person is saying until they are done. This model of listening can be useful for helping the speaker to create a release or discharge, like in downloading or venting. This type of interaction serves a purpose, but represents only a small portion of the true support that an interactive quality of listening can bring into the context of our daily lives. It usually takes special circumstances to become quiet enough within ourselves so that we can fully apply our concentration to what another person is saying for any length of time past several minutes. Our modern lifestyles don't readily provide the pauses that we need to bring full concentration to our exchanges with others. However, this is the extra effort we make to reflect our care for one another, arranging special times so we can exchange in more focused ways. Sometimes, having someone else be willing to pause with us helps by causing us to slow down enough so we can better listen to ourselves, giving us a chance to unwind and observe how we are managing our current experience.
ACTIVE LISTENING
Even though the more "one-sided" model of listening is useful, we need a practical set of skills that we can use daily for building safety and success as a listener. How can we relate to listening as a more "interactive exchange"? Active Listening is a specific practice of paying attention to the speaker and then asking questions to ensure that you've fully comprehended their meaning. I've applied the concept of active listening to several practice exercises to help you build some new skills with listening. These exercises require your willingness, not mastery. To really give yourself the chance to observe your habits more objectively, follow the specific formats in the beginning. As you build confidence, you are welcome to take more risks and expand beyond these templates. Rebuilding safety and trust is an experiential process – we need to feel that things can be different and that a new outcome is possible. The point in practicing with these simple steps is to increase the consistency and dependability of being heard, enabling us to relax our defenses and be more receptive. This softening allows both people to take more responsibility for the way in which they communicate their needs and desires. Sharing in this way demonstrates an intention to co-create an environment of safety and trust.
Echoing Exercise: You can take your first step into being a better listener with the practice of Echoing. For this exercise, choose a speaker and a listener. Begin with the speaker sharing one or two personal statements – like a new experience you've had, something you're learning about yourself, an important goal or changes that you're ready to make – something meaningful about you. Then, the listener gets the chance to practice repeating back what was said word-for-word.
You will build confidence more quickly as you practice hearing smaller amounts of information with more clarity and precision. To bring more awareness into your transition from speaking to listening, for awhile, acknowledge that you're done and offer a simple validation of your listener's efforts: "Ok, I'm done. Thank you for listening." Positive reinforcement is needed to bolster the sense of personal control that each person possesses to safely and successfully express themselves.
As you increase the time of your exchanges, practice repeating back one or two main thoughts you felt were most meaningful. Increase your exchange times incrementally and allow yourself to become more confident with an increased range of exchange, like 2-3 minutes per person. In difficult situations where there is tension around frustrated communication, both partners may want to make a list of "hot" topics that can be prioritized at a later time when the lines of communication become more calm & stable. In the beginning, you want to practice by sharing in a reflective way, rather than reporting on what you did that day. However, use easier disclosures that hold less emotion for you in the beginning depending on how delicate the situation has become.
Our interpretation responses are very strong and spontaneous, and it can be more challenging than you expect to literally repeat what you just heard. Allow yourself the chance to build confidence with your new listening skills. Be as patient as possible with these first few steps, taking into consideration that each of you is practicing a new kind of reliance on each other's willingness to let go of previous agendas, while learning to become more present with your own experience and within your exchange.
PRACTICING FLEXIBLE BOUNDARIES
Eventually, see what it's like to listen for 5-10 minutes. It can be helpful if the person speaking has a timer or stopwatch so they begin to develop their own sense of time passing in relationship to how much information they're sharing. Occasionally glance at the timer so you are somewhat prepared for the end of your speaking time. This portion of the exercise is for practicing the skills of flexible boundaries. If you're in the middle of making an important point and the timer goes off, finish your thought completely whole still observing your time limit the best you can. If you need a few more minutes to complete your thoughts, ask for the support you need with a simple request, "I need two more minutes of talking time." Do your best to stay within a one to two-minute time extension. Once you've both agreed to a new arrangement, reset the timer and make your best effort to finish within your time. It may seem tedious to take these baby steps while communicating, but the goal is to create a very clear container for simplifying the dynamic range of emotions, thoughts, beliefs and expectations that are all coming together as you build new confidence in your ability to communicate your needs.
As you rebuild safety & trust at this level of listening, you can continue to practice with a more natural pace of conversation. Continue to set up clear expectations around speaking time for awhile. It's important to keep your sharing time-frames small in the beginning so each person can practice finding the words that enable them to speak up for themselves. These smaller steps also help to rebuild safety around the fear of getting overwhelmed with too much information when listening. If you do start to feel overwhelmed while listening, remember to bring your focus to your breathing, inhaling and exhaling slowly. Then, when the speaker is done, say, "I'm starting to get overwhelmed while I'm listening. I need a quick pause to catch my breath. Would you please repeat the most important part of what you wanted me to hear?" Slow your breathing down, like sipping your inhale through a straw, and exhaling all your air out through your mouth. Then, refocus your attention and listen again. Repeat back the most important part of what the speaker wanted you to hear. This is a practice of working together, and asking for the help you need to be successful, and receiving each other's support in a compassionate and cooperative way.
INTENTIAL PAUSES
At the end of each person's speaking time, take an intentional pause to disengage your eye contact and look around the room, or outside into nature, or even close your eyes, and take several deeper breaths, focusing on the sensation of your inhale & exhale. Feel where your breath expands & releases in your body, like in your belly, ribs or chest. If you can't feel your breathing, then bring your hands together onto one of those areas, and focus your attention into the surface where you're touching so it becomes easier to feel. This is an important resetting period that only takes a few minutes. It will help you to release tension and reset your focus. Both speaker and listener need this time to be reflective on what has transpired. Sometimes, feelings release once they've been acknowledged and spoken. This is an important shift for the speaker to notice – so that "letting go" can bring more of the present moment into focus. Sometimes, the listener observes their own experience with more insight. This pause acts as an important reflection time for the listener to create a shift in their own perspective.
At different times while practicing, you may notice that you have more thoughts you need to express than your time allows, and the designated pause may feel like an unwelcomed interruption. Do your best to practice using this "forced" pause for taking some deep breathes to allow your arousal level to settle. Check in with yourself and see if you can hand off the timer and shift into a listening mode. If it feels like you must address these other thoughts immediately, then communicate this urgency to your partner with a request for an additional 1-2 minutes of talk time. Reset the timer, so that your shared boundaries continue to be clear and flexible while also being consistent enough to rebuild trust.
It will be necessary and inevitable for emotional intensity to arise as you start sharing more fully. This will be a perfect time to practice with your flexible boundaries by bringing a softer focus into your listening. Compassion is the remedy for defensiveness. Practice being in your "felt sense" as you listen, which means to open up to a non-judging state of focused attention. Our felt sense is activated when we allow ourselves to be in the experience of what is happening rather than needing to know what is happening. Listening in this setting means to be with the other person, even though you may not know where the conversation is going or what to do to make things better. Practice using the frame of mind that assumes there is nothing more for you to do in this moment than to be present with another person's experience. Simply love them and listen … observe the struggle or pain in their experience, and do your best to give them as much of your attention as possible. The less resistance, and therefore, the more acceptance that we can offer to this experience, the more efficiently the intensity of these emotional states will express and move through, causing a release or promoting a change of some kind.
Eventually, as safety and trust continue to be restored, you can resume the more natural mode of listening through interpretation. However, continue with the practice of active listening as often as possible as a way to deepen the trust in your relationship by externally verifying your interpretations in real time. Take the time to share in your own words what you thought you just heard the other person say, so you can practice receiving the necessary "reality-check" that will help you to know if your interpretations provided a real-time understanding of what was being communicated. With this honest feedback, your interpretations skills will grow stronger, and you'll gain the confidence you need to internalize your interpretations with clearer distinctions. It will always be useful to revisit these tools from time to time in order to stay in practice with your active listening skills.
GIVING ADVICE
Another way that we can lose track of being a better listener is when we give advice rather than actively listen. When we're exposed to another person's experience, we're given an opening to hear more than just their words. We are invited to sympathize – which means to relate through an emotional connection to the speaker's experience – or empathize – which means to identify with the speaker's experience in a way that brings about a deeper understanding. Both of these listening tools give us access to the fuller meaning of what the words represent. This way of listening also gives us an opportunity to hold a mirror to our own experience and reflect inward in a more meaningful way while we listen and feel through the speaker's experience.
Giving advice is a specific communication skill that works well in the specialized scenarios that require it or desire it. However, in your personal exchanges, the assumed offering of advice will eventually block the channels of intimacy and erode the trust that makes those relationships invaluable. Giving advice when it has not been invited or agreed to, especially if done repeatedly, creates confusion from the discrepancy of what we say and do. Our intentions to provide love and support can be easily misconstrued as a need to be in control. When a person is speaking, they are hoping to be heard, so unexpected interjections will naturally build resistance in them as an instinctual way to avoid being controlled. This control may be real or simply perceived; it doesn't matter. The unneeded advice still becomes an obstruction to a successful exchange, producing misunderstanding, and possibly hurt feelings, on both sides.
So what do you do when the urge to give advice is strong, or maybe even a compulsion? All the exercises presented here are meant to assist you in learning the skills you need to respond in new ways. Set up planned scenarios where you can practice and prepare for the more meaningful conversations that will require your new skills to shift the quality of your relationship. Practicing with intentional pauses and focused breathing will set up a template for your brain to recall – a body memory that can help you break down the compulsion to jump in with advice before you have honestly listened to who and what you are advising. Take the time to learn how you can provide guidance as a more satisfying alternative to giving advice. Advice comes from your personal opinion. This opinion is based in your own perception of your judgments, views and experiences. Guidance is more about offering leadership and direction in relationship to the way something is developing. This means that you have to be willing to be in relationship with how things are developing before you can offer new ideas. When unsolicited advice is offered repeatedly, it comes across as self-serving, which ultimately it is, since you are offering information this is based on what has and hasn't worked for you. Recognize that each person has their own discovery process that will help them to understand what will work specifically for them in a way that honors their uniqueness.
When you feel the urge to give advice, use an intentional pause to help you shift your focus to from offering advice to asking a question. If you have the urge "to help," then instead of trying to give in ways that you assume are helpful, simply ask, "Would you like some help with this?" or "I've had some similar experiences. Can I share with you what I've learned?" And be willing for the answer to be 'yes' or 'no' – practice letting it be the other person's choice to receive what you are offering. If you have the urge to tell someone what to do, try asking them what they think they could do in response to their situation. Listen to their ideas first so you know how to offer your experience in relationship to what they may have already worked out for themselves. If they respond that they don't know what to do, tell them you have some ideas that you think could be helpful, and that you'd be willing to share only if they want the support. Continue to intentionally focus on how your breathing feels in your own body so you can keep your attention on your own experience rather than jumping into someone else's "personal space" by filling the conversation with your ideas about their experience. When the conversation becomes filled with your ideas about someone else's experience, it translates as if you are trying to take control from them, right at a time when they are attempting to gain more control for themselves. There can be lingering pain in the misperception that you don't care. The boundaries of trust become unclear, producing the opposite outcome that your caring outreach intended to create. By learning to be a better listener, you can rebuild the safety & trust that will bring the offering of your intended love back into focus.
Ultimately, listening is about loving. We physically demonstrate our love and caring for one another by how we share our resources of time, energy, attention and affection. Listening satisfies in us the longing to be seen and heard, which is a process of witnessing – where we experience the importance of a moment in another human being's life. This shared experience can become a sacred means of exchange to receive the blessings of true connection with one another. I believe that this is one of the most powerful ways that we contribute value to each other's lives. So, although it may seem like a small or challenging gesture in the moment, you hold the power to make a world of difference in another person's life by being a better listener. Safety and trust make loving possible … and as long as we are willing to rebuild the bridge that gives us safe passage across the span of our differences, and make the crossing that brings us back together, then love stands a chance.
