Are you really listening? How to actively listen

Do you ever walk away from a conversation and can’t remember what the other person has said?

Do you ever leave a social gathering & realise you didn’t ask the questions you wanted?

Have you ever had a friend say they told you something important but you don’t remember?

I have. 

I’ve had this happen multiple times. And every time I realised I wasn’t listening properly. I was so busy forming my responses, or telling them about myself, I totally missed what they actually said. And although they might have thought otherwise, it was not intentional.

If people keep asking me questions about me, it doesn’t occur to me that they might just be being polite, I get lost in talking about whatever they are asking me. And when they are talking about something, I find myself searching for a situation in my life that I can relate to it and respond with.

But when a friend said she had told me something personal and I had no recollection of it, I started to worry about this. And then when I walked away from social gatherings a few times and realised I hadn’t asked about someone about something that was going on with them, I realised I needed to make a change. 

I needed to learn how to Actively Listen.

“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” - Bryant H. McGill

I am a big talker; I can talk on any given topic for ages, and I have to be careful not to interrupt others or talk over them. It is something I have had to train myself into. 

And what triggered my understanding of why I incessantly talk — especially in situations where I am nervous — was when someone said ‘you weren’t listened to as a child, were you?’ It stopped me in my tracks, because it was true.

My childhood was not an easy one. I am a child of domestic violence and for the latter part of my childhood we moved around constantly. I had one parent interacting with me on a daily basis, in neither a positive or nurturing way. They weren’t really interested in me, they were very focused on themselves and their situation. They certainly had no interest in anything I had to say (and that hasn’t change into adulthood).

I began to realise I was always talking, trying to either impart my opinion and/or receive some kind of response to it. I used talking as a way to try and make a connection, be accepted and approved of and also gauge if my thoughts and opinions were ‘normal’, because my isolated childhood meant I had no gauge. 

My inability to listen was because no one had listened to me. Fortunately this was something I could change.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” - Ralph Nichols

There are four main ways we show we are actively listening to someone. They are:

Eye contact

Looking at the person who is speaking to you in the eye, keeps your mind focused on what they are saying, rather than looking away at people around you, or at the clock. Looking at everything other than the person indicates you are not interested in what they have to say and are just waiting for them to finish. 

Body language

Much like the eyes, body language denotes engagement: facing the person, legs crossed towards them, staying still and not fidgeting. 

Verbal response

In person, but especially when on the phone with them, making sounds is important, it shows you are listening and paying attention to their words. It can be just a simple acknowledging sound, like ‘uh huh’ or it can be a word relating to what they are saying, or to prompt them to say more, like ‘and?’ or ‘and what happened then?’

Asking open questions that refer to what they said and waiting

Asking questions about what they have told you is a definitive acknowledgement of what they are telling you. But waiting for a response to your question, rather than using it to lead into something you want to talk about, is also paramount. You get to hear what they have said and hold onto it in your mind. 

“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” - Larry King

Learning to actively listen has also helped me be a better parent and make sure my children feel heard too, as my own experience has shown that it’s a necessary part of parenting. Whenever I found myself modeling my own parent’s behaviour I would remind myself of three things to help me: 

·         Put down or stop what you are doing 

·         Bend or crouch down if they are small children, so you are on their level 

·         Keep the tone of your voice low when asking them what they want to tell you

When going through this process I also maintain eye contact and repeat back to them what they had told me to confirm that they have been heard.

The payoff is that now my children are older, they feel they can approach me when they have something they want to tell me or speak to me about.

“Listening shows kids they matter, we love them, and their words are important.”

For more information about learning to actively listen, here’s an article by Tony Robbins on the power of deep listening that I found useful.

Mindset - Growth vs Fixed: How to literally change your mind

Do you believe you can only do things one way?

Do you believe that there’s a limit to what you can learn?

Do you believe you are only capable of doing certain things?

A common term these days is ‘Growth Mindset’. It's the new thing to be and to have, but what exactly is it? 

Mindset simply means the way you think or view things. Your mind is set a certain way; you think about things a certain way, or see them from a certain perspective, and your actions are dictated by what you think.

A ‘Growth Mindset’ means you are able to change your perception or view point and expand it to take on new ideas, concepts, and ways of doing things.

“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” - Jesse Jackson

In contrast the term ‘Fixed Mindset’ means you are limited by what you believe you are capable of achieving or thinking - you are fixed in your thinking.

If you believe in certain ways of doing things or there is a limit to what you can learn, and are rigid in how you do them, and/or don’t believe there is another way for you, then you have a fixed mindset and you find it difficult to conceive that you could change that. This fixed thinking means you can’t grow or expand in what you can achieve or learn - or at least you don’t think you can.

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations our possibilities become limitless.” - Jamie Paolinetti

In life this can either help or hinder, and it shows up in different ways.

You might have a dream about something you want to do, but if you don’t believe it is actually possible for you to achieve it, you won't take action to make that dream happen. It restricts you, and this can leave you unhappy, depressed, even anxious. You might even think there is no point in your life, leading to even darker thinking.

How we think about what we can and can’t do is affected by what others say and tell us, whether it’s parents, teachers or peers. It’s also by what we experience and what meaning we attach to that experience - whether it is something positive or negative – and this in turn can change the decisions when we make future choices.

“Growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.” - Carol Dweck

A mindset is a dialogue in our heads. We create this dialogue through our experiences and our feelings, and through what we hear and see externally; through how people treat us and respond to us.

If enough people tell us there is something wrong with us we might then believe it to be true, restricting and treating ourselves accordingly. If they tell us we can’t do something enough times, we might believe it.

But we can stop believing it by literally changing our minds. It’s all down to our internal dialogue. Nothing externally can change that, only we can.

“Change your thoughts, change your life.” - Wayne Dyer

A lot of the ways we limit ourselves are based in fear and comes from low self-esteem and self-doubt. If we are strong in our sense of self and who we are, and trust ourselves and listen to our hearts, we can be more open to change how we think.

We can start this by remembering these three things:

1.) You are not your thoughts

Thoughts are your minds way of processing your day, you don’t need to let them dictate how you feel. You can choose which thoughts to engage with and which ones to discard. But the thoughts you think the most in your conscious mind will feed what your subconscious repeats and delivers into the conscious mind, so the more you interrupt negative thoughts by challenging and replacing them with accurate, ‘true’ thoughts, the more you will train your subconscious into only throwing up helpful, supportive thoughts that will help you open up to what you really want to achieve.

2) You always have a choice

You can not change or control anyone or anything outside yourself. You can only control how you choose to react, and that is always a choice, whether you are aware of it or not (often we are not). You also don’t have to justify any of your life choices or actions either – a common misconception in our society. Only you need to be sure about what you are doing, and leading from the heart. If you are confident in your choices, those around you will be confident too.

3.) What you believe is how you live

The word 'believe' has two other words in it: 'be' and 'live' so what we believe is what we be and how we live. The world is open to you if you believe it is. You can achieve anything you want if you believe you can achieve it. You are only limited by what you believe is possible, and that is fed by your mind and thoughts.

Our internal dialogue can limit us if it is negative: we won’t believe we can do all the things we want to do, no matter how much someone else says we can, or what we witness others doing. Only if we believe it ourselves will we be able to achieve it.

We can feel restricted or we can feel limitless, the choice is ours.

Thus our minds are either fixed or growing - the choice is ours.

Whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, your right. - Henry Ford

Personally I like to believe we can change the stars!

Book Review: Listen Up! Your Heart is Speaking, by Robin Lee

Listen Up! Your Heart Is Speaking by Robin Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been a fan of Robin Lee for a few years now, so I was keen to get hold of her book. Plus when she saw me post about receiving it, she sent me a beautiful journal to match it, which I love.

The cover and design of this book are lovely, especially the illustrations inside dividing the chapters. Sadly I felt the font let it down a bit, it was large and not as elegant as the rest of the book - to my eye at least.

Robin provides an easy and uncomplicated way to listen and connect to your heart. There is a simplicity to this book that many in the self-help and personal development arena lack. There aren't masses of exercises to follow all the way through, and Lee doesn't pump the reader full of her ideas on how the reader should feel or think or her opinions on it all. She provides a simple, clear process.

The first part of the book talks about how to listen to your body and heart during day to day moments and talks about how to create the right mindset to ease the connection, and at the end of the book simple straight forward instruction is given on exercises the author uses, with some answers to FAQ questions.

I liked it and would definitely read it again. I have done a lot of reading in this area and also done some meditations on connecting to the heart, so it was simple for me to embrace it. For others they might want more depth. But it is a great starting point to get you connecting to your heart on a daily basis and relieve stress in your life.

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