Thoughts on Listening
For me, this is a difficult subject to write about. I am focused on the skill of listening, however, because I believe it is the most important skill I can master in my life. The challenge persists, mostly because I am roughly 35 years late in realizing this and a bit behind in the mastery process.
Only about 9,835 hours of deliberate practice to go!
Admittedly, these are very raw and early thoughts on listening and there will certainly be more to come as I continue my deliberate journey. As you may have gathered, I am new to the “learning how to listen” process.
Of course, I have heard for years, from bosses, motivational speakers, and most recently (and forcefully) from my fiancé, how important it is to be a good listener. Rationally, it makes sense. I mean, duh, right? Yet my typical response to that sense being made is to stop listening. Not because I want to stop, but because it’s easier to focus on something more comfortable than the insecurity I experience when thinking about my own, shitty listening skills. Thus, we arrive at the core problem:
Listening is an incredibly difficult skill to master because of how many things that we hear trigger our emotions in some way. In my raw approach to listening, I am actually becoming aware of a lot of complex layers to this core problem that I feel are worth sharing. In my initial understanding of the process, I have uncovered three layers of learning how to listen. Listening to ourselves, listening with presence, and listening powerfully.
Layer 1 — Listening to Ourselves
Think about this for a second. The skill of listening starts with how well we can actually listen to ourselves. While part of me feels like that is something I said to a buddy at a music festival once, the other part of me recognizes how true it actually is.
Our minds are constantly racing with thoughts. We, in turn, have the ability to listen to and understand those thoughts at will. So far in my limited listening learning adventure, this first layer is the hardest because my mind doesn’t shut up. This calls for a visualization exercise.
Take a moment to close your eyes and externalize your mind for a second. Once your mind is outside of you, manifest it into a person sitting next to you at work or laying next to you in bed or somewhere in speaking distance to wherever you are.
Think about what it’s saying. Think about trying to listen to this new mind-person. It just keeps talking and talking and is all over the place. These out loud, disconnected suppositions, disturbing comments, proclamations and decisions (among endless other things being said) are sure to make you reach for the noise-canceling headphones. Won’t work, obviously, but if your imagination is good enough at this, you should definitely understand the desire to turn off the noise.
This meta-analysis of the way our mind speaks to us can be illuminating as to how much internal noise we deal with.
Ok. Visualization over. Let’s get our previously externalized mind back where it belongs. Apart from those who are master meditators, we don’t really have the option for those headphones when the thoughts are in our head. Listening to ourselves and actually understanding what we hear is incredibly challenging. This is why we typically skip both the listening and the understanding parts. More often than not, thoughts go unnoticed, forgotten, or repressed as if our mind was some internal, unconscious twitter feed.
To be clear, I am not suggesting we take the time to listen to and understand every thought we have. I mean, try if you want but my gut says you won’t last long before someone has you committed.
What I am suggesting, however, is looking into the ability to consciously recognize, listen to, and understand the important thoughts as that may be a worthwhile thing to practice. Here is why: If listening to yourself remains a difficult, noisy task, how the hell are you going to listen to someone else?
Perhaps a quick illustration may help. Let’s say your partner is telling you the story of their hard day at work. They’re stressed and really need you to just sit and listen. After a few minutes, they get to the part about how Jenny from HR accidentally took their strawberry flavored yogurt out of the fridge, thinking it was hers. In turn, you’re left with the gross plain yogurt that she brought. Honest mistake, surely, but totally fucked up breakfast. In hearing this, your mind starts to talk…
“Plain yogurt isn’t that bad, I would have looked for some honey or fruit and just made due”
“Oh shit! That mango I cut up the other day is still in the fridge! I hope it’s still good.”
“We really need new kitchen knives, the one I used is…”
“Wait, what time is it? My team call is at 2pm right?”
If you think your partner hasn’t noticed you drifting into thought and clearly not listening anymore, you’re out of your mind (well, technically you’re in your mind but irony is fun). The truth is that by the time your mind got to “mango”, you were in the doghouse. Your partner didn’t even get to the really stressful part of the day and now they shut down and don’t care to continue because you couldn’t listen. If you didn’t get into an argument in that moment, there is definitely resentment building.
A quick side note here as I am not sure there is anything that feels better than the feeling of being heard, seen, and understood. In moments where your mind wanders and does its own thing instead of listening, you are choosing to not give someone that feeling. Relationships cannot withstand this for too long before someone simply feels unheard, unseen, misunderstood to a point of no return.
Now, back to the conversation. In a better world, you would have been working on deliberately recognizing, listening to, and understanding yourself. You would have had the “Plain yogurt isn’t that bad. I would have…” thought and immediately realized that wasn’t the point. At that point, you would have told your mind to shut the fuck up and keep listening or, if available, asked a question to help your partner keep sharing their feelings. It is in these brief moments where connection succeeds or fails.
Your ability to actually listen to someone else cannot be tapped into until your ability to listen to yourself comes to the forefront of your deliberate practice. As this practice continues, presence becomes available.
Layer 2 — Listening with Presence
As I have written about, real presence comes from our ability to find stillness and be mindful of our own thoughts, which is why that is Layer 1. The next layer to listening is cultivating that presence. Listening to others with our presence, is quite the gift (yup, still doing that). It entails listening with minimal internal and external distraction.
Presence from External Distractions
External distractions should be the easy part. Listening without letting our attention be swayed by some outside force is the most basic form of listening with presence. These days, however, even this most basic attention is hard to come by. The world is so unbelievably loud.
Let’s set aside the obvious issues of our cell phones being the most connecting and thus distracting devices ever invented (no basis for that assertion, just seems right to me). There’s good irony in the anti-listening impact of cell phones, but our attention and presence wanes from far more than the buzzing, tweeting, binging, and ringing. The world presents constant stimulation.
Let’s take another simple illustration of when you are out to dinner with your partner. It’s date night so your phones are on “do not disturb” to make sure you “disconnect”. Nice try. You sit down and start talking about Trump or something but before long, the waiter comes by to take your drink order. Mind you, this is the first of 5–6 more times they will be checking on your table over the next hour.
Once you place your drink order, settle a bit into your seats, and reengage in the conversation, the battle for presence really begins. You are now battling with the tables to your left and right, the TV on in the corner, the cooks doing their thing in the open kitchen, and the countless other activities and displays of peoples and things all around you. To have a fully present conversation in an environment like this is, to say the least, far fetched.
While this is a common example, think about any other time at work, at an event, or even at home where you try to have a conversation and there aren’t hundreds of things happening around you.
And look, it’s not really our fault. The environments in which we exist are constantly simulating. Particularly those of us in major metropolitan areas, there is always somewhere to go and something to do. We love it. We thrive in it. Yet the victim to this stimulus is presence, which is why it requires a deliberate effort to enact in a given situation.
Presence from Internal Distractions
Now that we understand the external forces that threaten our ability to be present while listening, we still have the internal forces for which we need to contend. Even if we’ve gotten good at listening to ourselves, from the work in layer one, we still need to apply that skill to how we internalize the things we hear from others. Internal distractions are often triggers from the conversations and communications we have with people we are trying to listen to.
We can go right back to the illustration from before and sit back down to the dinner we’re having with our partner. Let’s say that by some miracle, we actually got some quiet, focused time and you have been listening closely and long enough to digest what your partner is saying. Super. Unfortunately for your desire to be a good listener, the last thing you heard was something your partner said about wishing they had more money to buy this thing they want.
Immediately, your insecurities about your job not paying you enough come up and you’re now all hot and bothered at the idea that your partner doesn’t appreciate you. Or worse, that they don’t understand the pain that inadequacy brings you. The two of you could be sitting and eating in a cave with no one and nothing around you. If you haven’t done the work to soothe the anxiety that arises from an insecurity trigger like that, you won’t hear another damn word spoken.
Your Ego just got involved in the conversation and listening was a sad casualty upon its arrival.
This is where the inner work comes in to stay present in listening. Externalizing what someone else is saying as being theirs and having nothing to do with you is a good way to receive. You can also be mindful to your reactions and triggers and quickly quell them as they arrive, knowing they are yours and the person you are listening to does not deserve you being distracted by yourself.
Much like listening to yourself is difficult, listening to someone else and staying present despite the working of your own mind is just as challenging. It is a necessary skill, however, should you want to be able to ever listen with true presence. It is also a precursor to the ability of listening powerfully.
Layer 3 — Listening Powerfully
Yes, I know, it’s crazy to think there’s another layer. We’ve already established how much effort it takes to listen to ourselves effectively and also the work we need to do to be present, despite competing internal and external forces. Now that we’ve crossed the moat, scaled the castle wall, and slayed the dragon protecting the keep, there is still a final challenge to reach Powerful Listener status (Even knowing all of this, I still think I would have chosen Zelda as a kid).
Powerful listening is listening that comes from deep hearing, deep curiosity, and deep desire to understand someone. It requires a lot of energy and is quite rare to learn for yourself or find in someone else.
A powerful listener is still. This stillness allows them to be present. It is in this state that a powerful listener cumulatively absorbs the words, body language, tones, and patterns of another. From this absorbing of information comes genuine curiosity and inquiry.
Someone listening powerfully is asking powerful questions from a place of understanding that helps get them deeper knowledge about the person to whom they are listening. This way of listening is also referred to as “effective listening” and is ultimately the level we should all be striving to get to as adults.
Think about the way you envisioned your own listening abilities in the illustrations put forth with you and your partner in layers one and two. As a powerful listener, you are deliberately working to understand your own inner voice, recognizing how listening-conducive the environment you are in may be, and aware of your own ego and trigger-ability. It is from this place that you can be truly curious, inquire, and make powerful observations that connect another’s thoughts.
Learning to Listen
Becoming a master listener is the most important task I have ever assigned myself. As a coach, partner, and maturing adult, the above layers of listening describe the path I am on. I recognize that there is a non-duality of listening on this journey as well. Listening can be both good and bad, there’s a middle path. I trust that the process of deliberate practice, feedback, and reflection will help me enhance my abilities over time. Yet I recognize that perfection is impossible and that I learn more from my mistakes than I do from listening well.
On the learning journey, the layers are circular and sometimes intertwine in a mindful practice. The intention of becoming better, like most learning journeys, is the required first step. These layers represent my understanding of how to work on my listening. At this stage, I know I will always be working to listen to myself, my presence will always be threatened, and my ability to inquire powerfully is a skill in and of itself that bases its foundation on what I am able to hear.
For too long, I negated the need to become a powerful listener. Of course, life balances and listening has now manifested into the skill most vital to my work and relationships. Only about 9,833 hours of deliberate practice to go.
I am not saying this should be your work. Nor am I saying that these layers of listening apply to you. What I am saying is that you should ask yourself the question of how well you listen?
Make sure you hear the answer.
