The Value of Deep Listening: 5 Tips to Hone Your Skills

Recently I attended the funeral of a dear man from my writing group. I knew Bob as someone who was passionate about specific moments in history. His most recent book about the Revolutionary War, would amaze us with the voices of young minutemen recounting battles from their hospital beds. I also experienced Bob as kindhearted, but it was his grandson’s eulogy that was a revelation.

Standing at a podium in his gray suit and studious looking glasses, the young man said, “I have such fond memories of tinkering with my grandfather. Yet the thing about him that changed me the most, was the way he listened to me.”  Honestly, that statement alone took my breath away. I leaned in to listen more closely.

“When I was around 13 my grandfather started asking me what I wanted to do with my life. We’d be sitting outside his tool shed in the yard and he’d ask me questions. Then listen. I mean really listen. With his full attention. Then he’d probe what I was saying further. I felt so heard. I felt so cared for by him. And this wasn’t once, it was time and time again and again. The way my grandfather listened to me bonded us beyond words. And it made me the person I am today.”

Wow, I thought. What a grandfather Bob was, and what a testament to the value of deeply listening.

Why Become Aware of the Gift of Listening

Just like humor that I wrote about last month, listening is something we do as naturally as breathing. We’re human. People speak words to us, our ears hear the words, and our minds interpret them. But there’s something more. It’s also hearing with our hearts that matters. As the story of Bob and his grandson shows, listening fully to the people we care about can actually be life changing.

All of us just want to be heard. When someone listens to us with their full attention, we feel cared for and validated. Who of us doesn’t want that? It makes us feel recognized. It gives us the message that our thoughts matter. That we matter.

As with Bob’s grandson, talking through one’s dreams, concerns, issues, plans and more, helps the speaker gain clarity and direction. And what’s more, its bonding. The people in our life who deeply listen to us without judgment, with an open heart, are the people we trust and want to spend time with. So how do we become that kind of listener?

How to Listen Deeply

1.     Listen to understand, not fix.

Training as a life coach has helped me tremendously to hone my skills as a listener. The very first thing we learned was not to be a “fixer.” What that means is that when other people unload their thoughts and feelings to us about something they’re having difficulty with they don’t want us to give them a solution. Most of us assume when someone shares a problem with us our role is to give them a solution. NO! As one of my clients clearly stated about what she wanted when she was speaking to her husband, “I just want him to listen and show me that he understands what I’m feeling. He is telling me solutions. I don’t want solutions, I want to be heard.”

2.     Empathize, summarize or paraphrase what they said to show you understand.

As my client said, she just really wanted to know her husband understood her feelings. Something like, “I can understand why you’re feeling so stressed out.” Or paraphrasing like, “So you’re saying since your coworker got another job, you’ve been doing double duty and it’s just too much.” We all deal with so much in a day. Having someone hear and understand us is like peeling off a twenty-pound backpack.

3.     Don’t hijack the conversation.

Do you ever tell someone about something going on in your life and then it becomes about them? Instead of listening to you, they spin out a whole story of how something similar happened to them. That’s hijacking the conversation. Stop yourself in your tracks if you see your own hijack bubbling to the surface!

4.     Give your full nonjudgmental attention

This means looking into the other’s eyes or face and returning your focus to them each time it drifts. It’s about listening without interrupting.  Giving your full attention activates your heart and intuition to understand the other person’s feelings, thoughts, and experience. Again, isn’t that what we want from others?

5.     Be curious, ask questions to learn more.

What people really want is to come to their own answers. Each of us have the deep inner knowing of what is true for us and what are our next steps. We just need help accessing it. When we listen to someone trusting that they have their own answers, we will be curious to learn more. By asking questions as Bob did with his grandson, we help the other person uncover their own next steps. Deep listening is empowering for the speaker. And we can gain so much understanding of them and ourselves in the process. Most of what any of us struggle with is universal.

We have opportunities to listen throughout every day. Practice and intention enable us to grow and improve. Why not choose to begin improving with one of these listening skills!

Connect with me! I am available as a speaker and coach. Do you have some issues you’d like greater clarity on so you can take action? I offer a free 1-hour introductory coaching session. Check out my website www.uppcoach.com or email me at gail@uppcoach.com

Spring: Start Something New

I am taking a class that I never aspired to or dreamed of: flamenco dancing! As I was flipping through classes offered at Princeton Arts Council, I was mesmerized by a photo of women in long skirts with layers of ruffles, black dancing shoes, and clapping hands. Honestly, I was unfamiliar with flamenco. But I love dancing. Intrigued, I investigated further on YouTube. I discovered flamenco is all about intricate hand movements, emphatic shoe tapping, dramatic clapping, and graceful skirt shifting. So, me!

Hesitantly, I reached out to the instructor. She invited me to join in a free session. If I was interested, I’d be part of a class of women who’d been practicing flamenco since September. How would I keep up? Was this just a whim? Would it be worth making the investment in the clothing?

The longer days, flowers blooming, inviting sunshine—swept me up! After all its spring!

Spring is a Time for New Beginnings

Just like the new year, spring is a time of new beginnings. We see it in nature all around us—the bright daffodils, pink magnolia blossoms, the yellow forsythias exploding on their stems. It’s an opportunity for us too, to grow and try something new.  I hadn’t realized the convergence of my new class and spring until my friend Lynnie made the association.

For so many of us, our lives are the same day in and day out. We do our work. We have our routines. We watch our TV shows. And world news frightens and overwhelms us.

And don’t we all yearn for something more? Maybe it’s building a new habit: yoga, daily walking, meditation, golf, tennis, eating healthy, working out at the gym, reading a book. Maybe it’s about relationships—finding your just right person, keeping closer with friends and loved ones, enjoying more fun, quality time with your kids, joining a meetup group with others who enjoy your hobby. Maybe it’s a project that’s been on the backburner: creating a garden, painting a room, reorganizing a closet, taking that trip you’ve dreamed of. Or maybe it’s expressing yourself creatively: writing your dreamed of book, taking an art class, singing lessons, or dance; learning a new language, enrolling in a cooking class.

Why not go for your something more?

We Hold Ourselves Back

That’s right! We get in our own way from springing forward and acting on our dreams. Oh, there can be so many reasons. Time, money, faith in ourselves, feeling lacking in ability. But I would say the biggie is the stories we tell ourselves. Our minds tend to go towards negative previous experiences when we consider doing something new.

One coaching client of mine wanted to develop healthier eating and exercise habits. She said, “That’s going to be hard because I never follow through.”

 I know that never doesn’t exist. It’s our self-disappointments overshadowing our successes. So I asked, “Can you think of a time you did follow through on something that mattered to you?”

In about 5 seconds she responded, “Well, I did cycle from the World Trade Center to Washington DC as part of an effort to raise money for police officers’ families.”

“That sounds huge! Tell me about it.” She described all the training and preparation she had to do to cycle up to 60 miles/day. Accessing a positive empowering memory of herself following through to reach a goal, opened a small window of light. We began talking about how she might actually have what it takes to start building the healthy habits she craved.

I find it so exciting to recognize that it’s within our power to go beyond our negative self-stories. And one way is to remember times we have been successful. We realize we can unleash our positive possibilities when we voice our strengths and successes.

Spring Forward – Your Takeaways

1.      I’m seeing the process of beginning something wonderful and new like tending a garden. First we need to weed out the uninvited guests. Those negative things we say to ourselves that hold us back.

2.      Next, we choose the flowers we hope to bloom. Remembering what’s bloomed beautifully before is a starting point. That’s our previous successes related in any small way to our dreams and goals.

3.      Rich loamy soil gives us the foundation to support our new spring beauties.  We strengthen our soil by envisioning the person we wish to show up as: our identity. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, and the person I call “the habit guru,” says our power in doing or learning something new is in focusing on who we wish to become, not what we want to achieve.

For me, my identity as a flamenco dancer is, I am a person who does things she loves that are out of her comfort zone. And, I am a person who practices dance every day. (This is the part where I have to overcome past stories, and I will because I’m writing to you about it!)

My client who wants to develop both healthy exercise and eating habits says the identity she wants to develop is, I am a person who makes my health a priority.  

Some Inspiration from This Is Us

My husband Gus and I are huge This Is Us fans. In a recent episode, the mother, Rebecca, sat down at a table in their family getaway cabin with her three 40-year-old children. With early-onset Alzheimer’s she implored them to live boldly. “Take risks, make the big moves, even if they’re small moves. Forge ahead with your lives in any and every direction that moves you. I’m asking you to be FEARLESS. And if that sounds like a tall order it is. And the only acceptable response is, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”

WOW!

So, I say to you, the same thing. It’s spring, an opportunity for a new beginning that will give life to your life. Why not take a risk, big or small? You have it in you to be FEARLESS!

Gail is the award-winning author of The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good, a speaker, and life coach. She is happy to offer you a free 1-hour introductory coaching session to help you make a move and spring forward on a dream/goal. Contact her at gail@uppcoach.com Check out her website for more info at www.uppcoach.com 

You can order Gail’s book, The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good at Amazon. It’s a great way to support yourself in living with heart fearlessly.

4 Tips to Make Peace with Drive-Yourself-Crazy Perfectionism

My friend Naomi and I were doing our weekly walk on River Rd in Titusville. As we often do, we were reflecting on our lives and learning. Till she said something that stopped me in my sneakers. 

“And I don’t have to be perfect!”

“Woah! I love that!” Her honest, vulnerable owning of how her perfectionism had impacted her relationships and her life, had me thinking for days. Oh, how my perfectionist-self has caused me and my loved ones such unnecessary suffering! Our conversation gave me pause to look deeper at the many faces of perfectionism in my life, its cost, its gifts (as surprising as that sounds) and the opportunity…to grow.

First, the Gift of Perfectionism

Being a perfectionist may be what you or a loved one has needed to do to survive or gain acceptance as a child. It also may help you to reach high levels of accomplishment in your work or pursuing your creative passions.

In my home, I grew up with a bipolar mom and a perfectionist dad. Because of my mother’s illness, she didn’t give much attention to details in anything she did, nor did she teach me the skills other moms taught their girls. This led me to look for “the right way” to do things outside of my home. I became resourceful and receptive at finding learning all around me. The downside though was that I believed there was a “right way,” to do things (which my adult self knows is totally false.) I was constantly comparing myself to others and coming up short.

My dad on the other hand corrected my grammar until he was in his late 80’s. Talk about opposites!  Yet his expectations that I communicate well inspired me to love writing and to have the deep fulfillment of writing my book, The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good. And though personal growth books weren’t something he’d read, I’m sure he’s smiling down on me from Heaven.

While perfectionism can spur us on to work up to our highest potential, it can come at great cost.

The Cost of Perfectionism

The definition from psychology tells a lot: A perfectionist is someone who strives for flawlessness and sets excessively high standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concern regarding others’ evaluations of oneself. To a perfectionist, anything that’s less than perfect is unacceptable.

Does that sound anything like you or someone you love or work with? I confess, it is so me.

The cost of perfection as you can see from the definition, and probably know in your gut as I do, is it can guide us to set ridiculously unrealistic expectations of ourselves. Ooh, the countless times I’ve been hard on myself—brutally critical, for not having mastered something new…yesterday. Or for making a mistake…or saying something that may have hurt someone’s feelings…or not being as good as someone else, or not anticipating something I should have…Those are my perfectionist triggers (at least the ones I’m aware of). How about you? What are your triggers that unleash a tirade of self-criticism for not measuring up?

When I was writing my book, I came across some research that has had a profound impact on my awareness of the damage my perfectionist-self causes. And even better it’s given me a healing tool, I hope will help you, too.

Dr. Kristin Neff in her book, Self-Compassion, says it’s human to make mistakes and be imperfect. It’s not just us, but everyone who is imperfect. Because we’re human. What freedom that’s given me!

“It is a beautiful experience being with ourselves at a level of complete acceptance. When that begins to happen, when you give up resistance and needing to be perfect, a peace will come over you as you have never known. ”

— Ruth Fishel

Since then, I’ve become a detective in search of noticing when I get down on myself for unrealistic expectations and reframing my response with more acceptance. If I forget something, (isn’t that awful) I will hear myself say in a judgy voice, “Gail, uh, you made a mistake! Why didn’t you think of that?” “Mistake” became a signal word for me to replace what I was saying with kindness and acceptance. “It’s OK Gail. You’re human. Next time you’ll do better.”

Your 4 Takeaway Tips

1.     Eliminate the word “perfect” from your vocabulary! Just using the word keeps us hooked to the unrealistically achievable. While you’re at it eliminate “should,” too. “Should” is not a choice but can feel like an expectation of what a perfect person would do.

2.     Strive to be human instead of perfect. Embrace your fallible humanity with kindness and self-compassion.  Try saying, “It’s OK, you’re human. You’ll do better next time.”

3.     Become a detective of your own perfectionism. Discover your trigger experiences that lead you to be self-critical and have unrealistic expectations. Then reframe those statements with kindness and acceptance.

4.     Be a good enoughist as my friend Jamie wisely suggested in her book, Less Stress Life. When it’s not important that something be just so, accept it as good enough!

I love coaching people on embracing their humanity and being kinder to themselves. Contact me at gail@uppcoach.com for a free one-hour session to explore some new possibilities to be kinder to yourself. And go to my website www.uppcoach.com to learn more and read reviews about my coaching. Wishing you greater ease and self-acceptance!

I love nothing more than speaking to groups about how to develop a positive mindset; ways to improve their relationships and connections at home or work; and how to create a balanced life you love. You can contact me for more information about talks and workshops at gail@theaffirmingway.com.