What fascinates and interests me, is one simple observation…most people just want to be heard…
We are after all social animals and our biology dictates that we interact and talk and commune with others.
Our ability to express ourselves and our ability to listen are the ESSENTIAL ingredients in masterful, meaningful conversations.
Believe it or not, most of us think of ourselves as good listeners.
Listening is the freefall of letting go
Active listening is not a passive communication process.
It has tremendous impact on the person you’re speaking with, because you are fully engaged. It’s a really, really important skill.
It opens up a tremendous amount of space in conversation and it gives other people the experience that what they’re saying actually matters.
Any time a conversation is tense, if we decide we want to listen, we usually can.
Listening is the experience of what it’s like to receive
Have you ever had a sense of talking to someone and feeling that they are not there … just not listening!
Or perhaps it’s your mind that jumps to craft an answer even before the speaker has finished.
What is important in listening is-
the time you take to experience receiving a communication rather than being more identified with what it is you are going to say next.
To become a master mindful listener, you drop into awareness, stop your rebutting mind or the mind that’s coming up with an answer, and you simply open and receive the message from the speaker.
Listening is soothing
When you receive the words of another intentionally, you can soothe a communication. So, if you’re experiencing tension in speaking to someone and you make a decision to listen and to actually take in what they’re saying, that almost always will have a calming effect.
In an important personal relationship, when there is conflict and there’s a lot of activation in the nervous system, so one or both parties have more adrenaline in their system or cortisol. They’re feeling stressed and, to some degree, threatened or afflicted. Active listening will soothe the conflict.
listening is a primary skill that we can develop in communication –
We just haven’t been taught how..
Ok ok if you work with people in a therapeutic manner, you may have covered listening and communication as a subject in your studies. But what about all the other professions… scientists, engineers and accountants how much did you learn about communication at school or in your undergraduate studies?
We’re creatures of habit and that is especially true in the domain of communication
Are we lazy?
Language is such a powerful pattern in both the mind and in the body and we carry on our lives basically communicating in the way that we learned…from parents, teachers, society etc and that sets up a nuerological pattern.
Negative patterning gets laid down early
As we go through life, we absorb a lot of negative patterns in communication.
Our families, of course, have a lot of influence as well as our culture. But these patterns have an impact on our health and wellbeing later in life. Because they affect
- How we see ourselves in life and
- Our relationships and interactions with others.
Communication is a process of activation and receptivity
The giving and receiving is communication…
The back and forth process can be soothing when the ointment of mindfulness is applied.
When a person is heard, they feel honoured and soothed, even cared for.
Speak your truth
Speaking is a way of When a person speaks from the heart, there is energy, passion, and magnetism.
Consider the speeches by great leaders such Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King’s “ I have a dream”.The authenticity and truth are captivating and an expression of their truth…
When we use the first person in our conversations, we often don’t need other people to verify what we are saying. There’s power and sovereignty in the way we talk.
Mindful self-expression is lovemaking
when we have two people in authentic dialogue. There is giving and receiving of words and meaning and ….there is activation and receptivity in the dialogue that can be a beautiful way of lovemaking.
Patterning and the fear response
What happens a lot of times in our communication is that we start to experience something that feels threatening… and voila!! The fear response kicks in.
Fear is the neuroscience involved in the old part of our nervous system and it triggers the fight-or-flight response
our nervous system just turns the on-button onto the amygdala. The amygdala stimulates adrenaline and stimulates cortisol and everything in us moves into a defense mode.
…and this becomes a habituated pattern that is wired into neural circuitry…and it requires AWARENESS to change the pattern
Two steps in becoming a proficient communicator
- Witness your response to our own fight-or-flight
- Actually, practice-changing.
For some of these old patterns to change, you need to practice mindful communication.
What is mindful communication?
This is really about the human capacity to step back, become aware and to witness, or to watch our communication style and its impacts.
Mindfulness is about being fully here, NOW ad mindful communication is our capacity to step back and to observe and to witness our communication in action rather than just being absorbed by it or being engrossed in it.
So it’s that ability to actually step back and see the way we’re communicating—to notice that we can make a change and improve our pattern of relating.
There is magic in mindfulness
When you start with a mindfulness practice, you become skillful at stilling the mind.
Mindfulness may increase our stability of mind, and our ability to be present and to witness. A beautiful side product is an increase in compassion. We learn how to become more compassionate, more empathic, and even more merciful with ourselves and with others. In other words, we also learn how to cultivate a non-judging mind.
If you want to be a mindful communicator be a scientist
Mindfulness is a little bit like a scientist in the sense that a scientist is neither for nor against an outcome in an experiment but rather is just really interested in what is real and true.
Mindfulness practice allows you to develop stability and witnessing awareness. Within this atmosphere of non-judgment, we learn to develop a tremendous amount of precision in terms of watching what it is that’s occurring.
The ability to observe and the ability not to judge what’s happening- this is essential in terms of learning how to change our communication patterns.
The key is practice
because through ongoing practice we change the patterns in the mind and pathways in the brain.
What happens is that the patterning itself isn’t going to change unless we actually practice it.
The intent can be there and the witnessing capacity, but unless we actually practice, all those patterns are going to interrupt and continue—and particularly the negative ones.
Sometimes we need a hand to get ourselves out of the mind muddle, that’s why I run workshops to equip people with a few powerful and practical tips and tools they can apply to better understand themselves. Do you want a few tools in your life toolkit? Need a hand to get out of your own way and learn a few skills to lean on in tough times?
I have a workshop that offers A toolkit for everyday life resilience.
If you want to learn how your mind works, how to get yourself unstuck and find out why you do what you do, why your relationships aren’t all perfect, plus how to take control in the tough times in life, then this is for you.
It’s on July 21 and 22
In Sydney CBD
Harrington St Sydney
Hold your spot by emailing info@cultureofcare.com.au
Book a free 15- minute consultation to discuss your issue and find out how I can help.
Iman Iskander is a Clinical Social Worker with a therapy practice in Sydney. She is passionate about interactional intelligence -between people and within each person. She specialises in human interactions, mindful relationships and self mastery. Iman holds engaging workshops for the public and in the corporate sector and is soon to lead a MeetUp group in Sydney CBD.