The power of human beings is our ability to communicate our thoughts and emotions with clarity and detail. The issue is, however, most people haven’t anything to really say or understand what we are actually saying. Assemblages of words that make up sentences that lead to paragraphs that speak volumes of nothingness. We vocalize our emotions based on superfluous fragments, the sum of which is zero.
Focused Listening
The key to being a great communicator is to become a great listener. If we mindfully listen to the words that are shared with us we can extract the details of how a person feels and that is where great communication is born.
Think of yourselves as the editor and the therapist as our “patient” shares with us their deepest emotions. We process each individual word and determine which words we can cutout. As we mentally abridge the story it allows us to exercise our abilities to perform Mindful Listening and deepen our connection to the story.
As the words become statements that hopefully become full-fledged thoughts we can begin to paint a mental picture of the storyteller’s feelings.
If you silently listen without retort or introjection you will begin to fill in the blanks of what story you are actually being told. When the storyteller finishes it allows us time to breathe and help the storyteller feel comfort in your understanding of the narrative. It’s at this moment when you are able to express your analysis.
Positive Response
With complete sincerity, you should begin to respond with “what I hear you saying is” as you explain back to them what it is you heard them say. A positive response notating what content you have been shared can allow for a deeper and more meaningful dialog.
We often don’t hear what we are saying or even understand the meaning behind what it is we are saying. As we hear back what another person feels they heard you say, we can begin to rebuild the content into a baseline.
Once we are reconnected to the repeated narrative we can begin to access the basis of how are statements come across to an outsider. Many times hearing back the regurgitation of our words leaves us unsettled and exposed. It’s at that moment when the listener can make the largest impact.
What it all means
Most often our conversations stem from the expression of feelings that have developed inside our reptilian brain. This portion of our brains is responsible for carnal knowledge of basic functions essential for life. Our reptilian brain handles our primal instincts inclusive of our fight or flight emotion.
Our primal mind is incapable of reasoning or thought processing and so, therefore, we often aren’t making processed statements when our narrative comes from our lizard mind.
With a kind response we should ask the storyteller “but how did it make you feel?” This one usually floors a storyteller as it’s an uncommon question that will develop the deepest impact.
It’s during that exacting moment we hope to have moved the conversation into the frontal lobe of our brains where emotional expression, judgment, and problem-solving takes place. With our focus inside this controlled environment of our minds, we have moved away from fight or flight into deciphering the content.
When you give this segment of your brain the ability to process and decipher what we have heard repeated back to us, we can then look deeper within ourselves to find the clues on why we may have been triggered.
When we care to listen and allow a story to unwind, it’s the responses we receive back that opens our mind to the ability to figure it all out. Learn to listen and listening to the process is the most powerful of our human minds. Nurture the process and sharing how you feel makes the largest advancements in self-development.
