Listening to Others Level 5
In order to listen to others you need to take information in. In order to take in information you need to have the door open. You will need to open the door to your mind and let new information come in. This is called "Having an open mind." When you are listening you want to have more information coming in than is going out.
We all have situations or people in our lives that may irritate or frighten us. Just standing in a checkout line at a store can cause us to become irritated and upset. We become afraid that it will take forever or five whole minutes to get out of this checkout line. We are afraid that we will miss out of five minutes of Fox News. We become afraid that someone else will get our winning lottery ticket. We are afraid that the wife or the cat at home will pass out from starvation before we get there.
We all have many situations in life where the boss, co-workers, police officers, or bureaucrats will piss us off or irritate us. In order to listen to these people and not let our anger or fear overwhelm us, we need to examine ourselves and the fears that we carry with us in the past. Every fear that we have is brought up from our past life. Our fear of spiders was taught to us by our mother as she screamed and jumped up onto the chair to get away from this little spider. As children, we understood that if a grown person could become incredibly frightened of an animal slightly larger than the head of a pin this animal must have incredible power and be incredibly vicious.
Let’s examine some people in some situations that cause us to become fearful or irritated to find out where they originated from so that we can improve our powers of listening. First, let’s examine our own fears to see where these have come from. Some of these fears that are common to everyone are PTSD, a rough childhood, disease, getting old, and having relationship problems. By examining our own foibles at first, we understand that we are always willing to become more compassionate and considerate of ourselves. We always tend to be harder on others because we do not know their story. We know our own story, so it is easy to understand what is driving our own behaviors.
Take one person that you seem to be easily irritated at, and see if you can have lunch with them, or invite them over for tea, and just listen to this person. In order to listen to them you will need to take in information and give very little or no judgements on what they are telling you. You can ask them questions about their childhood and past to gain better insight. Do not ask questions like “So your father was really mean and abusive, is that why you turned into an asshole?” This is a leading, judgemental, and condemnatory question because after we ask them this, they will shut up and no longer wish to be attacked.
You can ask them questions like “How did your parents treat you?” “What are some pivotal points of your childhood?” “What kind of religious training did you have when you were growing up?” “How did your parents feel about money?” “How were your parents or teachers in dealing with dealing lazy people?” “What did you have to do to get approval as a child?”
As a person is talking to you, you can nod and use affirmative words like “Yes, I understand” or “That is amazing or interesting.” “That sounds really tough. You are an awesome person for making it through that situation.” You can also acknowledge their journey by briefly mentioning an event in your past that is similar to what they are talking about. You could mention “School was very tough for me also.” without going into lots of detail. Or you could say “It's tough being rejected in a relationship. This drove me to severe depression several times in my life.” You will want to redirect the attention to them as soon as possible, by asking the question “How were you able to overcome the situation yourself?” If they do ask you questions about yourself, make it quick and simple, just giving them enough information to help them to trust and have confidence in you to be able to understand where they are coming from.
Try to gain a complete understanding of what is driving their motivations in life. Do this without making judgments. You will want to understand completely what is causing their actions today, past problems, current situations, and how society treats them in general. When you listen to other people they start to gain trust in you, and this helps them to overcome their fears. You can reflect on the emotions and feelings that they have expressed to you, and imagine yourself going through similar situations, and feeling similar emotions, this is called empathy.
Empathy is when you feel the pain and suffering of others without making a judgement on whether they deserve this or not. Empathy is not trying to find solutions, it is trying to make a connection. When people are going through difficult times, the most important thing that they need is empathy. Doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs will always have solutions or fixes for their problems, you may have a fix also for them, but this is not your job when you are showing empathy. Empathy is letting other people know that you understand their feelings and suffering that you may have been through similar situations, and that they are not alone.
If nobody on the planet Earth ever got cancer, and you were the only human being in all known history to have gotten cancer, you would be totally devastated. Knowing others are going through a similar struggle helps you to deal with the devastation. This is why people form support groups for parents who have lost children to cancer survivors, sexual abuse victims, or trauma from war. Having other people as friends who have been through similar situations helps us to realize that not all is hopeless or lost.
People are always afraid of being criticized for making mistakes or being wrong. You will gain their trust and confidence by not becoming judgemental or criticizing their thoughts or actions. This is what empathy is all about. Empathy is understanding and experiencing the suffering of others. The word compassion also means to suffer with others. By suffering with others you form a bond with them, and it increases their trust in you.
Once you have gained this person’s trust then you can offer solutions to you or other people you know that has worked. If the person becomes frightened or suspicious of your solution, then it is best to back off and spend more time gaining their trust again. Most situations require a long process of healing and making changes. This is not like. You run over to a burning automobile stick your hand in and say “Grab my hand! I will pull you out!” Putting your hand in is just an instant solution for a one-time problem. We are taking care of the problem for the rest of the person’s life here, and it will take lots of work.
The problems that people are going through usually take many years to formulate to where they are today. Even physical disease takes many years to acquire the problem, and it is not going to go away instantly without many lifestyle and mental changes. This empathy requires you to become non-judgemental to be able to offer help and assistance where appropriate, and this help and assistance is normally just listening.
We need to be able to develop honesty with ourselves and encourage others to become honest too. It’s only this honest look in reality and in life that will help us achieve this understanding of what is really going on. This understanding will help us to perform wise action which will give us our desired results. All of the lessons that you have learned with mindfulness can gradually morph into kindfulness. This kindfulness will give you and others a more happy and enjoyable life. Be kind.