The Way You Listen
THE WAY YOU LISTEN
Transformational coach Tania Harley Badiyi explains how to create a life you love by the way you listen
How do you and I listen?
Well if someone asked me that before I learned about consciousness and the automatic ego, I’d ask if it was a trick question. My best guess would be I listen with my attention, with my ears? But what is that attention?
When you and I listen to a person or attend an event, we think that our experience of the person or event is the way they are. But what if they are, in part, a function of our perception? Can you try that on for a minute? I’m not asking you to believe anything I say as the truth. The intention of everything I share with you is to provide you with clarity freedom and a deeper sense of confidence, joy, and love. So for a minute, we are going to look at listening not a verb but as a distinction.
We can agree that we are on this planet for connection. If we need affirmation Psychologist Brenee Brown can back it up in her ten-year study on vulnerability. We yearn for connection, we thrive on it. We suffer without it. Connection is food for our soul.
It is one of my why’s for being a coach. So how does how we listen impact the quality of connection?
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “how we listen is more important than what we say.“
Whether we are at a seminar, in a meeting at work, talking with a roommate or life partner about daily business or out on a date, you and I are listening from a particular place but we are not aware that it is a particular way.
We think how we hear things is how they are. This way of listening is automatic. We don’t choose it. It’s a default way that we listen and it gives us our experience of what we call reality. It’s a filter that we created through which we listen. So just like things occur differently with different colored lenses and prescriptions, so do different ways of listening give us different experiences. That’s how two people can witness the same event and have two different experiences. Gaining the awareness that we actually listen from a filter gives us so much freedom, possibility, and power!
An awareness practice:
This week when you are speaking with the people important in your life — your boss, parent, friend; I invite you to inquire into what filter you have for each of them. There is a general filter we listen from and then there is a filter for each person.
For example, some people listen for how they can save the day. They can’t wait to fix your life. Their automatic ego is tied up around needing to be acknowledged and needed for solving your problems. Some crack jokes about e everything and others are know-it-alls. Some listen for how can I sound relevant so that I get accepted.
Ask yourself:
What am I listening for?
Am I listening for them to need something that I can provide? To prove I’m worthy?
Am I looking for an opportunity to sound like I know?
The purpose of this is to recognize it so you have a choice. When you notice your automatic way of listening you are no longer being used by it and you can let it go and be present and fully there with the person. Your charisma increases tenfold. You are there 100% with the person with no “ in order to”. You are not listening in a certain way in order to be liked or accepted. You aren’t thinking of anything else or where you need to be after. You can get the full experience of what life is like for that person. You can choose to listen from love or from nothing. Just be with the person to discover everything about them and get the full experience.
You know how when you first fall in love, you are so curious about everything about the person and then time sets in and it’s like you already know everything they are going to say before they begin to speak? . When we “already know someone, we kill off what they could be.”
You will be amazed at how your experience of them might transform. Although don’t expect it to because then you’ll be back in an “in order to“filter. Just be and be open to get who they are. Give up what you already know. Give up your judgments, opinions and evaluations. Just be for the sake of being and no other reason. Listen with a filter of listening for their greatness.
How we listen impacts how we experience our life and the experience we leave people with. The intention is to be of service and make a difference even with the way we listen . By becoming aware of your automatic way of listening, you have the freedom to choose a way of listening that fully frees you up to connect deeply and experience fully.
listen to episode 006 | On Purpose Conversations with Tania Harley Badiyi Part 2
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