Hi, everyone.
I'm Matt Abrahams, your guest host for the week.
Welcome to Radio Headspace.
This week is all about mindful communication.
One of the most transformative shifts we can make is focusing less on what we say and more on how we listen to what others say.
Today we'll explore why listening is often harder than it seems, how it impacts our relationships and how mindful presence can help us truly hear others, connect to others and build lasting relationships.
Many of us don't listen as well as we could.
There are many barriers to listening.
They all happen to start with the letter P. There's physical noise.
Sometimes it's hard to listen just because the environment we're in is loud.
Another barrier to listening is physiological.
What's going on in our bodies?
If you're tired, If you're hungry, if you're hangry, if you're nervous, it's really hard to demonstrate the focusing required for listening.
And finally, there are psychological challenges and barriers that get in the way of listening.
A lot of us are rehearsing what we want to say next.
We're judging, we're evaluating, we're connecting ideas.
Listening is definitely a skill that we can all develop.
Believe me, my wife encourages me all the time to keep developing my listening skills.
We learn listening by observing others and see what works.
And we also learn listening by seeing how people respond to us.
It's not innate.
We can all learn to listen better.
To be a better listener, there are several things you can do.
I like to teach my students how to ace their listening.
Pace, space and grace.
To begin, we have to give ourselves space.
And I mean space in two ways.
One, we have to physically be in a place where we can actually hear.
Maybe that means moving to a quieter room, stepping outside.
But more importantly, we need to give ourselves mental space.
There's a lot going on in our heads whenever we interact.
We need to open up a space to actually be present and listen.
Beyond space, we have to slow the pace down.
Life comes at us very quickly.
Interactions are fast.
You need to slow down and focus to allow you to truly listen.
And then finally, you have to give yourself some grace.
And grace is all about giving yourself permission not just to listen, but to listen beyond the words.
When people say things, I'll share a story where I messed that up.
I came out of a meeting with a colleague and he turned to me and he said how do you think that went?
And our experience in the meeting did not go well.
It was very poor.
And I immediately jumped into giving feedback.
I thought that's what he was looking for.
In fact, had i noticed he came out the back door, not the front door as i did.
He was looking down, he was speaking more slowly in that moment.
He did not want feedback, what he wanted was support.
I had not listened fully and completely, so space pace grace, put you into a place where you can actually ace your listening.
You're primed to do it.
Now, tactically, what do you do when you listen?
I believe one of the best ways to listen more deeply is to listen as if you were going to paraphrase.
Many of us when we listen, we just listen enough to get the top line of what somebody is saying.
And then we begin evaluating, judging, getting distracted.
When you listen to paraphrase, that is to repeat back in your own words what somebody has said. that you don't when you're not listening to paraphrase.
So I teach my students and I work on this myself to listen for what is the bottom line.
And then, really interestingly, by paraphrasing, you show you care that when you paraphrase, you begin to build trust, and trust is the foundation of all relationships.
I'm not saying you have to paraphrase every single thing somebody says, but by taking the time to paraphrase some of what they say, you actually show that you care, that you heard them and that you intensely want to understand them.
One of the best ways I have learned to practice listening is at the end of an interaction, a meeting, a conversation, listening to a podcast episode.
Ask yourself what was that about?
And how can I use that information?
This internal interrogation essentially an internal paraphrase not only helps you better understand the interaction you just had, but you're training the brain, you're laying down the neural pathways to make your paraphrasing more efficient.
The more you practice paraphrasing what you've heard, the better off you will be when you actually have to listen in a situation with another person or other people.
That's all for today.
Tomorrow we'll dive into messaging and frameworks, simple tools you can use to organize your thoughts and speak more clearly.
Thank you.
