106: 3 Tips To Help You Listen As If Your Life Depended On It

How often have you found yourself only half listening to someone? 

Yeah, me too. It happens too often! My mind wanders, and I start thinking about everything I need to do. 🙄

I realized one day that if my life depended on it, I would listen with my full attention. So why don't I do that in everyday conversations? I've learned a few tips and tricks that help me to focus my attention and listen as if my life does depend on it. And the result is that others feel heard and loved.

In this episode, I'm sharing three tips that help me be a better listener.

Until next time,
Crystal 

© Triumphant Learning, LLC

Transcript

Crystal Wagner: 0:05

Hey, this week on the podcast, we are going to be talking about how you can listen as if your life depended on it and why that's important. We've been talking the past couple of episodes about how you can be present with your children and those in front of you. And listening is a really good way for us to do that. But listening, developing the skill of listening is just that it is a skill that we have to practice and hone and really pay attention to and focus on. So today, I want to ask you a question. How often have you been listening to someone else, while your mind was wandering, and thinking about all the things you need to get done, or maybe you were thinking about the upcoming projects you had, and you had some ideas about those projects that you wanted to process through and think about. Maybe you were thinking about how you need to start laundry in 10 minutes, or you need to start dinner in 10 minutes, and you still had to get laundry done. Maybe you were looking at your phone or your computer or watching TV, but you were not truly paying attention to the person in front of you. Yeah, me too. I have done that multiple times throughout the day and have to really practice the skill of listening, of focusing on the speaker. Others notice when we're not doing that. They can tell when we're not fully present and engaged with them, and it makes them feel unimportant, honestly. But what would happen if your life depended on you listening and paying attention? If you didn't listen, something bad was going to happen, you probably would pay pretty close attention. You would be listening intently to the speaker; you might lean in so that you can hear every word. He'd probably repeat what they said. You'd make sure to paraphrase and make sure you understood what they were saying. You would listen and you would not forget those instructions. We can do the same thing when we're listening to other people and help them feel loved and feel heard and be truly present with them. So today, I wanted to give you a few tips about how you can do that in any conversation. The first thing is to put down your phone or your work, your computer, your laundry, whatever it is that you're doing, and truly focus on the speaker. If I am working in the kitchen, or working on laundry, I'll often take the my earbuds out so that I can hear. And also so that my daughters or my husband knows that I'm paying attention to them. I will look at them. I may not maintain eye contact the whole time, but I will turn my head to face them. It really annoys me when I'm trying to talk to one of my daughters, and she is just looking at her computer or she's scrolling or flipping through stuff. Or maybe she's looking at a book or magazine and I'll ask her, Would you please just focus on me for a minute? I want to know that she's listening. Sometimes I've had to ask my daughters to wait a moment so that I can give them my full attention. I've had to say, Hang on, let me finish. And I've had to teach them how to respond to that. They will sometimes come up and they'll put their hand on my arm as a way for me to know that they want my attention. Other times I have had to have a sign on my door of the office when I've been working and I really don't want to be interrupted. They know that I'll take a break, I'll check in with them, but they needed to respect that I needed some time to work. When they were younger, and I'd be having a conversation with somebody else, they would come up and put their hand on me. So whatever it is, however you need your children to respect you so that you can give them your attention, teach them how to do that. When we were first starting this when I would be working on the computer and they come in and they just start jabbering away and have to say,"Stop. I cannot focus on what you're saying until I stop what I'm doing." And I didn't make them wait a long time, but I needed to finish, usually finish the sentence that I was writing or the thought that I was on and then turn so that I could physically give them my attention. The next thing you can do is focus on the speaker. Look at them, give them your physical attention. And I find sometimes even when I do that, my thoughts wander and I'm not focusing on on what the speaker is saying, because I'm so preoccupied with what else is going on. So I use a visual image that really helps me, I am very big on having those visual images because it just helps me to understand the concepts so much better. And what I'll do is I'll think about a horse with blinders on, and how that prevents them from getting distracted and sidetracked. And so I will literally think about those blinders in my mind, I can see my hands coming up and putting them, putting them beside my head so that I can be focused. It's my way of saying, hey, get your thoughts back here. Come on, we're going to focus on what's been said. Finally, listen to understand. Pay attention to how often you engage in a conversation, and you're listening, and you're thinking, "Okay, I want to say something about this. Oh, yeah. I want to tell you about whenever I did this. Oh, yeah. Well, what about..." When you're doing that, you cannot hear and understand what someone else is saying. You're only half listening to what's going on. So instead, really listen and try to understand, maybe paraphrase back what they're saying. Maybe ask if you understood correctly. You could use some empathic listening and say, I hear that you, I can see that you're really... It sounds like you, or that must be really difficult. Just a phrase to help them know that you heard what they said. And not just always, yeah, I hear that. That must be difficult. I mean, those phrases are really good to make sure that they know that you're listening, but whenever you can take what they're saying, and turn that around, and maybe say something like, "That must be really hard. It hurts whenever someone says things like that to us." They know that you understood, you heard and understood what they said, and you know what that feels like. So all of those are great ways to help you listen as if you your life depended upon it, even when it doesn't. Charles Hummel said to focus on the things that have eternal significance. Listening to those with whom you're engaging, I think ,has eternal significance. We have an opportunity to build those relationships and those connections. But it's hard, especially with all the distractions that we have in our daily life. So if you will think about this, and just think about listening as if your life depended upon it, even if you're just listening to your three year old tell you about what they found in the yard, or you're listening to your 10 year old tell you about something that happened during their day, or you're listening to your 17 year old tell you about a struggle that they have or something that really excites them, listen intently. We'll have more to talk about in the coming months about listening, and I have a workshop planned to help you develop some of those skills. But for now, try implementing this strategy and see what a difference it makes in your relationships in your daily life.