Creativity Jijiji

Day 6: The Gift of Listening

• Chris Mchale • Episode 28

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Today's Creativity Jijiji opens with a story about the first printed Advent calendar, and we use that small door as a metaphor for a bigger one: how intentional listening opens the space between us. We move from the reflex of hearing to the craft of listening, exploring why attention is an act of love and how silence, safety, and subtext shape honest conversation.

Patty and Chris get candid about their own habits—interrupting, noisy minds, and the work of waiting. We break down the difference between passive hearing and active listening, then dig into the skills that make connection possible: holding space, noticing the rhythm in every voice, and letting pauses do part of the storytelling. As a composer and writer, Chris shares how cadence, breath, and rests reveal character, while Patty reframes listening as the greatest gift of love, the moment we choose presence over performance.

You’ll leave with practical ways to listen better today. Slow the pace so truth can show up. Summarize what you heard and ask if you got it right. When your mind races for the next line, drop from head to heart and let curiosity lead. Hear the stories wrapped in silence, the meaning under the words, and the door you open when you choose attention on purpose.

Walk this audio advent with us and practice the gift we all need. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who values deep dialogue, and leave a review telling us one habit you’ll try this week.

Thanks for listening.


Patty:

Gerhard Lang, a German printer, was inspired by his mother's childhood practice of sewing 24 cookies onto cardboard, a seasonal tradition. So in 1908, Lang produced the first commercially printed Advent calendar with 24 little doors to open. Welcome to Creativity Jijiji, the audio advent calendar. Each day we open one of the gifts we were born with to remind us not to forget the gifts we are all given. Today's gift is listening. Not just hearing, but true attention.

CHRIS :

Oh yeah, and I'm uh I'm a really good listener, I think. The way I see it is listening isn't hearing the kind of listening we're talking about. Hearing, which I'm really not good at either, because uh these days are my old ears, but hearing is automatic and listening is intentional. That's I thought about this because Patty and I talk about it a lot, and uh that's what I think uh what I've been trying to teach myself. Hearing just happens to us, but listening is something we choose. Listening is compassion and emotion. It's been hard for me to learn to listen. My head is way too noisy sometimes, but my life works better when I do listen intentionally, take the time to hear what is being said, and maybe if I listen carefully enough, why it's being said.

Patty:

Well, you're a good listener when it comes to music. You hear things in music that I don't even understand. Um, because you're very studied in it, but you you have the ability to listen deeply to certain things, but that you know, you can translate that to other areas.

CHRIS :

I like that. I I do obsess listening when I'm mixing and stuff like that.

Patty:

So here it is. People can feel when you're listening. Uh-huh. They feel when it's safe enough for them to open up.

CHRIS :

Oh. Yeah, you know what? That is so key. So key. Uh we listen deeply when we begin to hear the things people don't say. All right. It's that subtext underneath that we really need to listen for. We hear the stories wrapped in silence. Silence to me is the most critical thing in sonic storytelling. It's the silence.

Patty:

Well, listening is multidimensional. It really is. And listening is I l I have learned, I've heard this in my coaching, one of my coaching um certs, is that listening is the greatest gift of love. It really is. But you know, that's where the real conversation lives, you know, in in deep listening.

CHRIS :

Yeah, well now you know why I love this woman. To listen is to open up a door between yourselves, but in a communication. It's like instead of having a door closed, if you take the time to listen intentionally, the door will open between you.

Patty:

And we all want that. We need to do it for ourselves and within ourselves to listen and with one another. Though being the humans we are, um, we all have a lot to learn. Yeah. Myself included.

CHRIS :

And I did a really bad job of listening just there. But uh I here's something I learned from Patty. To listen is to hold space. I didn't really know what that meant, but I I think that that's really important when I learned what it meant, you know. Listening is part of holding space for someone. Uh, that's something I only began to understand in the last couple of years. And uh I've had to really practice my listening. Um, even though I've had a lifetime of listening uh professionally, um the listening we're talking about now is the listening in a relationship, and that's that's been tough for me, no doubt about it. It's been tough.

Patty:

Well, you know, this is for myself as well. Maybe it's just slowing everything down enough for truth to show up. Because sometimes we need to talk to get to our own truth, um, and to feel safe with somebody to really get at things. Um, and there's a it's a whole that's a whole nother conversation into itself.

CHRIS :

Yeah. Listen, I'm a musician, I'm a composer. So the one thing I've been focusing on lately is the rhythm in every voice. Actually, it's it's sort of like what I focus on as as a as a director in my creative work, you know, and as a writer when I write words that are going to be spoken aloud, I write with rhythm. Actually, even when I write just prose um and essays, it it's the rhythm that always gets me. I'm very much a writer by ear, and I learn a lot from the rhythm people put into their voices, the way people speak, not only of their words, but their pauses and their gestures and their dreams and their wounds. It all comes out, don't you think?

Patty:

Yeah, and I my suggestion, and I tell myself this, and I've learned this time and time again, because we live in a noisy world and it's exceptionally noisy right now with a lot of stuff. Wow. But it's listen with our hearts, you know, for two in our head, drop down to your heart, listen with your heart, because the heart has the best ears.

CHRIS :

The heart has the best ears. Uh, you know, look, I'll just get to the truth here. The most challenging thing for me, for me personally, is to wait for my turn to talk. I mean, I fail at that. You know, I piss people off about that. I I don't know what it's about. I mean, I have a mind that raises a head and sort of analyzes everything being said, and I want to put it into context, but that's really not the way to communicate listening, starting with intentional active listening is the way uh to keep yourself out of trouble.

Patty:

Try to think of it as not so much waiting your turn to talk, but your opportunity to see inside another's world and learn. And if you find yourself not listening, again, take a s take a step back, take a breath, and drop down to your heart. Tell your mind this can wait, you know. You you can you can listen. I everybody can. It just takes a lot of practice. So listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give. So thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. And please follow the song lines and please subscribe to our podcast so you can walk with us every day of this wild audio advent adventure.

CHRIS :

Yeah, visit us at uh studio to gg.io. We've got a new website up there. We're gonna be doing all sorts of interesting stuff in the new year. Um so thank you for listening, and hopefully, you listened with intention. I tried to write that way. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Contributor

Chris Mchale

Host