“If we know how to listen to our own heart”, writes the late Stephen Covey, “we can listen to the hearts of others.” I think one of the greatest challenges to walking a path with heart is being willing to listen to your heart and to listen with your heart. The former is to tap into the deep inner wisdom that resides in each of us, and the later is to be willing and open to the wisdom and insights that others have to share. The difficulty of this twofold commitment is that you have to be open to just listening.
When we choose to listen to our own heart, and to tap into the deep inner wisdom that reside within each of us, we must recognize that most of us on a daily basis are caught in a cycle of hyper-vigilant reactivity. We, myself included, are constantly on our phones, iPads, or laptops responding to e-mails, watching YouTube videos, or reading the latest news. This addiction to screens and the subsequent responding to ever-pressing inputs prevents us from taking the time to step back, reflect, and listen.
Listening to our own heart is deep work. It requires us to create periods of uninterrupted time and silence. For when we give ourselves permission to be still in the midst of this uninterrupted silence, we find that our lives are filled up and defined by so much noise, especially non-urgent and non-important activities and information. It is in the silence and subsequent stillness that we listen and re-discover the importance of living a life that reflects a complete alignment of body, mind, heart, and spirit. And with this understanding, we can then reprioritize our focus and our choices. We can discover new ways of thinking, working, and living.
When we choose to listen with our heart during a conversation with others, we must recognize that we often listen to respond rather than to understand. We hear the opening part of someone’s communication and we are already figuring out our response. Routinely, we listen to fix something or someone. We want to offer our advice, or to solve a problem. While these may be worthwhile elements and may even need to happen over time, in the beginning, the middle and the end, we must listen less with our head and more with our hearts. For it is from this place that we bring compassion, empathy, and openness to the moment.
Father Gregory Boyle in his book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (Simon & Schuster, 2017) uses the following mantra in his head when visiting with people, namely “stay listening.” He also reminds himself to “listen here and now and only to this person.”
My wife, Jane, and I were discussing the subject of teaching people when she shared that a friend of hers had pointed out that many teachers focus on education as a form of transmission. However, this friend explained that great teachers focus on education as a form of liberation.
The minute she shared this insight with me a light bulb went off inside my head. Many people listen as a form of transmission. It focuses on the message sent and the message being received. But the great listeners I have met, the ones who truly listen with their hearts, engage in the process as a form of liberation for the person speaking and for the person listening. This type of listening frees the speaker and the listener to achieve a deeper and more meaningful level of connection. And ultimately, this helps both as they move forward through life.
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