How to listen?

It is harder than you might have thought!

Let’s talk about listening. A simple topic that, It seems, is not as easy as we were taught, or at least as I was taught it is. There are different types of listening and different ways to listen, and, of course, there are methods to make yourself heard and understood.

Today we will talk from the listener’s point of view. We will find out how can we listen better, what stops us from listening and understanding, what can we do to make sure we understand the speaker’s message and what can we do when we find ourselves losing the message.

Listening is important. Understanding someone’s point of view helps you understand them, better connect with them, and gather more accurate information.

It is extremely important in a couple, as well. Listening to your partner makes them feel understood, important, and loved. We want that for our loved ones and that is why learning to listen is important.

That does not change the fact that listening requires energy, a lot of energy. This is one reason why it’s difficult. Something else that makes listening difficult is something called framing. And, of course, the biggest nail in the listening coffin is personal emotions and triggers.

That is what we are going to talk about today!

Time

The first thing you want to offer to your speaker is your time. This will make them feel important enough to open up, and you will have fewer distractions to keep you from hearing and understanding them.

I want to clarify that when I say time, I mean attention. When someone comes to you and wants to tell you something and you want to listen to them, you let down distractions and offer them your time and attention. As much as possible. That means no phones and social media, no working and listening at the same time, There are some mindless activities that you probably can do, like ironing, or watching disses or, I don’t know, everyone has their mindless activities.

And NO, the scrolling social media is not mindless! You might think it is, but it is not!

I understand this is a lot. And yes you should not do this all the time because it will exhaust you. So, here comes a tricky part, that is THE SAYING OF THE “NO”!

Your son wants to discuss with you a very important topic. You are exhausted from work or any other activities, you realize the topic is important to him and you don’t want to make him feel unimportant or unheard, right? But you know you will not be able to listen to him with enough attention. What do you do? You say NO! Yes, you say NO. But not any “NO”, you say “Buddy, I am sorry, I know this is important and I want to hear you out, but I can’t now. Please give me a few minutes or a few hours, and I will listen to you then!” That kind of “NO”. And, if you have noticed, there is a promise there. “… and I will listen to you then!” You keep that promise. You WILL go back in a few minutes and ask him, “Kid, what was it you wanted to tell me?”. And that is why you will listen to him. If he forgot, what might happen, that’s ok. He knows now he can trust you and your words. He knows now that you are reliable. You made him feel safe and important, without even listening to him! Ain’t that something, yeah?

You can do this with anyone, your spouse, your friends, your parents. And in any situation, when you are doing something that takes requires your attention and you can’t stop, or when you are focusing on something else, or talking with someone else.

But, and this is a big BUT, it is up to you to decide who you want to give your attention to and who you don’t. If a stranger comes up to you on the street, you don’t need to offer them your complete attention, right? So you don’t! You decide who is worthy of your time and attention. You are in complete control!

Framing

The frame of reference is a person’s point of view. To listen and understand effectively, it is important to understand the speaker’s perception of reality, their frame of reference, as well as your perception of reality, your frame of reference.

It is important not to forget the purpose of the discussion. If that is to understand the speaker then going over your frame of reference and finding out theirs is what will help you achieve that purpose.

I managed to split the frames of reference into 3 categories. I want to mention that this is my way of splitting them that I used to help me, I hope it will help you as well.

First, we have Physical frames of reference.

For example, my wife has just seen a video about domestic violence and comes to me and tells me, in a rather harsh voice, how men are stupid and do awful things. This start of discussion could put me into a very weird situation because I don’t know what she is talking about.

What I would do is take a little moment, analyze what she said, and look around. If there is nothing that would start a discussion like that it means that she would have found that somewhere else, and I would ask her what does she mean?

Eventually, I would find out what triggered her emotions and I can listen and help her unload them without being affected by them.

The second type would be mental frames of reference.

These are harder to pick up and maybe even solve. For instance, I have a childhood friend whom I have known for a long, long time, and who came with me to college and moved to the same city as I did, but, for some reason, in the last few years, he stopped hanging out with me.

That made me feel sad and abandoned, and like a true man, I dealt with those feelings by hiding them under fury and blame. So for a lot of months, I was fighting him in my head every time he ditched me for some other activity.

When we met at some point and talked, from my point of view we were fighting for months, so I was angry at him. But he would not understand what was happening and why I was that way. It was very confusing for him because he was not part of the fight.

I created this situation in my head of fighting with him for a long time, and I used it as a frame of reference when I talked with him. That broke the communication and in the end, he was frustrated because he did not get my point and I was frustrated because I was not understood.

So, when people talk to you with an attitude that you don’t understand they might have a different mental frame there. They might have done the same.

These types of frames are a little harder to fix and require a lot of patience and a lot of energy from the listener. Usually, the speaker needs to vent out all the stored energy and after that is done they will be aware of their feelings and start to make sense.

What you can do here is to listen patiently and validate their feelings. Understand that, them feeling that way might not have anything to do with your actions or intentions. Avoid telling them what you wanted to do, or what you intended. That will move the discussion to you and will invalidate them. It will not help them release their anger, for instance, to get to the sadness beneath.

You want to do that because sadness you can fix, anger not so much.

And lastly, we have emotional frames of reference.

If you think about it the other two are emotional frames of reference as well, but the emotions are ignited by something or someone from outside before the conversation started. Emotional frames of reference are based on emotions triggered by the conversation itself.

For example, in my case, there was a period in my childhood when my father would take me fishing because we had nothing else to eat. I would not mind fishing in general, but this time he would take me net-fishing in a very dirty canal near our village and we would have to get into that canal knee-deep in mud and hip-deep in water with all sorts of garbage and snakes and mosquitoes and other critters. And on top of that, because our meal depended on this he would yell at me a lot for each fish we lost.

Because of that until some time ago, I would be very triggered in a discussion about fishing, I would not want to accept why people fish or like fishing. I remember discussions with friends where they would want to tell me how they enjoy fishing and ended up fighting on why is phishing good and me saying they should stop because it’s bad for all sorts of reasons, totally unrelated to them.

You see, they had no idea what was happening, and why I responded angry. In response, they would enter a defensive state and start trying to convince me about their opinion. And so we got into a fight. Not a big one, but the communication there was broken.

My response was not triggered by them or the idea or the words they used. NO! It was triggered by my frame of reference and my emotions attached to that frame. These are the trickiest frames of reference because they are buried deep inside us and it is hard for us to identify them. The responses and emotions they trigger are intense and we stray far from logic and control once they get hold of us.

All these types of frames will stop you from understanding and listening to the speaker. It will, also, disturb their message and block the message from reaching you. And that is not what you want, right? You want to understand them and their message.

What to do?

What can you do to get over your frame of reference and better listen?

I have the perfect and easy solution that works 100% of the time and it only takes about 1 minute 😅😅 , that is what I will not be able to tell you 😎.

The problem is that identifying your trigger and becoming able to be conscious of the fact that you are now listening through one of your frames is very difficult. It is a tedious process and it takes time. The good news is that with this comes some very nice perks, like being able to know yourself and be a more mature and centered person. But until then I can give you some things that I do. I am not saying that I can fight my triggers but I heard about some techniques and ideas that kinda work for me.

First is meditation.

Meditation gets you familiar with listening to your body. I recommend body scanning meditation. One that I do is to focus on each part of my body in as small pieces as possible and tell them to relax while exhaling.

Something like :

Focus on one foot :

Inhale — — Exhale — “Relax” — repeat until you feel that foot relaxed.

Focus on the other foot:

Inhale — — Exhale — “Relax” — repeat until you feel that foot relaxed.

Then your calves, and your thighs, and so on until you get to your face and that is when you stop.

If you want more ideas here is an article with 3 meditations that can help you!

Another thing is to practice tagging your feelings.

Why body scanning meditation is helpful? It offers you a very easy way, at least in time, to recenter yourself and place yourself into the present. When you are in the present you stop your doubt from your past or anxiety for your future to take control. In the present, you are free from all of those and you can take reality without judgment. Thus remove the frames and be able to better listen. Another nice perk meditation and body scanning offer is that a trigger creates physical reactions in your body. After enough body scans you know how your body feels when you are relaxed and ok. This way you will feel when something is wrong with your body and you will be able to catch the trigger by its physical effect on you.

I remember this helped me in a very interesting situation. One day I wanted to take my kids to swimming classes. It was a nice day outside, sunny and warm. So I decided to go on foot. I took the kids from school and started walking. After about half an hour of walking, they started nagging about the distance and how hard it was to walk and stuff like that. At the same time, I realized that we started to run late and I needed them to walk a little faster to get there on time. That is when stuff started to take a turn for the fast-and-furious type of dad 😀. I started to yell at them and pull on them, they started to be more frustrated, by my actions and, especially, by feeling my anger and frustration. We stopped having fun, of course. Until, at a certain crossing, when I realized my state. I realized I was frustrated, I was angry and agitated. Also, I realized the impact I was having on the children. So I stopped, closed my eyes, and did a quick body scan. Luckily I did body scanning for a long time so it only took me a few seconds to relax my body enough. That is when the past disappeared and my fear of not getting on time disappeared as well. I will, at worst, let the kids in 10 minutes late and they would miss 10 minutes of class. No big deal. I stopped pushing them to go faster. After a few minutes, they started relaxing because they did not feel my anxiety anymore and so the rest of the journey was a delight. We ended up being late a few minutes but that was fine because we had a very nice trip there.

And that brings me to my second “very easy” solution.

Self work!

You see in this story relaxation would have helped but it might not have been enough if I had not known that getting there on time was my problem, and thus my responsibility.

Unfortunately, this is another very big topic. In short, our problems are ours and can be fixed only by ourselves. Yes, help is always welcome, and yes, someone else can trigger our problems for us. But the problems and feelings are still ours and the steps towards fixing them are still ours.

Knowing and accepting that you are the only person that can save yourself is crucial. Again that does not mean not seeking help or accepting help. I recommend help. Talk to people, friends, and therapists, search for philosophies or psychological ideas, whatever help we need. But the work is still yours. You find a good psychologist, but you decide to go to them, you put in the work outside of the therapy sessions, you start meditating, and you write down your issues, and you look for solutions, in the way you found out from the help you received, but still you put in the work. That is why I say it is all up to you. Psychologists without your work cannot do anything, friends without you listening to them and assimilating their help cannot do anything, philosophies, and books without you applying their advice cannot do anything. In the end is you who will help yourself.

Everything and everybody else is there to support you, but not take the steps for you!

I know this sounds hard! I understand that too well. But! And this is another big BUT! You are very strong and tough! It is hard to believe this because of stuff that you have told yourself or others have told you, but you are!

You are strong!

You are amazing!

You are wonderful!

And that is what makes all this easy enough for you to manage and that is what will make you an expert at listening!

We got a bit sidetracked here 😀.

The third thing you can do is stop! Not your trigger, or your emotion but the discussion. Similar to the saying of the “no”, doing of the “stop” should be done in a nice way as well. Say something like “I am sorry, but for some reason, this seems to be a sensitive topic for me and I am not able to listen to you! I need a break”.

Now, this is different from saying “no”. Because coming back might trigger the same reaction, but it offers you the possibility to clear your mind and look back, maybe you find something that you can fix. At the same time, your speaker might feel bad as well. They will feel bad for triggering bad emotions within you, or feel abandoned and not important. Those feelings are normal and okay to have, but they are their feelings. And even if they seem to be your responsibility, because you triggered them, they are not. Similar to how your feelings are your responsibility, even if they are triggered by someone else, their feelings are their responsibility even if you triggered them.

In any case, you get out of the discussion! Staying in it will, most likely, create a fight that would be worse than the feelings it creates by getting out of it.

Bonus advice

As a bonus advice that I have for you is to confirm what you understood. When you feel that the speaker is not satisfied with what you understood then ask him:

• What I understood you are saying is: ….. Did I get that right?

And then they would confirm or not if you understood correctly.

This is important because if you understood what they wanted to transmit but they did not figure that out, now they know and they could, maybe, get to the next point or finish the discussion with satisfaction. In case they say they wanted to transmit something else you just ask to try again, maybe even throw in an “I’m sorry”. And this is very very important. You don’t start to tell them what they transmitted. Even if you feel that they were doing something wrong with the transmission of the message, you still ask them to try again and don’t tell them they are not explaining ok. You don’t want your speaker to go into defense mode because the conversation will degenerate. So, don’t do this:

• What I understood is that you want me to take out the trash more often than I do. Did I get that right?
• No, no, no. You are not listening to me!
• But that is what you told me, “I don’t like the smell of the trash in the house and I want it thrown out more often”

This, right there is not what you should do. People usually are not able to put into words what they feel or think. Especially when there are emotions in the mix. That is OK and normal. Don’t expect them to be able to do that. So replace the last sentence with something like:

• I am sorry. Can you please explain it again? I will try to listen better.

Now you might feel the spiral you can get into here, you say what you understood, they say that is not it, you ask to explain again, they explain, you say what you understood, they say that is not it, you ask to explain again, they explain, you say what you understood, they say that is not it, you ask to explain again and so on. So, if you feel that is the case then you need to get out of the situation somehow. The easiest way is to stop the conversation. Do it similarly as we discussed before, with something like:

• I am sorry but it seems that I cannot understand what you are trying to transmit. Can we, please, try this again later or tomorrow? Maybe a clear head will help me more.

I know it is difficult to implement because usually, these discussions end up with a lot of emotions boiling out, unfortunately, someone in the conversation needs to step up, stop the emotional outrage, and act in a way that will calm everyone down somehow.

So, a little recap.

You want to listen well, yeah? You want people around you to feel heard and understood, yeah? You want to create a safe environment for your friends and families where they would not feel judged, yeah?

What will you do?

First.

You offer time to those you want to feel listened to! Remove distractions, face towards them, and listen to them only. This will make them feel important and heard. If you cannot, tell them “no” but the nice type of no, with a promise you will get back, and you get back to them.

Second.

Be aware of your frame of reference. When you feel you got agitated, nervous, anxious, or even angry, accept that this is due to some emotional trigger, and from then on you will distort the speaker’s message and you will not be able to listen to them.

What do you do if you get triggered?

You can focus on the present acknowledge the trigger and accept that it is not important. Putting yourself in the present might help. If it does not help and you feel that the message is not getting through, STOP the conversation and get yourself out of there. Look back and realize what was your trigger, reflect on it, and try to realize what is that you need and that trigger pull out.

These are the most important ideas that I have about listening. I hope they will help you.

Thank you for reading 🥰.

If you want to learn more here are some articles that might help: