You know what's cool...

You know what's cool?  Being the best version of yourself for people.

I feel like I've spent a lot of time recently forming my tribe.  My support system.  The people that I am choosing to influence me and the people that I can go to with my shit.  Not my physical shit, but my metaphorical shit.  The shit that keeps me up at night wondering if I'm capable of pulling off this whole life thing.

I feel like that's a heavy thing for me to ask a lot of my friends to help me carry, but.. I can't carry it alone, so I have to ask.  And, as a way to repay them for my debt, I help them carry some of theirs.  Fair is fair, right?  If I expect this from the people in my life, then it's only fair that when I offer up my carrier services that I do so in the best possible way that I can.

In my latest string of human being improvement inquiries I've realized that there are very few things that I can do for the people in my life; my friends, family, clients, and coworkers, that is less important than listening to them.  Not just listening, but listening.

We've all, I'm sure, heard about the difference between hearing and listening.  That's not what I'm here to write about.  We've all heard it, we're all sick of it.  What I'm here to do, is to give out real tools for improving your relationship with listening.

How do I know that I'm the kind of person that would benefit from listening training?

• Are you a human being?

Hard stop.  We have a lack of listening epidemic on our hands.  Like our entire society.  Our desire to feel connected to our community is as ingrained into our biology as breathing is.  One way that we can feel a stronger connection is to feel like we understand and are understood.  But how do we expect to be understood if we don't communicate?  And part of effective communication is... listening.  I get it though, it's hard.  My friend Leslie put it perfectly, 'listening is a conscious choice', you have to decide that you are going to do that thing.  And if this is something that you aren't used to doing it can seem difficult.  What was it like when you first started typing on a keyboard, searching for each individual letter, painstakingly scouring the keys that are in no particular order to find the one that matches your needs.  With some practice, though, now your fingers fly across the keys.  What used to take hours now feels like seconds, and now you can type an entire Facebook rant without even blinking.  So how do we do the thing?
Let's talk about 3 places to start.

1. 'It's an occupational hazard of being packaged in a body, that the universe is outside and you are obviously then center of it' -Jon Kabat Zinn wrote that.  I think what he is telling us here is that it is soooo incredibly easy for us to show up to a conversation with only ourselves in mind.   How deflating does is feel when you are sharing something with someone and all they can do is relate is back to themselves?  Comment- 'hey, I recently reconnected and have starting hanging out again with this mutual person that we knew in the past'  Answer- 'cool, you know who I just saw, this random person that means nothing to either of us or, quiet frankly, the original person that you mentioned'.  Deflating.  The wind is immediately and abruptly stripped from your sails and you've missed the opportunity to share a meaningful conversation about reconnecting with past acquaintances.  That's not listening.  And when that happens with the small stuff, why would anyone go there with the big stuff?  And the big stuff is how we are understood.  So.. do what you can to check your ego at the door and show up to a conversation with a mind wide open.
2. Show up.  Not just physically.  Actually show. up.  We don't always like going down into the basement, we all have insecurities and it can be scary to go down there.  It commonly requires an emotional commitment that we aren't always willing to make.  But, if you go down there with someone and they hold the flashlight for you, you may find out that your basement looks a lot like theirs, and you know what that means- they may be able to help you find your way out.  Even if their basement looks nothing like yours, the cobwebs aren't in the same places, the cracks in the foundation aren't as shallow or as deep, but if they can show up to the conversation and really listen it really doesn't matter.  So show up, sit across from someone, put your phone down, look them in the eyes, and don't just wait for the next time you can interrupt.
3. Form questions, not assumptions.  Not much makes me jump to defense as making assumptions about where I'm coming from.  Everyone interacts with life through the lens of their own experiences so how easy is it to assume that everyone else is looking through your lens, and that they would experience something the same way that you did.  Instead, ask a question about how they identify with what they are talking about.  I promise you'll understand way more about someone by asking what it was like to grow up with 4 siblings than to assume that their life was crazy and that their mom was always chauffeuring around them and their siblings.  To be fair, it does take genuine interest in a person or topic to be able to pose thoughtful and thought provoking questions, but curiosity doesn't always kill the cat, and truthfully questions don't always have to be thought provoking.  You are allowed to ask, 'hey how was that presentation that you were nervous about giving?' without it being a profound, ground breaking moment between 2 people.  And when you are looking for questions to ask, use the trick that journalists use- start questions with who, what, where, when, why, and how.  Close ended questions, with yes or no answers aren't going to get you very far.

Do I think that listening is a skill?  Yes.  Do I also think it will strengthen the connections that you have and improve every aspect of your life?  Also yes.  Do I think that you have to give it to get it?  The MOST yes.
So I'm posing a challenge- try one of the things I suggested above, just once, and see how it goes.  We're all in this together and remember skills take practice.  I'm still working hard on this one too.