Phone Call: Interrupted
Last week I was strolling down the street in San Francisco feeling totally energized by endorphins from a killer Pilates class when an amazing new idea for my company struck me. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes sweaty workouts get my creative brainpowers flowing. Great entrepreneurial ideas aren’t easy to come by, so I grabbed my phone to share my awesome idea with my friend.
I was so excited that each ring….ring…ring…felt like an eternity. The moment she answered, I immediately started spewing: “Wait until you hear this cool -” KRRCCHH. STATIC. STATIC FUZZ. MORE STATIC. *CALL ENDED*
Okay, hang on. I readjusted my phone, checked to see how many bars I had and called her right back (it was a really, really great idea).
This time it went right to voicemail. I thought about leaving a message but what I wanted to share was too complicated and important to try to explain to the void of her mailbox. I needed her on the other end to hear me out, so I texted quickly: “u there?”
And then redialed three more times. She picked up. More static. Snippets of my voice or hers would make it through the fuzz, giving me hope that the line would clear and then – the call would drop and there I was standing in the middle of the street yelling, “Can you hear me!? Helllloooooo? I can hear you. Can. You. Hear. Me.”
I was livid. Within four minutes I had gone from the ultimate workout high to blood-boiling, cortisol-spiking anger. I was mad at my phone. I was mad at my phone company. I was mad at cell service in San Francisco. I was even mad at my friend. How could she? She was probably in the wrong room. Or not holding the phone to her ear. She didn’t even care. This morning – which had been going so wonderfully - had just been ruined, and it was all her fault. With my frustrated “nevermind” attitude I started to text her just that when: wait – what was I doing?!
My sanity returned, and I started laughing so hard at myself that people were staring. I had completely lost my mind and my emotional logic for one simple reason: I wasn’t being heard. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, least of all my friend’s, but feeling like she wasn’t or couldn’t listen to me was enough to send me off the deep end. And I’m a trained therapist.
For all the listening that I do in my professional life, I was reminded in that failed phone call how truly critical it is to be heard. I should know this well. My years of training have taught me that there is nothing more important than listening when it comes to creating understanding, trust, and growth.
Talk therapy isn’t only successful because of the guidance you receive from your therapist. Research shows that your brain’s chemistry changes just in the act of sharing. Being able to talk about your experiences and feelings opens the gate to understanding for you to be able to help yourself. Believe me – therapy would be a much simpler process if therapists just acted as magical advice-dispensers and people internalized and acted on that advice without hesitation. The reality is that you can’t do anyone’s mental push-ups for them. Offering clarity and guidance helps, but providing a space for people to be truly heard is where the deepest learning occurs.
I was reminded of the power of listening in a recent experience with a client who is facing an incomprehensible battle with cancer. One day, I decided to reach out to her and offer to have a conversation if she ever wanted or needed to. She called me. We spent an hour on the phone. In that hour, I said almost nothing, just listening to what she wanted to share about her life now. It was one of the most powerful and mind opening hours I had spent in a very long time. I joked at the end of it that she should be send me the bill for her insightful inspiration.
There are some aspects of life that go beyond words, that no language can substantiate the experience. There are times when we need someone to not tell us what to do or how to feel, but to just listen. After all, this is why people love prayer. In the quiet moments when there is no one butting in, no one annoying us, we feel a profound connection to the world around us and ourselves.
This deep feeling of connection is especially important in a world where listening has been comprised by the attention we all give our devices. How much time do you spend competing with your partner’s (or friends’ or family’s) cell phone for their attention? Or vice versa? Our need for instant gratification via our technology has eroded our ability to have patience with each other to create the space that real listening requires.
We’ve convinced ourselves that we have less time for each other because of all the competing demands on us. This is an illusion. You can always slow down and choose personal connection and empathy. Ask yourself, in which are of these areas could you improve your listening skills?
•Less advice, more empathy
•Less scattered, more present
•Less filler, more silence
In the words of the great philosopher Krishnamurti, “To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet.” Imagine a world filled with people who spent less time checking texts and more time making eye contact. Imagine the deep peace that would emerge in a world where listening skills were a prioritized. Imagine the gifts you could give the people you love just by paying attention to what they want to share. Recognize that personal transformation begins and ends with the willingness to share and the platform to be heard. After all, there is nothing sweeter than being heard and deeply understood.
Follow Leigh and Mind in Motion @ http://getyourmindinmotion.com and Facebook or drop us a line at info@getyourmindinmotion.com.