Please Listen First

Transcript

This is a beautiful thought, this is how your life is already wonderful. I would like to talk to you about the concept of please listen first.

I have noticed this tendency among human beings, many of us want to jump to a conclusion.

Many of us want to form an opinion quickly.

There is a concept in body language analysis called cluster. Normally when you look at body language, if someone is a novice in the art and science they might notice one particular thing like a person blinking very often or some thing they are doing with their hand, scratching their nose. Or this person leans in when they say something and they will jump on that and say they know what this means.

That they are lying or being overly assertive and that they are being deceptive.

Or that they are uncomfortable in the situation and are therefor deceptive.

A lot of the time people will jump on it and think maybe this person has bad intentions or something like that. Of course that is not how body language analysis works.

You have to be aware of the clusters. You have to be aware of the context of what is going on in order to interpret, in order to make a tentative conclusion.

You must know the the context. You must put the individual gesture into the context of other gestures, into the context of the conversation or the other cues we have like verbal cues or meta communication.

All of this comes together in a cluster so we can start to say if I notice these 3-4 things in alignment with my hypothesis, perhaps it is correct.

What I notice other people do…now that I notice this tendency in others I say to myself okay, I better be extra aware of this to make sure I avoid this behavior myself.

What will happen frequently is I will start to tell someone a story, or I will start to tell someone an experience of something that happened to me and within 10-20 seconds they would say “Oh well that is just because of this”

Many times I started telling especially female friends of mine the reason I broke up with my ex girlfriend because her behavior was suspicious.

When I would tell one element of the story they were already starting to share their opinion. “No she was just uncomfortable in that situation or she was just trying to pay you a compliment”.

Like hold on, you have to hear me out first, you have to hear the cluster first.

It is very important for us in fact it is very enriching when we can listen to the whole thing.

When we can allow the information to come in first, without categorizing it. Without saying “Oh I know exactly what this is.”

Or “I am pretty sure I know what this is”

If we make those conclusions, if we come up with those opinions too quickly then when we listen to the rest of the information perhaps we won’t actually be listening.

Perhaps we will just let it come in and perhaps we will be processing it in context of the conclusion that we already made.

But if we can listen clearly and say let’s get a more thorough view of this conversation, story, experience whatever the discourse is.

Maybe after a few minutes we ask more questions, try to probe more deeply and find out what it really is.

I do find that it is enriching, when we can know life as it really is and observe things as they really are. It develops our ability of discernment and enables us to take in more information.

We are not just working with those previous categories we had before, we are actually exercising our intelligence, the highest part of our intelligence.

We don’t necessarily need to form a conclusion when we hear something someone else says.

Of course this is a classic thing, some people, many people and I guess this is more common among men but what will happen is a partner will be looking for reassurance, they want to be heard. That is their primary motivation.

And someone will come up after 30 seconds or a minute starting to offer solutions already. THat’s not what is really going on here.

Firstly the person wants to be heard. When we can hear people, that already has a curative effect. It has a healing effect.

Now often there are more things that need to be done after we hear a person out but it is valuable just to hear them out.

Just to try to understand what was going on in that situation without having to categorize it, form solutions or do any of these things.

If we do find ourselves in a situation where we start to speak and mention one element of the story and someone says “its very easy for this to happen and this to happen” while they are already forming an opinion.

I was just meditating about this and I thought, what can I say in that case? I don’t want to snap or get passive aggressive even though I might feel frustrated in that situation.

Perhaps the best thing would be to simply say, please, it sounds like you are forming an opinion of the situation already and what I would really like is to be heard, first.

What I would like is for you to listen to the details and perhaps later you can form a conclusion or come up with a solution.

But first, please, please listen first.