Practicing Silence To Learn To Listen

It was said by a radio producer in the United States, Larry King: “Nothing I say will teach me anything. To learn, I will have to listen.” We spend the day talking, even though we are alone. Take the test: take a moment away from the screen and listen to what his mind is telling you. Your thoughts do not stop flowing. Whether you want it or not. Whether you like what you think or not.

We talk a lot, we listen little

We constantly tell ourselves things. We are talking beings and we need to understand, analyze, memorize, give coherence to experiences. We do all of this with words. We are born storytellers. We tell ourselves stories, sometimes certainly far from the facts …

We also constantly talk to each other. We tell them our stories, what we have discovered about the world, about ourselves, our desires, our doubts and certainties. We ask, we give, we request, we require, we implore, we reject …

Words help us to communicate thoughts and moods. But every speaker needs someone to listen. Finding a person who knows how to listen is not always easy. We listen to each other correctly to convey minor messages … and we do not always succeed. It is enough to see how complex it is to transmit simple orders at work, or at home: “I told you that …”. “Ah! Well, I understood that…”. It is something that happens often.

Why is it difficult to be heard? Do you remember the last time you felt like you weren’t listening carefully? How did you react to? Did you know how to convey your feeling to the person without hurting them? Did it shut up?

We often find it annoying that they do not listen to us carefully enough when we are telling someone something. When we have an important message or we need someone to listen to us, because we are going through difficult times, finding the right person with the right attitude is essential.

But let’s look at it now from the other side. And you? When was the last time you listened fully to someone? That is, without interrupting him, with empathy, showing him that you understood him, being really interested in that person and without wanting to quickly tell your personal experience or give your point of view in a hasty way. It’s difficult, right?

Inner calm, the first step to knowing how to listen

Both speaking and listening are an art. An art that must be practiced and that deserves special care. It is difficult to know if it was before speaking or listening. In any case, we can affirm that when words are born from silence they are more meaningful and fair. As we have seen, our mind is full of words, with constant speech that overwhelms us.

We do not own this internal verbiage. For the vast majority of people, thinking has become autonomous. The mind is a tool that we must learn to use. We need to know its capabilities and how to use them. Speaking the fair is one of them.

To speak fairly, listen or be heard, the first thing is to learn the value of silence. To be silent is to be silent, but it is also to be still internally. This means that the inner speech stops.

When inner silence is achieved, we prepare ourselves to speak better and also to listen better.

Our relationship with ourselves improves and our relationship with the people around us as well. But why so much talk? Have you noticed that we often talk to hide our concern or anguish? Just as we explain a story to a frightened child, we tell ourselves stories internally and we also tell them to others.

6 ways to quiet the mind

To lay the foundations for active listening, begin by working the silence within yourself:

1. Sit comfortably and with your back straight.
2. Take a deep breath. It is important to relax the shoulders, neck and chest.
3. Observe your thoughts and continue to quiet your body, looking for a relaxed way of being there present.
4. Let your thoughts pass. This means that you observe what you think, as if you were watching the clouds pass by in the sky. Realize that you can observe what you are thinking and decide whether to step in or let the thoughts slide.
5. Keep letting your thoughts pass for at least 20 minutes.
6. It is possible that at the end you have experienced a curious feeling of silence. It is something pleasant and new, easy to recognize. Although it is usually very temporary: you have to practice!

Fear of silence

It seems that our society fears silence, as if something bad could come from it. We constantly have “noise-stories” that lull and calm us, movies, television, sports, newspapers, magazines, dinners with friends, many things, that fill our time and our mind.

Surely you know someone who, for example, cannot stand being alone at home without playing music or having the television on. Talking becomes superfluous if it only serves to avoid fear. The interesting thing is to face our fears to be able to live in trust and not in avoidance.

In all spiritual traditions great value is placed on silence and internal listening. Silence, learning to calm down, is essential to open up to a better way of living day to day. With true meaning and with true confidence.

You have to dare to get in touch with silence.

Once I sent a person from the city to do an exercise in the forest. When he returned he told me that he had not been able to get to the end, since the silence of the place frightened him. That person projected their fears onto the environment. The absence of noise made it easier for him to see all kinds of dangers. He did not know how to listen to the silence and enjoy it.

By the way, do you remember when was the last time you were next to someone in silence and feeling that you understood each other deeply? Strong relationships are capable of sharing without talking.

The 7 keys to active listening

Become aware of each of these aspects that must be taken into account in order to learn to really listen:

1. Feeling interested in the person in front of you and opening up to them. Our gestures already communicate if we are willing to dialogue or if it is going to be a conversation of the deaf. A posture without tensions, without having folded arms, and a welcoming expression that invites confidence is essential .
2. Convey that we have time for each other, even if it is scarce. In a few minutes you can be very present and make it felt!
3. Adopt a receptive attitude. That implies being attentive to our reactions and opinions, to the biases that we have and that will modulate our understanding. We must be there for the other person; that implies containing our opinions in order to listen to the other’s point of view.
4. Not judge. If the person speaking feels judged, communication is distorted and she does not feel understood. To show empathy, we may disagree, but we have to make an effort to listen without blaming the other. Attention to gestures, faces and looks!
5. Do not give advice or rush to solve your problems. Many times, when someone feels listened to, they find ideas that help them. Other times, the mere fact of expressing emotions or thoughts already helps to clarify them.
6. Give signs to the person that we understand them. From time to time we can nod or rephrase a phrase or idea to show our empathy. Being in front of someone who does not give any sign of understanding can be very unpleasant.
7. Only when the person asks, express our point of view in a respectful way, accepting that the same reality can be seen in different ways and this can enrich relationships.

Really understand what the other is saying

We are constantly communicating with our environment. Voluntarily or involuntarily, with words, with gestures, with attitudes. Communication is complex and creates many problems. Knowing what we want to express and finding the right way to do it, adapted to our audience, is a challenge. Often we do not see that what seems so clear to us is not so to others.

We also find it difficult to understand that the emotional charge of certain communications complicates the understanding of the content. In general, we can say that for communication to work we have to care about the other.

That is, we have to be able to be there for the other person, knowing that our point of view and our experiences are a part of reality – not all of it – and that listening will broaden our horizon and provide new elements for understand better. Not all conversations are momentous nor will they change our lives.

But from the conversation in the queue at the bakery to deciding with our partner where to go on vacation, any conversation offers us an opportunity to exercise in communicating from our being.

A personal work and empathy

For others to really matter to us, we have to stop believing that we are the center of the world and that everything revolves around us. At the same time, it implies feeling more united with the rest of humanity.

Sometimes a smile and four words do us a lot of good, even if they come from a total stranger.

If we think about it a bit, we see that we are all travelers on this ship-planet and that we all have similar sufferings, anguishes and desires for well-being. Knowing what you want to say to the other is not always easy. Even the simplest domestic or work request could be complicated if the other feels that we are demanding that they modify their space or their routine on our own whim.

Communicating feelings or deficiencies is usually complex and requires a prior effort of personal clarification. This exercise must begin by internally silencing yourself, that is, going to the origin of what you feel and need to express. To do this, you have to silence yourself before speaking.

Better yet, you have to silence yourself before thinking about it, because as we said, the mind is an instrument that we rarely know how to use correctly. If the communication is based on fear or mistrust, if it is based on insecurity, the expressions are often unfair and add more problems to those that may already exist.

Carl G. Jung used to say that when two people speak, there are actually six people who are speaking: those who believe they are, the one who each thinks is the other, and those who really are.

Therapeutic listening

When we need to talk about our problems, we usually go to friends. They listen to us with patience and love. We are comforted to be able to share our pain and be reinforced with words of support. It also helps to clarify things by putting them out loud and listening to the other person’s response.

There are other circumstances in which this is not enough. Perhaps because we do not want to burden loved ones with problems that belong to us, perhaps because we do not feel heard or perhaps, and this is important, because commenting on it with the people with whom we usually speak reinforces the closed circle in which we are and that does not help us.

At such times it is good to be able to find an outside person who will listen therapeutically. Therapeutic listening is listening by a professional, preferably a psychologist, who will allow us to unravel our thoughts and emotions.

In cases where the inner knot has become stagnant, the psychologist will have the tools to establish a healing dialogue. I invite you to read, for example, about Milton Erickson’s techniques. This psychiatrist began by listening to his patients. He tuned in to the person, had empathy with them, and understood their needs.

He often invented a story appropriate to the patient’s problem and told it using the techniques of naturalistic hypnosis (also called Ericksonian ), that is, modulating the voice so that the listener would do so in the most receptive way possible. There is nothing better in the face of the suffering of the soul than to be heard and understood.