305 - Why Won't You Listen?
Are you listening?
Most of us have probably had friends or partners or family members who have mentioned that they felt as though we weren’t listening to them at certain points. It’s common, among those you’re close to, to stop actively listening and dwell a little too much on what we’re going to say next instead of focusing on what the other person is talking about. This episode, we’re talking about why we have trouble listening sometimes, as well as some ways to enhance listening skills so we can have a better conversational experience.
What makes it difficult to listen?
A few reasons we have trouble listening are:
Noise. Any physical distraction going on around you will hinder your ability to listen effectively.
Psychological noise also can be a problem. Personal problems may interfere with your focus when talking with someone. Additionally, if you’re extremely attracted to someone OR if you greatly despise someone, you also may have trouble listening to them.
Physiological noise, where you may need to HALT, may also come into play. You’re less able to listen if you’re tired, hungry, etc.
Limited attention span. We all have a limited attention span as humans and after a certain amount of time we won’t be as good at listening as we were at the beginning.
From a more internal standpoint, some reasons we stop listening are also:
We heard a problem, and instead of continuing to listen we want to fix the other person’s pain.
We talk more than we stop to listen in order to gain validation.
We want to be seen as quick and witty and have the perfect retort.
Personal bias can get it the way of actually hearing what the other person is saying.
Instead of listening, we are often:
Planning what we’re going to say next. Often we’re afraid of possible ensuing silence so we plan what to say instead of hearing the other person speak.
Analyzing what the person said previously to form our own opinions.
Trying to figure out how to fix the problem we’re being confronted with.
Letting our egos get in the way of listening and trying to figure out how to sound wittier than the person who’s talking.
Being dismissive of the other person and actively choosing not to be fully engaged in the conversation.
Multitasking, which has been proven to be almost impossible to do well.
Learning to listen effectively is important! People tend to like someone more if they sit and listen to them as opposed to endlessly chattering, and when you’re focusing on someone fully and listening to them, it shows that you’re actually hearing them. Instead of trying to fix their problems, when you’re listening to your partner you’re connecting with them and making them feel cared about.
How to listen better
Use the Triforce of Communication to let your partner know (or have them let you know) that just listening is needed.
Set aside some time in your day (about half an hour or so) where you take turns talking about your day and the other person doesn’t interrupt, just sits and listens.
Get rid of distractions and go to a quiet room, put phones away, etc.
Don’t listen to a conversation with the mindset that it’s a debate. You shouldn’t be trying to “win” anything or prove that they’re wrong about something.
Employ active listening skills instead of passive ones.
Use some of these tips over the next week with a friend or partner. At the end of the sessions, write down some of the information your partner shared with you to see how well you listened.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are going to make you a better listener.
Emily: Yes, often during conversations.
Dedeker: In 60 days, no refunds guaranteed.
Emily: Hopefully in 45 minutes.
Jase: I love that, Dedeker, guaranteed, no refund.
Often during conversations with our acquaintances, our families, and our partners, we fail to actively listen, and instead, we're thinking about other things like what to say next. Today, we're going to discuss why it can be so hard to listen properly, the importance of learning to listen, and some homework practices that you can do with your partners or friends to learn to listen better.
Emily: I was listening to an interview with Glennon Doyle. Do you two know who that is?
Dedeker: Oh, yes. They wrote Untamed, right? That book's been recommended to me and I don't know why and it's on my list but I don't know why.
Emily: I haven't read it either, but maybe I should know. The episode that she was on, it was great, and she talked a lot about listening and how when you go to a place for addicts to go and talk to them.
Dedeker: A rehab center?
Emily: Not even a rehab center, but meetings.
Jase: Like a 12-step program.
Emily: Exactly. Any 12-step program that at those programs, it's not a bunch of people talking to each other and having conversations, but often it's someone getting up and just speaking, and other people listening without offering any advice or anything along those lines, and that struck me. I wanted to discuss today better ways to be a better listener because so many of us are not. So many people out there are not good listeners, even though we may think that we are.
I wanted to pose that question to the two of you. Do you think you're a good listener? Have you ever been told that you're not necessarily a good listener? Then are there people out there that, I don't know, you have come into contact with, who you're like, yes, that person is amazing at listening?
Dedeker: What a question. I don't know if I've ever been complimented upon my listening skills by a partner. I think that if I were to evaluate myself, I think since doing a career change, and becoming a coach, and working with clients, that that has definitely really forced my listening skills to get a lot better. I really can't be spacing out or thinking just about what I want to say next, or stuff like that. I think that has helped me to come to more of a default sense of bringing that compassionate curiosity and listening when working with clients. I'm still working on that, bringing that into my personal relationships as well.
Emily: Nice. What about you, Jase?
Jase: I think I definitely know that I've been probably on both extremes of this of being a really good listener and other times really not being. Something that it makes me think of is one thing is I noticed that something that was a trope when I was in high school, was that anytime I was going somewhere and my mom was giving me directions on how to go there, I would immediately forget everything that she told me as she was telling me when it came to giving directions specifically. What I learned, later on, is that when you're-- You know that phenomenon when you're reading something, and you suddenly go, oh my gosh, I don't remember the last three pages that I read. Let me go back and find that. One explanation I've heard for that is that you came across something that you didn't understand, like a word you didn't know, or maybe the grammar was weird. That there was something you didn't understand and you're in autopilot reading, or I think this also applies to listening, but something you didn't understand and suddenly everything after that you stopped understanding because your mind got stuck on that thing. I think for me with directions, it was always that because I was like, if you said a street name I don't know, then I can't listen to you after that, because my brain is stuck on, I don't know what that is.
Dedeker: Oh gosh. It's just like having a conversation in Japanese.
Jase: Yes, for sure.
Emily: I can't even imagine.
Dedeker: One word pops up that I don't know and then it's just like, I'm sorry, random stranger, random helpful shopkeeper, I'm going to ruin your day by being the fool who doesn't understand your language as it turns out.
Emily: I think you're doing okay. You're pretty dang good at it.
Dedeker: I try to. You know who is a fantastic listener, I think is our friend, Paul, who was our roadie on our first tour. The best listener I've known in my entire life, both in the sense that he's just one of those people that, if you're talking about something hard that's going on, he's just so supportive, and so helpful and really offers actually genuinely thoughtful advice or thoughtful reflection. I've always really gotten a sense that he actually listens, combined with the fact that he has a mind like a steel trap for remembering conversations. He can whip out a reference of something I said in conversation 10 years ago, and I'm just like, oh my God, where did that come from? I don't know. I imagine if you were in a relationship with Paul, maybe that'd be rough.
Emily: Remember when you said this thing.
Dedeker: You said this thing five years ago.
Emily: Oh, my goodness. When I was listening to that episode with Glennon Doyle, I realized that, in my listening, I do a lot of things, a lot of mannerisms or a lot of ahas to make people, because I want people to know that I hear them, and that I'm understanding them.
Dedeker: Backchannel communication, is what we call that.
Emily: Yes. Often, it actually backfired in my life, when I was younger with a director because the director was giving me a note when I was doing a show, and I was doing that whole aha aha and trying to really show that I understood what they were saying. He got so pissed at me and was like, "Will you just shut up and not pretend like you're hearing me and just sit there and listen to me." It was awful and it made me cry and I felt terrible afterwards, but I've always remembered it to this day. I'm like, maybe I need to tamp down my yearning to be liked and to show that I get what you're saying person and trying to make them feel good.
Dedeker: That's really interesting because I can bring in some more Japanese trivia related to that. I think there are some cultural differences around that, and also personal differences. Some people, when they hear you do like, oh, yes, totally, they enjoy that, that's helpful. Some people like with your director, it's like, oh, no, you're just trying to get to the conversation, you're not actually listening. You're just trying to autopilot this. In Japanese, culturally, it's very much expected. It's known as-- They have a word for it. It's called , where it's very much expected you're going to be giving that backchannel feedback the whole time. That caught me off guard often the first time I had long stays in Japan, is because sometimes I would interpret that as like, oh, they're not actually listening to me. They're trying to hurry me up.
Jase: Yes, like come on, come on.
Dedeker: Then I started to realize, oh, no, this is something that everybody does, and it's more expected culturally than maybe we do in the West.
Jase: Also I found something that comes up for me with that was that I remember when I was in middle school, I think, my stepdad would get really frustrated with me for not looking at him when he was talking to me.
Emily: I've seen you do that before. You look down sometimes. It's like you're thinking about-- I don't know. What is it?
Jase: This is something I also learned about much later, I think in a book that I was reading in college. It was talking about how you primarily interact with the world. I think I've mentioned this before on other episodes, but myself, I'm more of an auditory and touch person than a site oriented person, according to this way of thinking of things. A trait of people who are more audio oriented is that they will do that, they'll turn their ear toward you instead of their eyes toward you when they're really listening. That was something that I learned feels like you're not being listened to, and so sometimes I will try to focus on looking at the person, but often I'm so focused on the fact that I'm looking at the person, that I'm not hearing them, so it actually, I'm looking like I'm a better listener, but I'm actually not. There is some interesting dynamics here that are more individual as well in terms of how you actually listen.
Emily: Yes, for sure. Wow.
Dedeker: I think you're not alone in that because not too long ago, I listened to an interview with Ira Glass, where he was actually quite honest about the fact that in interviews, he has to really bring himself back into focus to look at the other person because otherwise, he just finds it really, really easy to space out. I'm like, if even Ira Glass spaces out and has trouble listening when doing his job, interviewing somebody, I'm like, "I think we can give ourselves a little bit of grace and compassion."
Jase: It's easier for me to listen if I'm not also having to look at their face. Because then I'm looking at how their lips are moving, or how they're saying things or what their expressions are, and I'm missing out on in what they're actually saying.
Dedeker: You must be pretty good at it because I've never noticed that. I've noticed that a little bit about you, but it's never been like, "I feel like Jase isn't listening to me," unless you're distracted by something, that's a whole other conversation though.
Jase: That's different, yes.
Emily: That happens quite often.
Dedeker: Let's segue into why is it often difficult for us as human beings to actually listen to what another person is saying, especially when we're in conflict from somebody. I think that we could theorize, there's a bunch of different factors that could go into what makes it difficult or what presents obstacles to listening well.
Jase: Yes. The first three of these that we're going to talk about are all about noise. This first one is just literal, the actual physical noise that's happening in the place where you are. This includes things that are occurring around you making sound. I would say potentially also visual noise would fall into this category too, but something that's actually happening in your environment.
It's difficult to listen to someone if there's construction going on outside, or there's babies crying in the next room or in your arms while you're trying to listen to someone, or a dog's barking, if the TV is on, someone's texting you, things like that. There's just a lot of distractions that come from the physical world.
Emily: The next type of noise is psychological noise, so things like your own personal life, your own personal well-being, maybe problems that you might be having that are interfering with you being able to focus your attention on someone else. Also, this article that I found all of this from saylord.org, saylord.org.
Jase: Saylor, I think it's saylor.org.
Emily: Oh, it's saylor?
Dedeker: saylor.org.
Emily: It looks like saylord.org. Okay.
Jase: It does kind of.
Emily: Anyways. Yes, it said something about the fact that if you're listening to someone who you're super attracted to, it might be more difficult for you to actually hear things that they're saying because you are overcome by how beautiful they are, I don't know.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. 100%, I've experienced this many times where you're like, "Shit, I really need to pay attention here because I'm super distracted."
Emily: That's hilarious. Sometimes if a beautiful woman comes into the restaurant, I'll be like, "Keep it together, keep it together. I don't know." That has definitely happened to me before.
Dedeker: I think for me, if someone's super attractive is talking to me, it's less of like, oh, I'm so focused on how attractive they are, and I think it's more I get so self-conscious on how bumbling I am, and is much more about like, "Be cool, be cool. Be hot, be cool, be sexy, be super suave" and in the meantime, I'm not listening to anything that they're saying.
Emily: There you go, that's some noise that could impair you in other ways. Also, if you really dislike someone, that can automatically just make you be like, "Yes, I'm not going to really give my full attention to this person, no way."
Dedeker: Related to that, there's also physiological noise. Things like if you're tired, if you're hungry, if you're drunk, if you're sick, so all the things that would trigger a halt, for instance, you're probably not going to be able to listen very well. There's this physiological noise going on inside your body that's making it difficult to actually listen.
Emily: Semantic noise is another thing that can come into play. It was also in the article, but I didn't write it down, but because Jase talked about it earlier, I figure why the heck not. That's like, again, if you don't understand what the other person is saying, if you're fixated upon perhaps like a word or something along those lines that, "Hey, I didn't quite get what they meant by that" or maybe just the way in which they talk about something is you don't understand it and you're fixated on that thing, that can appear--
Dedeker: Like if somebody throws a word salad at you.
Emily: Sure, and you're like, "Right, I don't get what this person is saying." Yes.
Jase: Or maybe if someone misuses a word and you just can't get past that.
Emily: What was the thing that we used to say, Jase, from that person that I worked with that he didn't misuse the word, but he just said it, tout--
Jase: Tout.
Emily: Yes, he was like tout. That thing over there, it's really tout. I'm like, "Excuse me."
Dedeker: Now, you just stop listening for that moment.
Emily: Definitely, I did. So things like that.
Dedeker: Another thing that can be an obstacle is just the fact that we have limited attention spans. Our attention spans vary from person to person, but generally, if you're discussing the same topic with somebody for an hour or more, or if you're required to listen to another person giving a lecture for a super long period of time, that essentially our willpower and our attention span starts to decrease. As more time goes on, it becomes more difficult to pay attention.
Emily: This talked about the fact that people who are giving a lecture really need to figure out ways to keep their audience engaged. That's why teachers also, it's like, "Okay, it's time to bring out the movie." It's time to do something in order to keep these people engaged.
Dedeker: I heard that that's why Emeril, the famous chef, started doing the whole bam thing.
Jase: It gets your attention back?
Emily: Just kind of be like whoa.
Dedeker: Well, it's from teaching that he would be teaching and people would just start getting bored, and so that was what he would do to liven things up and wake up all the sleepy students, I guess.
Emily: Wow. Bam.
Jase: Wow.
Emily: Those were more external factors that might cause someone to not listen. Then there are more internal things that might be happening to a person or a reason like underlying reasons why they may not want to listen well, or they're just unable to. The first one is that if you're talking to a partner, if you're talking to a friend, you may hear a problem and immediately just want to fix it. Fixing someone else's pain when they're telling us that something is wrong, and so, again, you get fixated on that as opposed to listening to the whole story, as opposed to really being there for that person, you're just like, "I'm going to fix it and I'm going to figure out a way to do that."
Dedeker: This may depend on the relationship, but among acquaintances and friends, I think for many of us, we've been culturally taught of we can't really tackle big, heavy, painful subjects in polite company, and so it is a thing of like, "Oh, we've got to just fix it or tamp it down" or just throw it an aphorism or something, instead of actually talking through uncomfortable things.
Emily: It's always darkest before the dawn, or something like that.
Dedeker: Something like that, yes. We may also talk more than we listen because we're seeking validation from another person where it's not really about a two-way flow of conversation. I think related to this, something that a friend of mine was talking to me also about recently was over self-disclosure where it's like I'm disclosing something I feel guilty about or bad about, maybe even something bad about that is involving the person who's listening to me, not because I want to dialogue through it, but because I'm trying to make myself feel better. I'm just going to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk just to get it out and hope that I feel better or get validation at the end of it.
Jase: Another one is along with wanting to be liked, to getting validation, is that we want to be seen as quick or witty or intelligent. I think especially if you watch a lot of TV shows with really snappy dialogue, you might think, "Gosh, I should be able to react like that," but then you're thinking about--
Dedeker: I don't want to live in an Aaron Sorkin world.
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Jase: So you're thinking about those reactions, or you're saying something too quickly without really taking the time to absorb what the person has told you. Then, of course, our own personal biases can often get in the way of actually being able to hear what the other person is saying and listening to how they're describing their experience, rather than you hear some details and you immediately put your own experience onto theirs or how you think you would react in their situation instead of taking the time to really understand not only the fact but also what they're telling you about their experience, which are also facts, as it turns out.
Dedeker: Yes. I think related to that, I think cognitive biases and personal biases can really, really gum up the works. We can have a cognitive bias just straight from this person who walks up to us and based on how they look, how they're dressed, the color of their skin, what gender they are, we can already immediately create a story around, "Oh, I think this is what they're going to say or this is what they're going to want, and I'm going to immediately react from that standpoint instead of being open and receptive."
What happens in long-term relationships, and I think we've talked about this on this show before, that over time, research has shown that people actually get worse at predicting what their partner is thinking and feeling.
Emily: It's so interesting.
Dedeker: Yes, not because they don't know each other well. Of course, when you're in a long-term relationship and spend a lot of time together, you start to know each other better and better, but it's because we form a narrative, it's like we form a cognitive bias around this person. It gets to a point of where my partner comes to me, and based on all my past experience, I already had this narrative of like, "Oh, this is how he's going to say this, this is what he's going to want. This is how it's going to go. This is going to turn into a fight," or things like that, that can set you up to just not be listening from the outset. All that time that we're spending not listening, what are we doing instead?
Emily: Good question.
Dedeker: Just having a grand old time.
Emily: Probably Jase is putting his ears towards the person.
Dedeker: Jase is trying to angle his ears and his eyes at the right angle.
Jase: That's when I'm not listening, I'm just trying to--
Emily: You're like, "Look at that person's lips."
Dedeker: Of course, the super common thing is, we're just planning in our head what we're going to say next.
Emily: It's all about us.
Dedeker: What's the next point that we're going to swing in there, we have our own little agenda of making sure, okay, well, I want at least make sure that I can say this or make this point, instead of actually taking in what the other person is saying. Related to that, we also can sit there analyzing what the other person is saying and formulating our own opinions about it, instead of just taking it in. This is so hard to avoid doing because it's just the way our brains work. It's part of the way that we process information. Literally, I'm going to way oversimplify this, so if you're a neuroscientist, please forgive me. Literally, the way that our brains take in stimuli and process stimuli from the outside world, is that it essentially passes through the center of our brain that's responsible for determining how does this affect ourselves? Before we can even--
Emily: It's all about us.
Dedeker: It is all about us. That is how our brains are wired. You can get around that with, actually meditation isn't a good way of getting around that and reforging those neural pathways, but fundamentally that's there. Our brain wants to know immediately any stimuli we get, how does it affect us, which is a survival mechanism. That's part of the reason why so often when we're listening to somebody, it's literally, okay, well, what am I going to say and what's my opinion about this? How is this affecting me? I need to respond from that standpoint.
Jase: Along with that, part of the reason why we'll feel the need to be formulating these things in advance is because we might be afraid of the silence that could happen after they finish speaking, waiting for us to respond and we don't have one immediately. Again, if you're watching a lot of Allan Sorkin films, you're going to feel this--
Emily: Aaron.
Jase: Aaron.
Dedeker: Aaron Sorkin.
Emily: Allan Ball and Aaron Sorkin.
Jase: Got it. Aaron Sorkin. If you're watching a lot of Aaron Sorkin movies, you're going to feel this more extremely, I think. This is something that, I guess to go back to the meditation thing, something I really try to remind myself of, sometimes, when not about doing meditation, but when you listen to people speak, who are big meditators, I'm thinking people like the Dalai Lama, or various meditation teachers that I've encountered or things like that. There tends to be this pause almost every single time they get asked a question, or they're about to start a new topic. There's this little pause, sometimes it's a long pause. Sometimes it's a short pause where they collect their thoughts, finish taking it in, and then respond. It's something I try to remind myself of that that's okay. That we look up to these people. We don't go, "Oh, the Dalai Lama is so unintelligent," because he doesn't respond right away.
Dedeker: Yes, I think Alan Watts talked about Suzuki Roshi, one of the Zen masters, saying something a lot like, he may take like a whole two minutes to respond to your question, but he never hesitates.
Jase: That's a great way to put that. I like that.
Emily: He never has a what?
Dedeker: He never hesitates.
Emily: Oh, hesitates. Okay. Yes. That's great.
Jase: A wizard replies precisely what he means to, it's what he's saying.
Dedeker: Something like that.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Then also, it's because we're trying to figure out how to fix a problem. This goes along with the other stuff, we've been saying that we might make judgments about something they're saying early in the conversation, stop listening to the rest, and then spend our time formulating a solution to that first problem we identified, which might not even really be the thing that they need help with, or that's really what the problem is.
Emily: We've been talking a lot about ourselves here. Our egos, that's a big thing that we're thinking about instead of actually listening. We might just be figuring out how to sound wittier, or more intelligent, or even do things like one-up what the person is saying. Yes, I've definitely encountered some people like that in my life, dated a few of them as well, when they're just sitting there being like, "Actually, this thing is blah blah blah blah."
As Dedeker talked about before with the cognitive biases, we may just be dismissive of another person just right at the onset, either because we don't like them already, or because, I don't know, you see a person and you form these cognitive biases about them. That's going to affect how you view them, and perhaps whether or not you're actually going to spend time listening to them.
Dedeker: Another thing maybe that we're trying to multitask at the same time as we're supposedly listening to another person. There's a lot of research on this, that shows that multitasking is actually not a thing that our brains really enjoy in general. I know we've been fed this narrative that women are naturally better at multitasking, and men are not. That's actually not true. Everybody's brains--
Jase: We are all bad at it.
Dedeker: -equally struggle with multitasking, of course, with personal variation, but all of us do better in an environment when we're able to focus as opposed to needing to multitask. There's also some sexist things that go into that as well, but that's a topic for another time.
Jase: I think, even aside from the gender stuff, I think that our society has taught us that multitasking is a skill, and that being good at it is something to be admired. When in reality, all the research shows no, we're actually pretty much rubbish at it. We're pretty much always going to perform worse when we're multitasking than if we're not. Get over that pride. Stop it. Stop it. I know sometimes we have to do it, I get that. At my job, I'm often required to be jumping from task to task, it sucks. I don't like it. I know I'm less productive when that's happening. Sometimes I just have to do it. Let's stop being proud of multitasking, because it makes us bad listeners, as well as just less good at everything that we're multitasking.
Why do we care? Why is it important to get better at listening to other people? Well, the first thing is that people love to talk about themselves. It's basically everyone's favorite topic. An article in Scientific American says that, on average, people spend 60% of their time in conversations talking about themselves, and 80% of their time on social media doing the same.
Now, I don't know how you have a conversation where both people are talking about themselves 60% of the time, I guess it's 60% of the time you're talking, it's about yourself. That makes sense.
Emily: Sometimes in a conversation, you never get a word in edgewise. It's just like, okay.
Emily: There's a lot of people out there who literally can't talk about anything other than themselves, and are not interested in you talking about yourself at all.
Jase: It reminds me of something from the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Something he talks about is the most beautiful sound to any person is their own name, and so he talks about the power of using someone's name when you're talking to them, but also when you're negotiating with them. He gives this big story about some merger between two companies that seemed really improbable that one guy was going to be able to convince the other to do it. They named the thing, the other guy's name, and the first guy's name. By putting the other guy's name first, he was like, "Ooh, okay."
That's supposedly, the story goes, was what helped him get this much better deal than he would have gotten otherwise, because it's about him, it's about the other person, and you're giving them that, which makes them feel good.
Emily: There you go. Along that line, people really do tend to like you more if you sit there and listen to them, instead of just talking up a storm. I feel like I use this quite often. Sometimes I do wonder, I'm like, "Why is it that the people like to hang out with me?" That sounds terrible. I feel like I've encountered so many really brilliant people in my life and I'm like, "Why is it that they're into me and to being my friend?" I'm like, maybe it's because I give them time to talk and I don't always interrupt. I'm just the one sitting there and allowing them to speak. That's interesting. Something to think about.
Jase: Another thing, actually, from How to Win Friends and Influence People, gosh, it's been like 10 years since I read this book, but it's all coming back right now. Another thing he talks about is if you want everyone at a party to think you are the most interesting person there, just ask them questions and don't say anything yourself. They will come away thinking you were fascinating and interesting. Yes, that holds up.
Emily: That you were an awesome person. Exactly. It really does make people feel good about themselves if you're asking questions, and if you're allowing them to talk, and instead of being the super talkative one. Then when you actually listen, you're actively making your partner feel heard, again, as opposed to sitting there and saying like, "Okay, well, this is what we're going to do," or, "You need to be doing X, Y, and Z thing to fix this situation." If you really just hold space for your partner or for the person in front of you, whomever they may be, to say, what's going on with them if something is really challenging, if something's really difficult, I mean, that's why people go to therapy, right? To hold space.
Jase: Yes, that someone actually listens to you.
Emily: Yes, exactly. Then also when you listen, like I just said, you're choosing to connect with your partner instead of fixing one of their problems. I think that's just a slight change in sometimes what we choose to do with one another, and I think it's a really important change to potentially make. I know so many people who just want to fix problems, and it's really not as productive, perhaps, as you might think it is.
Dedeker: Yes. When I'm working with clients, and especially with couples, sometimes there really is just so much power in literally just that holding space and just somebody feeling heard, like truly actually heard. Because frequent spats or frequent arguments between yourself and a partner, it could be directly linked to just a lack of listening to one another. The thing is that, it's like, this is an opportunity to learn so much about this other person about how they tick, about what's motivating them, about what are their existential dreams underneath the things that they're fighting for. I know that sounds intense, but it's like, literally, this is the stuff that comes up in the work.
Emily: Also what happened with their family of origin, why something might be triggering to them because of their past, things like that.
Dedeker: Exactly. There's just so much there to be mined, and the thing is that it's like we bring that curiosity and that interest often at the beginning of a relationship. Well, I guess once we've gotten over the whole, they're so attractive, I can't even listen to them, and we're actually in the bonding phase of truly trying to understand them, and often we lose that later in relationships, but that doesn't mean that you've learned everything there is to learn. There's still a ton there. Something that I do really appreciate, having these two long term relationships, is that I'm constantly bowled over by the fact that Jase, I'm still learning stuff about you, and same with Alex.
I don't know. I don't think I'm ever going to have that feeling of I've got these two figured out, I can check it out now.
Emily: I'm boring. Boring.
Dedeker: Another thing that when you're in conflict, that listening to your partner, it really can help get you out of your own head and away from your own ego. That can be really helpful because I think sometimes when we're in conflict, and when we're in pain, and when we're suffering, there is this tendency to really look inward and sometimes almost get a little bit navel-gazing and kind of obsessed with our own suffering and our own pain in listening to somebody else, and putting our attention on somebody else helps to have a little bit more of a bigger picture around that pain, and it helps to, I think, kind of, for some reason the phrase broaden your heart was the phrase that wants to come out.
Emily: I like that. It's beautiful.
Dedeker: It's not an existing phrase, but I really do think that putting your attention to focus on somebody else can help with that and help you not just be sitting there just kind of chewing over and obsessed about your own pain or your own issues.
Emily: Broaden your sexual horizons. Sorry, I had to callback.
Dedeker: Broaden your heartful horizons.
Emily: Heart horizons.
Dedeker: Heart horizons, okay, that's going to be our new like self-help--your heartrizons. That's our new self-help empire. Heartrizons TM.
Jase: TM, yes.
Emily: We were like, "What? The heartrizons? I don't get it."
Jase: The heart is rising? I don't get it.
Dedeker: No, no, heartrizons.
Emily: The horizon that it's your heart. Cool. All right. Well, we are going to discuss some important steps that you can take to improve your listening skills, some homework, talk a little bit about active listening, but before that, we are going to discuss some ways in which you can help our show out and keep it coming to you for free.
Dedeker: Okay, I've got it. It's going to be heartrizons, TM, colon, making you a better listener in 60 days or less. Guaranteed, no refunds.
Jase: I like it. That's good.
Emily: Ellipsis, no refunds.
Jase: Or is there a little asterisk down at the bottom that says no refunds?
Emily: I like that. That's good.
Dedeker: Oh, that's totally better.
Jase: Now this is the training. This is Heartrizons now. Welcome everyone to Heartrizons. What are some steps that you can take to improve your listening skills? How do we do it? How do we do it now? All right, step--
Dedeker: You're the certified Heartrizon facilitator, you tell us.
Emily: We, I guess, all are, but this is the first one to speak.
Jase: Yes. Our team of well-trained heartrizon educators are here. Thing number one is to use the triforce of communication, TM, TM TM. The idea here is, if you really don't want your partner to try to fix your problems, if you're the one sharing and they're the one listening, using the Triforce can help set them up for success in terms of they can start thinking, should I be thinking about solutions? Should I just be listening? Should I be offering encouragement? What is it that you want from this interaction, and then similarly, on the other side, you can use the Triforce as a way to ask. If someone starts talking about something, and you find your mind going to solutions.
This often happens to me when I'm talking with Dedeker, where she might be talking about something that's going on and my mind starts going to, okay, she's going to want suggestions and help with this. Let me try to come up with those. Then I'll catch myself and go, "Hang on a second, what triforce are you looking for here? Are you wanting to triforce three, just triforce two?" That helps then set me up to listen in a different way. That can be really helpful on both sides.
Another one is to actually do an exercise where you set aside some time each day. This amount of time could range, but this could be anything from 15 minutes or an hour, where you and another person, whether this is the family member, friend, partner, you take turns talking about your day, what was challenging, what was great, and the other person doesn't interrupt. You very intentionally set it so you don't interrupt at all, even to just interject something. You just sit there and listen as a practice, as a way to just get practice and see what that's like to actually just listen, without any pressure to respond. It's not even like you can't respond, but it's also you don't have to, you're not expected to respond. You get to take that time to just sit there and listen.
Dedeker: When you are doing that exercise, you should definitely get rid of all of the distractions around you. Go to a quiet room, maybe put the kids to bed or make sure that you've eaten, that nobody is going to start screaming potentially, or that you're going to get hungry. Make sure also that you're in a good place emotionally to hear what your partner has to say. Sometimes that can be challenging, especially in the moment, but do things like meditation, deep breathing, stuff like that, halting all of that is really helpful when you are expected to be a good listener.
Jase: Also put your phones away. This is something every time we record one of our podcasts, we say to each other, okay, everyone, put your phones in the garbage. We put them not just silenced, but out of sight, to where you're not even going to look at them and get distracted.
Dedeker: Something that can also help is checking in on your mindset. When you're going into a conversation with a partner or with somebody that you have a history with, it's really easy to get into a habit of feeling like I'm heading into a debate, or I'm competing with them, or I really need to win this conversation, or I need to talk.
Emily: You've talked about right, Dedeker?
Dedeker: Why are you laughing at me?
Emily: I was just saying, I wrote this with you in mind, because I definitely have heard you talk about it before in certain conversations.
Jase: I mean, when I had you in my phone contact, when we first met each other, Dedeker, seven-plus years ago now, I put you as Dedeker Winston, and whenever you would call me or a message would come up, my phone would abbreviate it to just Dedeker Wins, and I was like, "Yes, that's appropriate."
Emily: She does. That's cute. I like it.
Dedeker: Well, anyway, Dedeker does win sometimes.
Emily: Yes, that's why you're the alpha, we know.
Dedeker: Oh, my God.
Emily: It's out of love.
Dedeker: Anyway, I feel like a lot of my work, both myself and my work with clients, is to help remind people that sometimes you really have to be intentional about switching your mindset and switching on the listening mode of like, okay, how would I listen to this if this were a friend talking to me about this, as opposed to how I'm listening when I'm anticipating a debate or anticipating it's going to be a fight? How do I get myself to open and hear and receive and empathize without jumping straight to figuring out, taking it personally or jumping straight to figuring out the how, or things like that.
Jase: Yes, and then the next thing that we're going to talk about in terms of how you can improve your listening skills, is employing active listening, as opposed to passive listening. What is that, you might ask? Well, let's get into that now.
Dedeker: I feel like active listening has really been the darling of self-help and communication skills for a long time. If I'm totally honest, active listening as a concept, I think most of my life, I was just like, "Oh, throw this in the garbage, sounds boring."
Jase: Right. Yes. No, it's interesting too, because I've also heard some backlash against it because some people interpret active listening to mean, what Emily was talking about, which is doing lots of, mm, ahas, and nodding and gesturing and stuff like that.
Emily: It can be a part of it, from what I learned, but I think that it really does go deeper than just the outward little things that you can do, at the very least, to make your partner think that you're actively listening.
Jase: Right. Yes. Okay, there are three components to active listening. Step number one is to comprehend. This means paying attention to the speaker's verbal and nonverbal language to attempt to fully understand what they're trying to say. I like this because it's very much the whole seek to understand before seeking to be understood thing. It's something that I think is so important and I'm not always good at doing, but I think is really valuable. The very first step is actually trying to understand, and I think that if you keep that in mind, it can affect how everything else goes. If the purpose isn't to perform listening, but it's to actually understand. Step number one.
Step number two, is to retain, to remember it. The listener, you try to remember key points about things that they're saying. This might just be in your memory. This might be note-taking. I've also seen some techniques that involve doing stuff with your hands. Like when you think of a thing you want to apply, you'll touch your thumb and your index finger together to physically bookmark that for yourself, and then while they're talking, they might say another thing you want to remember to respond to or say, then you add your middle finger to that, put that on your thumb as well. Then you can count through them afterward. There's different techniques like that.
Dedeker: I want to take some umbrage with that actually, because I feel like something that's getting muddied with the remembering, is I think there's a difference between remembering what somebody said versus remembering what I want to respond to.
Jase: Yes, that's a good point.
Dedeker: I feel like that counts more as like, "Okay, I'm still doing the work of thinking about how I want to respond, and just start taking notes."
Jase: It's interesting though, because the way I've always interpreted this, and when I've used it, it's more instead of now spending the rest of the time while you're talking, thinking about that thing I want to say, I've bookmarked out and put it away so that I can keep listening to you, but yes. Either way.
Dedeker: Yes, there's that. When I'm working with couples, I literally have them take notes when one person is listening, and I know that sounds weird, but I found that, first of all, the very act of taking notes helps short circuit that tendency to want to just be thinking about how I'm going to respond, because you literally have to be listening actively enough to also take notes of what your partner is saying, because then I have people reflect back to their partner, and that's why the notes are really important. It sounds weird to take notes, but I think if it's something that you and your partner could agree on trying, if there's a particular topic that you just feel you have a hard time listening to each other on, I really, really recommend trying it.
Emily: I feel older people do this. I remember my grandmother used to take notes when she was talking to my mom or talking on the phone with someone, and then especially if she was talking to a relative on the phone and wanted to relay back to us what was said, she would take notes, which is very cute, I think.
Jase: Oh, fascinating.
Emily: Yes, and my mom, I think she does that now, too. It's interesting.
Jase: Wow. That's super interesting. An episode on note-taking and its psychological effects and how to do it would be really interesting too.
Emily: Oh my Gosh, people we're going to love that.
Jase: That's something I've got some thoughts on, but we're not talking about that. Right now I'm talking about active listening. Again, step number one is to comprehend this, to understand. Step number two is to retain and try to remember what they've actually said. Actually commit that to memory. Then step number three finally is responding. This is where you respond, not to say some witty thing, but to confirm that you understand. We've talked about this on other episodes as well, but this could be something like actually repeating back certain things they said. It could be saying it back to them in your own words, paraphrasing it to make sure you understand the sentiment of it. It could be talking about related things or maybe connecting different pieces of things that they said to each other. There's lots of different things this could look like, but it's not about yourself or about solving the problem yet. You could get to that later, but the active listening, the responding is to respond to make sure you understood as well as you can.
Dedeker: All right, kids, let's do a recap and let's also talk about a little bit of homework where you can apply these things at home with an adult.
Emily: All right, maybe we can do it again.
Jase: We're a child, yes. I think this could work with your children.
Dedeker: Also with a child, yes. Use some of the tips that you've learned today in your conversations with your partner or your family member over the week. I think can be particularly helpful to think about the obstacles that come up for you in listening. Just bring some curiosity about, "Where does my mind tend to go when someone's listening to me? Do I start to fix it? Do I tune out? Do I start to plan on what I'm going to say? Do I get hung up because they used a particular word or I got confused or I had a question and then I'm not listening to the rest of it? Is it because my partner is just so attractive? I just cannot." It could be helpful to get curious about yourself again, be a scientist about yourself and figure out what's going on with you, when you're listening gets sabotaged.
We already talked about setting aside some time to sit down with a partner or a family member and just practice these skills. Remember when you're setting up that time to get rid of as many outside distractions that you can, get rid of your physiological distractions or physiological noise, psychological noise, to the best of your ability. We also highly recommend going back and listening to our episode 267 about specifically stress reducing conversations. If you want some more structure to try, some more questions to try specifically, if you and your partner want to try a ritual of decompressing about your day together, that's a good episode to also check out.
Emily: When you're taking turns talking to each other, you can use reflecting skills. Those things are reflecting back on what it is that you heard the other person say, and asking things like clarifying questions if you need to comprehend something that you didn't quite understand what they were saying, things like that. Just compartmentalizing and being like, "Okay, these are the bullet points that I heard." Is that correct here? Getting a clarifying question if you need to, or having one, if you need to. Use those active listening skills. Do things like maintaining eye contact with your partner, or maybe your contact. You need to do.
Something we didn't really get into, but that I've heard from child psychologists, also from speech therapists, things like that, is that mirroring emotional life of another person is really helpful in listening. For example, if somebody is like, "I just got a promotion." If you're sitting there sad and with a frown on your face, then that's not really mirroring your partner's emotional life. If somebody is excited about something, you also can show that excitement. If somebody is sad about something, you can express your condolences or have empathy at that moment, and that's not a time when you be all happy and excited and having a big huge grin on your face if somebody is upset.
Jase: I have even heard this proposed for dealing with when someone else is angry and they're upset, is rather than a lot of us, myself included will often react to that by getting super calm, really, really thinking you're going to deescalate that way. I've actually heard some people suggest that actually meeting them closer to where they are. You're not all the way where they are. You're not just as bad as them, but you meet them, so they don't feel this disconnect of like, "No, I've got to get angry or so you understand how angry I am." You go there with them and then bring them back, as opposed to trying to stay calm, which I often do, and then finally they make you so mad that now you're mad too, and that's not helpful. It's intentionally meeting them there and bringing them back.
Emily: Yes. My voice teacher in college talked about this a lot that he would have big seminars with first responders, and that instead they're often taught to just super deescalate and be very calm on the phone, but sometimes if you do go there with the person that actually shows them like, "Oh, they get it."
Jase: They're being heard.
Emily: They're not saying, "Yes, I'm being heard." They're not saying that I'm full of shit or something. They're actually understanding that I'm going through a crisis. That's really interesting, and you can also do that with kids, apparently, that if a kid is having a really tough time or throwing a tantrum about their shoelace being untied, you can be like, "Oh my gosh, I know this sucks. I'm sorry." And they give a little bit more.
Also, give positive feedback by using those verbal signals and showing that you're engaged with what your partner is saying. I do this a lot, maybe feel the situation. If somebody is going to yell at you and tell you to shut up, then maybe figure that out in advance.
Jase: He just moved to Japan and then it's perfectly acceptable and normal.
Emily: Perfect. Exactly.
Jase: Then our last recap and homework here is, when you're doing these sessions of sharing with each other, try to write down some of the information that your partner shared with you. You could try this as notetaking while they're talking, or this could be writing down afterward, just to see how well you remembered things.
Then at the end of the week of doing this regularly, try to gauge how well you listened, how well did you remember things that your partner shared with you? What did you do well and what could you have done better, and then try it again the next week. If hopefully you-
Emily: It's a process, it's a practice.
Jase: Yes, hopefully you and your friend or your partner or your family member that you're doing this with, hopefully you're people who can meta communicate about this communicating. Hopefully, you have some of that if you're able to actually sit down and do these exercises, but this could also be a good opportunity to be scientists, as we like to say, of, "Okay, yes, we tried this, and it was really hard. What if we tried changing it up somehow? What if we did it in shorter chunks, or longer chunks? Maybe we need a longer time to break through our urge to try to fix everything or respond to everything. Or maybe we try Dedeker's thing of taking notes during it, or maybe we try not doing that, or maybe we need to put our phones in another room, not just facedown on the table?" Just experiment with things, try things and see what has an effect.
Emily: In our bonus episode, we are going to talk even more in depth about active listening and how to employ active listening skills in conversation. If you're not one of our patron members, then you can definitely look up active listening skills. There's a ton of articles on it, but we're going to talk about it in our bonus for all of our patrons.
Our call to action question this week for the Instagram stories that you can find, what makes it difficult for you to listen to someone, because we all have our own, like little tics, little habits that make us maybe be better or worse listeners. What makes it difficult for you to listen to someone, we'd love to hear this.