Fearless Listening
As we start a new week, new experiences naturally come our day. In fact, new information presents itself to us every day, and in every conversation.
Even if we feel like we have the ‘same conversation’ over and over again with someone or that we are not experiencing anything new in our jobs or our relationships or our lives, that is not true. This perception of ‘familiarity’ is a barrier created by our fear lens so that it can quickly catalogue things as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ and ‘defend’ us from the world.
Things are considered ‘safe’ are quickly archived with no further investigation, no need for further exploration.
Things that are considered ‘unsafe’ are seen as attack, and defence measures are rapidly put into place.
Every time we have a conversation, one part of our brain is actively trying to fit the dialogue into a pattern it is already familiar with, so that it can catalogue and archive the information as soon as possible. Think about it this way….our fear lens (that part of our fear self that looks out onto the world) is tasked with filing away information so that our more creative, higher self can take a strategic view and focus on how we can create fulfilling relationships, health and wellbeing, and the best life and results for us. But the catch is that the fear lens catalogues all information before it can get to the more curious and creative part of our brain. It is like an overzealous worker that takes its job very seriously, and all information is immediately dealt with and sent to the archives, to save senior management time and effort. And to stay with this analogy, of course, senior management never actually receive the information until they actively seek it out!
From an evolutionary perspective, we are attuned to finding the quickest way to process information to quickly alert us to danger and help us move to safer surroundings, and to save our brain’s processing capacity for more value-added activities. This is a great aspect of our evolution, without which we would perhaps long be extinct. But the downside of having this ‘rapid-processing’ capacity is that we often forget that we also have a more inquisitive, curious, creative capacity with which we can engage the world.
We stay in the auto-mode, which essentially is our most basic, ‘survival’ mode. At best, this keeps us in our ‘comfort zone’ with no incentive to try out new things, look at new ways of doing the same things, or taking a true interest finding out more about someone we think we already know. At worst, it keeps us in a constant state of alert where the slightest thing that someone says to us is seen as an attack. We then naturally adopt one of many ‘fight, flight or freeze’ defence strategies to deal with this attack:
We may stop listening and tune the person out, telling ourselves that what they are saying has no basis, or that we have better things to think about.
We may start thinking about how they are wrong, or already think of convincing arguments that we can make to show our greater knowledge or better opinion.
We may believe that what we are hearing is a criticism of us, and that therefore demonstrates that we are not worthy, deserving, powerful enough...which may lead us to further blocking out or attacking the other person.
The truth is that each time we hear something, it cannot be the same as the previous time: because we have moved on since we last heard it, and the speaker has moved on since they last said it – so something new information or understanding is inevitable if we actively seek it out.
The truth is also that if we are truly open to new input every day and allow it to inform us, we become far more effective: we learn and grow, we open ourselves up to endless possibilities, and we make much better decisions.
And the human truth is that we only express our pain and concerns to those who we believe care about us in some way: people will only share their perspective with us if in some way they care about our understanding of them.
You have probably heard that ‘active listening’, where you show the speaker that you are paying attention, is the key to good conversations.
The real, hidden key to Fearless Listening, and the great relationships and synchronistic results that follow, is to know that you first perceive the world through a fear lens which is simply trying to save you time and effort (but, in fact, causes you complacency and boredom or conflict and struggle); to become compassionate and curious about the information being gifted to you, and keep your focus on how you can create what you would love with the true information that has just been shared with you.
Your real powerhouse, your true decision-making centre lies in the part of you that is curious, compassionate, and creative.
