There's Listening and Listening

Hej, Listen up!!

I have a secret to tell you that has the potential to firstly change your world so profoundly that it will literally change The World around you and the people that you meet. Sound interesting? Read on and I will tell you what I have understood after two weeks of bumping into the idea and trying it out.

It's called listening.

I have always possessed a skill that I assume everyone has...the power to know someone's mood and state before they uttered a word. Imagine if this skill was trained and harnesses openly, and people didn't deny its existence, I can imagine conversations taking very different forms, there would be a lot more honesty...and yes I'm guessing things would get pretty heated at times but also very loving too. This skill is a layer deeper and is a form of listening that we all possess, it can be enhanced through shutting up and REALLY listening to what people are saying through their tone and combinations of words, intonations, pauses, and of course body language.

In my own journey, I am approaching another guardian of the threshold in myself and in life through the art of listening and not feeding my thoughts. I believe that testing out new theories and ideas should start at home, it all starts with us, and I have started to listen to me on a deeper level. The guardians of the thresholds come from a long-held idea that they are both protectors and very scary demons that need to be passed through on the way to freedom...if we dare, if we are ready and if we can promise to behave (at least that's the deal for me) once given our new freedom and power.

Thresholds are passed by reaching a new understanding, my understanding has come mostly, inefficiently, through suffering and frustration, pain and anger. But slow as it may be I am getting there. There being the discovery of freedom and truth that has been bothering me ever since I can remember. And my new threshold is listening and hearing. As a karate coach, I listen with my eyes and sports therapist I listen with my hands, through my eyes and ears and then I interact with whomever I am there to 'help'.

Now with life coaching, Michael Neill is talking about and practicing listening, not helping, definitely not throwing the client's a line, not digging them out of the hole that they find themselves in. Many coaches with a bag of coaching tools will always want to step in, throw a line and rescue the client from drowning. But listen, we never find out that we can float if we are continually rescued, right? And this is the problem with techniques, in the long run, they are disempowering. If we a given a technique that works we believe that the technique was the cause of our return to health or mantle sanity, when in fact it was us that did it...we rescued ourselves.

The issue is one of giving ourselves time and space. We have a belief that if we know it in our brain it becomes so, this is not correct and needs to seen for what it is...the brain simply logging information to be used at a later date, IF needed, and if not needed it literally gets erased...use it or lose it. We need to settle down and be quite we all have our own ways to do this, I love training and it is one reason why people love doing karate. The Dojo (training hall) is a space where we step out of life, focus on doing something perhaps difficult, sometimes impossible and we sweat and pant. The head clears, we take a break from ourselves and feel good. The thinking or “blubbering on” takes a break too and most people feel great, I suspect not simply from the chemical infusion of good stuff pulsing through our veins but also from the disconnect. It is in this disconnect that something very powerful and wonderful can happen in us.

So cut to a transformative coaching session, one to one, between 2 human beings. One of them needs a result the other wants to give it, in fact, is being paid to make sure there's one. The pressure in on. The client starts to talk and explain about their life and what's happening what they need and where they want to go with this. Does the coach keep throwing in logs to help stop the client from drowning or does the coach show that their client can actually float on their own? Results have shown that the most effective, compassionate and loving action is empowering the client to see that they actually can float. That, in fact, the power to float and know exactly what to do is innate, and I would go as far as to say that it is a divine god given intelligence that we all have. We just need to be quiet, settle down, shut up and not take our thoughts too seriously and certainly not follow their lead. They will pass and will pass quickly if not fed by ourselves, those around us and especially not by our coach or us or our friends. Mostly we just need to be heard and hear ourselves for the miracles to start happening.