Lessons From Listening: A Report

…Last week I set out to seek connections through becoming more aware of the dominant pathways of listening that I have been employing in my life.  Below is not so much a wrap up of this journey, but more a report of a journey that will be a lifetime in the making.

Last week was one of the most emotionally draining weeks I’ve experienced since my participation in GetReal.  I had forgotten the way that AI concepts, when put into practice, affect your life in intense ways and often in the most unassuming ways.  In my experience, working with these concepts is a bit like someone creeping up on you and surprising you with a swift thwack upon the head, even after you judged the situation safe and clear of anyone.  AI concepts, well, are like ninjas.  You think the coast is clear, that you’ve traveled this path before, that you somehow have a handle on things.  Then, out of nowhere….THWACK! NINJA STAR TO YOUR MIND! You look around to find your stealthy assailant and there is no one there.  It’s just you.  It’s you.  I’m not going to lie, sometimes these concepts can throw your world upside down and you might find yourself huddled, fetal position, in your living room corner.  One the other hand, it’s not as bad as I’ve just depicted.  In fact, with every chance “thwack” upon the head there is also the buzz, and energy of a renewed power.  You feel more alive than ever as the world you once knew opens up to you in new ways that had previously gone unnoticed.  You see a whole new field of play that seems to accord with your new found powers, perceived challenge and skill level aligned in that glorious unity of Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow.”  Accepting one’s “thwack,” actions proceed as if natural…

Here is what I learned:

The beginning of the week, I tested out what turned out to be my dominant pathway of listening to others: competitive listening.  When I realized that the majority of my life has been spent attempting to connect with others through competing with them in conversation, I feel a huge rush of remorse and disappointment.  I thought of all the relationships in my past that fell apart and how I blamed them for my own feelings of loneliness.  I never gave them a chance.  I entered into conversations not to listen or experience the other person, but to contributed to the conversation, to add my own opinion and thoughts in an attempt to demonstrate my own superiority.  I made others reactions responsible for my sense of power and connection by trying to demonstrate how much smarter, wiser, or funny I was in the hopes that they would admire me.  If they admire me, then I will feel accepted, and acceptance is one way of feeling connected.  My pathway, even to this day, often falls in to seeking connections through seeking acceptance through admiration.  This influences my listening and turns it “competitive” because to be admired means being the funniest, the craftiest, the smartest, the wisest, and this means that I must listen for opportunities in my conversations where I can add my “two cents” worth.  I’m constantly scanning other’s words for an opportunity to contribute to the conversation.  There is no connection here, just one person enjoying the sound of their own voice and hoping others do too and respond accordingly.

Last week I learned the limitations of this pathway for creating deep connections with everyone in my life.  Here is where a ninja popped up and thwacked me.  See, it’s not like I did not know that this path way was somehow unproductive.  I mean, seriously, this pathway once led me to feeling like the only option to relieve my loneliness was suicide.  How much more does one need to realize that one’s pathway is off? Nonetheless, through the magic of “acceptance and action,” of taking actions and working with the AI concepts in everyday life, the realization hit me square on the head.  I experienced with a great awareness, for the first time, what I had been doing that has held me back from being more open to connecting with others and hence cultivating feelings of loneliness.  Competitive listening is, for me, an unproductive pathway for feeling deep connections with others because it makes others responses responsible for my feelings of connection and, moreover, it doesn’t allow for even a basic kind of commonality to be built together.

Last week I went further than competitive listening, however.  Again, with the help of AI concepts, I also tried “listening-to” others.  As I talked with others, I became aware of similarities between us.  When someone would share things they had done, events they had attended, ideas that we held in common, I would share my own experiences with those doings, events, or ideas.  I connected with people at a very surface level of similar activities, thoughts, or ideas.  This was a good first start away from competitive listening.  But still left me feeling like I wanted more.  It still did not scratch that connection itch.

At this point, let me express a HUGE revelation about both competitive listening and listening-to.  Ever feel like you have run out of things to say in a conversation? I do all the time.  Chances are that is because both competitive listening and listening to both depend on the surface level, topic-level, of conversation.  If, for instance, I’m talking to people and I’m competitive listening or listening-to, then when the topic of conversation turns away from topics or events that I cannot speak on, then I will either sit there in silence feeling all frustrated because I “have nothing to contribute,” or I’ll have to hijack the conversation and steer it back to something that I am more familiar with.  In either case, I am not connecting with people at more than a superficial level.  The result? I still felt lonely because there was no deep connection.

So, I went further down the rabbit hole and tried to “listen-through.” Here I tried to listen through to people’s experience of their world. When people express joys or frustrations, I would ask them about those experiences.  “What was that like?” “How did that feel?”  And, then, I was able to connect at a level of shared feelings and emotions.  Moreover, when I started to not only ask about their experience but also about how they would like things to be different, then I was able to listen through to their core desires.  So now, I was able to connect with others based on 1. emotions 2. core desires.  This was POWERFUL.  I felt a much deeper sense of connection when I was able to have this kind of conversation.  Notice what I just said there, “when I was able to have this kind of conversation.”  See, some people, I am convinced have a hard time articulating their emotions and desires, if only because they are not asked often to articulate them.  Thus, in my experience, I was able to experience this deep connection with those people who were willing and able to share their frustrations, struggles, or joys.

So, this leaves me feeling like I’m still somewhat dependent on meeting others who are willing and able to connect and articulate themselves at a deep level.  I felt a bit of frustration and demoralization.  Then, I realized words are not always necessary for feeling connection. In fact, one of my favorite lines from Antoine de St. Exupery’s children’s book, The Little Prince, are: “Words are the source of misunderstanding.”

Ok…again with big help from AI concepts, down further I go.  My week ended with an attempt to experience deep connection through something like “vicarious experiencing.”  This one is wild.  When LoGun describes it as a kind of “allowing yourself to experience the emotions of others,” I could not help but feel that this is something I do all the time! In fact, I’ve always considered it something of a deficiency towards being “a guy.”  I watch movies and deeply identify with the characters.  I literally can experience what they feel.  Hell, I can’t even watch those “prank” shows (you know the one’s where people are being punked?), because I feel the anxiety of the people being misled.  I cry at movies.  I’m not going to lie.  I do.  Hell, I just got choked up watching Toy Story 3 because I could identify with Woody’s sadness.  😛

This very same process of emphatic identification with the emotional states of movie characters is the same process that I would try to enact in my everyday interactions with others.  So, I went out where people were being really expressive and tried to feel through the people, as I do with movie characters. I went out to a bar with friends.  People were laughing, joking, having fun.  Girls were dancing on the dance floor, on the stripper poles in fact :P.  But, try as I could, I just had a difficult time emphatically identifying, feeling what my friends and all the beautiful people were feeling.  Don’t get me wrong.  I was still having a blast, but I was not feeling through others as much as I would like.  This one is still in the works and is hard for me to explain.  I’ve never once thought of turning my inclination for crying at movies towards connecting with real live people.  I am excited and fascinated about how much more feelings of connection are possible by making this a more consistent practice in my life…stay tuned for more on this as I continue to work on it.

Finally.  This week I discovered one kind of connection that I experienced that overshadowed all of those above.  But, I’m convinced I would never had realized the power of this connection had I not done the work to go out and experience all these other pathways of connection.  This one I am calling: “Creative Connection.”  It probably has another name somewhere that I am not aware of, or even is simply one of the above kinds of listening and connecting.  But, for me, I felt the most feeling of connection, that is, I felt that “connection itch” properly scratched and relieved.  Creative connection is an emergent kind of connection that seem to come with the creation of “inside jokes,” or a mutual reality.  When I connected with one girl this week, we riffed off one another like great jazz musicians.  We also created, together, new and novel ways of understanding our everyday lives.  It was filled with humor, banter, and freedom….but importantly, for me, “connection”  We connected creatively, forever bonded by a moment that had nothing to do with finding commonalities of any kind, but rather through the creation of a shared emergent story, thus of future commonalities forged in the moment.  We became unique to each other within the character of that moment, because it could not not have been what it was without either one of our participation.  In short, creative connecting presupposes listening-through and vicarious emotional experiencing.

I’m not even sure this make sense to me.  All I know is that when I left the interaction with her, I feel the kind of charge of power and connection and it REALLY scratched the itch for connection that I feel is lacking right now in all areas of my life.  I guess, then, the kinds of connections I’m seeking are fun and light, yet deep, collaborative, and open.

Last week was crazy.  I am very thankful for the great work and concepts of AI.  I can tell you that acting on these concepts is not easy, but the effort well worth it.  Or to say it another way, its worth is discovered only when effort is applied.  The insights are profound and the changes lasting.  The greatness of this week is that my feelings of connection are no longer at the mercy of the topic of conversation, or shared experiences, but are back within my own power to act and listen-through to people’s desires, or experience their emotions and connect at those deeper levels.

My competitive listening days are evaporating into a wash of Ninja smoke…