Hi everybody, welcome once again to this podcast on how to heal your relationship.

If you haven’t tuned in before, my name is Ayesha Walker and I’m a relationship coach. I work with couples and individuals helping them find solutions to some of the common problems that come up in relationships.

So last week we were talking about why trying to heal a conflict or a problem in your relationship when you’re already in a low emotional state is really not a good idea.

If you’re already feeling hopeless or sad or frustrated or angry, it’s not likely that you are going to be able to come up with a solution to whatever your problem is. It’s not a very empowered place to be coming from.

So I was talking a little bit last week about how you should A, check in with where you are emotionally and B, if you determine that it is a fairly low state, what can you do to shift that before you choose to go and find a solution to any conflict that you might be having before you choose to go and speak with your partner.

Well one of the simple things we were talking about last week was how you can actually use your physical body to change your emotional state. So go for a run, do a little bit of meditation, get up and dance, all those mindfulness techniques that probably a lot of people are already fairly aware of.

Question Your Beliefs

But I said there are many other things that you can do to change emotional state in addition to that. And one of the ones is to question what you make things mean, what thoughts are going on in your head, what beliefs you have about your relationship, something that you’re doing or something that your partner is doing that might be disempowering you.

And when you challenge some of those thoughts, how that can very much change your emotional state. So I thought I’d take a very, very specific example of that this week to demonstrate exactly what I mean.

So we’re talking about meanings and definitions and beliefs and how they affect our state of mind. Well let me take you back to one of the earliest episodes that I did on this podcast which was about listening, right?

And I mentioned that one of the reasons that many people really struggle to listen when they’re having a conflict with somebody is the beliefs that they hold about listening.

Many people believe that if they are listening to someone without interrupting or defending themselves, then that must mean that they are agreeing.

And that if they don’t defend themselves or interrupt something that they don’t wish to hear, then that must mean they’re being a doormat, they’re being walked over and taken advantage of. Okay.

That’s a really good clear example of a meaning that you’ve given to something that is not empowering you. It’s not empowering you because what is needed is you being able to listen so you get better informed so that you can come at the conversation from a more peaceful and calm place.

But because of your beliefs around listening, you won’t be able to do that.

Challenge Your Beliefs

So how about you change your belief? How about you question that belief?

That you ask if it really makes sense and if it’s really true. Does not interrupting somebody mean that you’re agreeing with them? It’s not really any logic to that belief if you think about it.

Does not defending yourself mean that you’re being a doormat when someone’s talking to you and you don’t like what they’re hearing or what they might be saying about you is that true?

So when you start to look at that and think about it and question it, you might start to wonder whether there is a different belief that you could have around listening, for example, that would be more empowering, that would really have you very motivated to listen.

So when you’re at this stage, what I’m suggesting is that you have some blue sky ideas.

Explore Alternative Empowering Beliefs

What other possible definitions could you give listening? How about listening has got nothing to do with agreeing with someone or being a doormat?

How about you decide that listening for you means that you’re acknowledging another person’s autonomy, that you’re confident enough in yourself that you can hear a different point of view without it triggering you or how about listening for you is just acknowledging someone.

It’s got nothing to do with agreeing. You’re just acknowledging another point of view and that other point of view does not have to threaten you.

Now how does that change your emotional state when you’re choosing to create these new meanings or definitions around this idea of listening?

How does it change your ability to actually listen to somebody? How great could you get at listening? How powerful could you get at not getting triggered by other people?

Not allowing other people or situations to yank your chain because you don’t make listening to them mean what you used to make it mean.

You have a new definition and that new definition allows you to be in a completely different place around listening.

Now of course this concept of changing what you make something mean can be applied to pretty much every area of your life. We’re talking at the moment around how you could use it around listening. If you change what you make of it i,e. if you change what listening means for you, you can change how you are being around listening but you can do this in every area of your life.

But I’d like you to start with just listening for today. Why? Because it is so fundamental and foundational to finding your way through disagreement, through conflict with your partner.

That’s where you begin and how, of course, do you listen to your partner? The big question how do you listen to them when they are being triggered, when they are being unkind or angry or perhaps hopeless or apathetic, how can you stay in listening mode?

The Power Of Effective Listening

Well the answer is you change, you change what listening means for you, you change it to it means. E.g. I’m just acknowledging another person’s point of view. I’m simply acknowledging someone else’s autonomy: they’re right to feel or believe what they choose to feel or believe that doesn’t have to threaten me.

When you get there, boy then you can have a powerful conversation. Why? Well because most people actually aren’t looking for you to just agree with everything that they are saying. We don’t live in a world full of crazy narcissists who just want you to slavishly go along with their way or the highway. Most people, like yourself, are just looking to have their point of view acknowledged for the fact that they might see something differently to you to be accepted.

Now I’m not saying you leave it there of course. There are many things that you would want to do where you come to some kind of agreement between you around a differing point of you but you can’t get there until you’ve actually first of all listened to them. Why?

Because when you listen to them in this different way then you will positively trigger them and you will shift their state of being without asking them to shift. You will just naturally cause it. Why?

People Want To Be Heard

Because most people just want to be acknowledged. They want to be heard and when they begin to trust that you are really listening, that you are acknowledging that they have a different point of view you’re not going immediately into defence or attack you’re just hearing without judgement what they have to say.

Then they will at some point also start to get less triggered. Maybe not right away to be fair because when a conflict has been going on a long time in a relationship it can take a little while for someone to really trust that you are genuinely listening.

They may want to test that a few times before they really really trust that you aren’t going to interrupt, you aren’t going to go into defence but at some point you will sense a shift in them.

Now the proof of this one is in the pudding. I’m glad to say what I mean by that is you may not really get it until you actually experience it.

Start Listening In A New Way

So what I’m going to suggest you guys do over the next seven days is start to think about listening in this new way. Start to give it that new, more empowered meaning that it’s just acknowledging it’s not agreeing and see what results you get by doing that.

As I say, you’ll want to do it more than once. It may be many times if what you’re listening is about a topic that has been quite heated in the past.

In fact you may not even want to practise this kind of listening immediately with your partner, you might want to practise this kind of listening in a situation where the emotional stakes are not quite so high, as they will probably be in intimate relationships.

So if that’s a little bit of a too far to reach and a bit too much of a big step then maybe just practise on a friend. Just practise that type of listening on a family member or somebody at work where you can really be in a place where you’re less likely to get triggered yourself because the emotional stakes are not so high.

Okay so that’s your homework for the week folks! Go out and put it into practice because it is only in the practice of something that true learning occurs.

We’ll talk a bit about that on another podcast, about why practice and not just learning is so key to couples coaching.

Suffice to say where this will come to life for you is to go out and do it.

So just to summarise, think about what listening has meant for you in the past. When you’re listening to something that you don’t agree with, change your definition of listening and then start listening in that new way and see what comes back.

That should keep you busy for the next seven days I hope and we will tune in again next week. In the meantime have a fabulous seven days and take care till we speak again. That’s all for now!