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

If you haven’t caught me before, my name is Ayesha Walker and I am a relationship coach. I work with couples and individuals, helping them navigate some of the common problems in intimate relationships.

If you were listening to last week’s show, you would have heard me talking about how changing what something means can really shift how you’re able to be.

We use the example of changing what listening means for you to change how you can be around listening in a more empowered way.

The Skill Of Listening

So I thought I would continue that thread this week and talk a little bit more about listening because it is such a very key part of good communication.

I often call it the ninja tool of good communication because it is when well used, when understood, it has truly the power to cause the greatest healing in probably the simplest way. When you can really get skilled at using this tool of listening, it can move mountains, it’s truly, truly a magical and wonderful skill to learn.

If I could only teach you one thing, it would be that skill of listening.

So a quick recap on what we were saying about listening last week is, if you change your definition of what listening means for you, you can listen in a very different way to your partner that’s likely to positively trigger them.

So what I was pointing to there was, if you decide that listening does not mean that you’re agreeing with someone, it just means that you are acknowledging someone.

It means that you’ll actually be able to acknowledge them without interrupting them, without needing to defend yourself against what they are trying to say.

You can truly begin to acknowledge them when you begin to acknowledge another person’s point of view even when it’s something that you don’t agree with, they will often become less triggered themselves, they will calm down, they will be more open to listening to you.

How To Become A Better Listener

So I wanted to talk today about some other things that you can do to make you an even better listener. So let me ask you a question.

If somebody is not interrupting or defending, okay, so you’re doing what I suggested you do when you change your definition of listening, if someone is not doing either of those things, how would you know that they still weren’t actually listening to you? Okay, so they’re being silent and they’re not being defensive, how do you know they’re still not really listening to you?

Well, the truth is words are in actual fact only 7% of our communication. The other 93% is made up of the tonality in which we use words and the body language that we are doing when we are talking or staying silent.

So to answer that question, how would you know if somebody who was being silent wasn’t listening to you?

Body Language

Well, you would probably be observing some kind of body language in their face or their posture that was letting you know that without words they were most definitely not agreeing with you.

Us human beings are absolutely masterful at communicating a whole host of things without uttering one single word. Just by a little change in our facial expression, a shift in our body, we can let somebody know exactly what we really feel.

It’s thought that we have this skill because at some point in our history, we wouldn’t have had words. All we would actually have had would have been tonality, sounds that we might make, grunts for a yes or no or I like that or I don’t like that.

And our hands and our bodies to communicate to others in our tribe, what we wanted, what we didn’t want, what we were happy with, what we weren’t happy with. So it’s likely that those skills long predate our ability to use words.

And we are still more than capable of using them when needed. So it’s very good when you are listening to somebody to be very mindful of what you are actually doing with your body.

We can often be communicating quite unconsciously that we are in resistance or judging something that they are saying. And if they are observing that in you, then they are likely to get fairly instantly triggered themselves and that conversation isn’t going to go well.

So to become a better listener, you would want to become aware of what you’re doing with your face and your body when you are listening to somebody. However, let me ask you another question.

How about your body and your face are showing that you’re in listening mode and you’re not interrupting and you’re not defending. How would somebody know even more that you were genuinely listening to them?

Reflective Listening

What could be something that you would actually be doing as opposed to something that you would not be doing that would have your partner feel very, very listen to, very understood.

The answer to that question is something that is often referred to as reflecting back. Sometimes it’s even called reflective listening.

It is the ability to paraphrase or summarise what it is you think that your partner was trying to communicate to you.

So this isn’t about staying silent. This is about listening, thinking about what the essence of what they’re trying to say is really getting to the heart of it and then summarising or paraphrasing what it is that you think that they said because what you think that they said may not be what they think that they said, okay.

So this ability to paraphrase or summarise what you think that they said to you back to them.

When you get very, very good at that, then you have aced the skill of listening. But reflecting back is not something you tend to instantaneously get good at. It really is something that you need to practise to get good at.

First, because you don’t want to just be reflecting back as if you’re a parrot because that is not going to have your partner feel listened to.

You’re going to sound like all you’ve done is swallowed a coaching manual on how to listen and you’re just spouting it back at them with really no depth, no true understanding, no real feeling.

Listen To What It Is They Are Feeling

So don’t parrot back what it is you think you heard them say. See if you can get to the heart of it. So how do you get to the heart of what someone is trying to say? And it is this, you listen for what it is that they are feeling.

They may not say what they are feeling. A lot of people are not so connected to their feelings that they are able to instantaneously express that.

They’ll often say a whole host of things around it and you have to be a little bit of a detective and work out what it is that you think they are feeling.

Are they perhaps really angry but under that anger, under the sort of loud voice and the angry words is a feeling of fear in them, for example. Are they maybe sounding quite flippant like they don’t really care, it’s not that big a deal but actually underneath the words that they are using it’s a very big deal and there is perhaps a lot of anxiety that they might be feeling.

So there’s two little examples to give you an idea, especially if you’ve got a partner who’s not great at expressing what they feel. When you can get a sense of that and reflect that back in a conversation with your partner, boy you will have them feeling heard!

Feeling Heard

Even if you get it wrong and a lot a lot of the time people don’t reflect back because they really worry that their partner is going to flip out because they tried to guess what was going on for them.

They tried to get to the heart of it. Maybe they tried to guess at a feeling that they might be feeling and they got it wrong.

And yes that’s true you might get a snappy reply from your partner saying no it’s not that. I’m angry, I’m actually frustrated, so they’ll correct you. They’ll take the word that you used, and perhaps you paraphrases that maybe where they were feeling angry about something and then they will correct it and use a different word.

Or it’s not that they were feeling hopeless, they were actually feeling really anxious. That might be really important to them that you got that distinction in what it was that they were trying to say but even when you get it wrong it’s a good thing.

Why? Because it gives your partner an opportunity to hear that you were trying to correct you to say well no it wasn’t this, it was this, and suddenly even though they weren’t connected to what they were feeling they maybe didn’t use a feeling word.

When you’ve presented them with what you thought it might be that they were feeling they are able to connect they know what they weren’t feeling and then could connect with what they were feeling so you actually help them connect up what it is they’re actually feeling so it’s win-win.

Even when you get it wrong. Now you may recall me saying last week around listening all kinds of listening that your successes may not come immediately when there has been conflict in a relationship that’s been going on for a while. Or conflict over the same thing, the same issue that’s repeated many times.

Your partner even, when you are reflecting back beautifully, when you are summarising or paraphrasing beautifully what they were trying to say to you, they won’t necessarily trust that you really got it.

So you might find that you have to do this a number of times in a number of conversations.

And this is where you want to get good at not getting triggered. By that don’t make it mean that this is a hopeless endeavour.

Stick With It

Hang in there. Make it mean talking about meanings again that they just need to hear it a few times before they can really trust that you really are listening at this new level.

So when your partner perhaps lets you know that what you summarised or paraphrased wasn’t correct, stay in that reflective listening Mode. Keep going, don’t give up. If they use a different word. If they say what you thought they were saying wasn’t right and they tell you what wasn’t right then reflect back their adjustment.

Just stay if you can without getting triggered yourself in that reflective listening mode. Now I don’t say this is easy. You will probably find on your first few goals of doing this you will get triggered. You will lose your temper at some point and give up and start defending or attacking.

And that’s fine. All learning happens on a spectrum. First we’re aware of what we’re doing wrong, then we get a little bit better at not doing it and then we forget and we do it again and then the next time we remember a little bit more quickly.

But we still get it wrong. But the next time we remember a little bit more quickly even than that and slowly that is how you learn a new habit around the way you listen and the way that you communicate.

It’s just like water dripping on a stone. Just keep going. Hang in there repetition repetition repetition and eventually you will get very very skilled at that skill of reflecting back of summarising what it is someone has been trying to say to you. And for them then it becomes not just that you acquire and that you didn’t interrupt but they have a real sense that you absolutely were listening.

Not only were you really listening that you really could take it in at a level that may even be better than their ability to express it. You’re listening has a clarity that they themselves weren’t able to access in their expressing if that makes sense.

So this week’s homework is to go out and practise the skill of becoming aware of your body language. Whether this is your body or your face.

And second piece of homework: practise the skill of summarising or paraphrasing what it is that somebody’s trying to say to you in a way where you get to the heart of it and let them know that you really got what they were trying to say.

That should keep you out of mischief for the next seven days and keep going keep practising because it’s in the practice that the magic happens.

So until we speak again, have an incredibly wonderful powerful week and have fun with the skill of listening and reflective listening.