It Isn't Hard to Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill.

Susan was deeply disappointed at the lack of emotional closeness she felt in her marriage.  She began to lash out at her husband.  He, of course, reacted with this own defensive anger.  Over time their anger grew, threats were exchanged, and eventually divorce became part of their confrontations.  Finally, Susan's husband moved out and she filed for divorce.

The divorce proceedings were bitter.  They fought all the way through it.  When they met to sign the final papers, they stopped to look at each other and Susan saw in his eyes the very feelings she was experiencing--a feeling of longing and yet of resignation.  She thought, I don't want to divorce him, and I don't think he wants to divorce me.

She voiced her thoughts to her husband, and for a moment it appeared he might also soften and admit he, too, still cared.  But then he said in a dull monotone, "We've come this far.  I guess we should finish it."  Susan left the courtroom realizing she had never really wanted a divorce.  She just wanted her husband to listen.

Don't allow anger to lead you anywhere...but especially down a road you truly don't want to travel.

Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.

Proverbs 17:14



You Can Win More Friends With Your Ears Than With Your Mouth

Dale Carnegie, author of How To Win Friends and Influence People, is considered one of the greatest "friend winners" of the century.  He taught, "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by tring to get other people interested in you."

To illustrate his point, Carnegie would tell how dogs have learned the fine art of making friends better than most people.  When you get within ten feet of a friendly dog, he will begin to wag his tail, a visible sign that he welcomes and enjoys your presence.  If you take time to pet the dog, he will become excited , lick you, and jump all over you to show how much he appreciates you.  The dog became man's best friend by being genuinely interested in people!

One of the foremost ways, of course, in which we show our interest in others is to listen to them--to ask questions, intently listen to their answers, and to ask further questions based upon what they say.  The person who feels "heard" is likely to seek out his friendly listener again and again, and to count that person as a great friend.

Need a friend?  Start listening with your heart.

Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.

James 1:19

Can You Hear Me Now?

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Robert McCloskey

During my first year of teaching school, I discovered that there were many things I did not learn in college.  For instance, there was never a class on dealing with parent-teacher conferences, or a class on dealing with parents who, even after four years of school, had a hard time leaving their children at the door every morning.  No one ever taught me how to get around the gossip-mill called the teacher's lounge and no one ever taught me that children, in most cases, have never been taught how to listen. 

Now, it's been a couple of years since I was in the classroom, but I'm bringing this up now because everywhere I look, it seems that people have not learned this skill.  If you look at the definition of listening, it says, "to make an effort to hear."  OK, I think I see the problem right away...to make an effort.  Listening requires effort, work.  It's not a passive activity. 

When I was a little girl, a LONG time ago, I had an aunt who was very hard of hearing.  She had two hearing aides which, in those days, were very big things that she plugged into her ears.  They squeaked and made funny noises and I always wondered how she could hear with them.  Even with these, we had to talk very loudly to be sure that she heard us.  She had to make an effort to hear, and even then she missed a lot of what was said to her.  It took a great deal of effort on her part and on the part of the speaker to be sure that the conversation was understood. 

I think listening requires more than just two good ears or even two good hearing aides.  With today's technology the hearing aides are much smaller and much more effective, but we're still not hearing each other as we speak.  Listening requires more than just hearing the words that are spoken.  According to Dr. Larry Nadig, there are three basic listening modes:  

1. Competitive or Combative Listening happens when we are more interested in promoting our own point of view than in understanding or exploring someone else’s view. We either listen for openings to take the floor, or for flaws or weak points we can attack. As we pretend to pay attention we are impatiently waiting for an opening, or internally formulating our rebuttal and planning our devastating comeback that will destroy their argument and make us the victor.
2. In Passive or Attentive Listening we are genuinely interested in hearing and understanding the other person’s point of view. We are attentive and passively listen. We assume that we heard and understand correctly, but stay passive and do not verify it.
3. Active or Reflective Listening is the single most useful and important listening skill. In active listening we are also genuinely interested in understanding what the other person is thinking, feeling, wanting or what the message means, and we are active in checking out our understanding before we respond with our own new message. We restate or paraphrase our understanding of their message and reflect it back to the sender for verification. This verification or feedback process is what distinguishes active listening and makes it effective.

As you can see, there are vast differences in the way we listen. In the first mode, we're listening only to prove our case or battle for our point of view.  We're listening to 'catch' them and prove them wrong.  In the second mode, which is more productive, we really want to hear what they have to say and to understand it.  The problem with this mode is that it's still passive and will probably hold misunderstandings.  The third mode is the one that few people really understand.  Like the second mode, we're genuinely interested in what the person is trying to convey to us, but we take action on their message.  We reflect back to them what we believe their message to be and then they verify or correct us.  The conversation is an action between two people who genuinely want to understand the meaning of the words being spoken.

I have a very dear friend.  She and I can visit with each other and understand each other with very little work.  We've known each other a long time and we've worked over the years to understand the meanings of our words when we communicate.  It wasn't always easy.  It took a lot of years, but it's much easier for us now to understand each other.  On the other hand, with all of my new friends I have to work much harder to be certain that I understand the meaning of their words and they me.  Here's an example:

I have a new friend who is a widow.  She has asked me on several occasions what I do, as a single, middle-aged woman, to fill all my time.  She has an interest in starting a single women's club.  I think her vision is to create a large group to come together on an in-frequent basis with small groups forming with specific interests, such as needlework, singing, theater, eating out, etc.  I think there is a lot of merit in this idea and through my work we'll probably start a group in the fall.  When I was sharing this idea with another friend this week, her immediate understanding of what I said was "single's club," complete with match-ups and dates.  Now I said nothing about men in this conversation but through her "filter," her life experiences, that's what she heard.  We had to work a little harder to understand the meaning behind the words we were sharing.  We had to make an effort  to hear correctly.

As adults, we set examples for the children in our lives for everything that we do.  When we listen to them as we're watching a television show or texting on our phones, we're not really attentively listening to them and they learn that this is the proper way to listen to others.  Listen is a verb.  It requires action, it requires work, it requires time.  I worry sometimes that in our age of Facebook and cell phones that we're losing the depth of our listening.  We're only hearing the words, and not the meanings.  I'm not saying that I think these things are bad.  I certainly use them and appreciate them every day, but I believe they just mean that we have to work a little harder, put forth a little more effort, to listen to each other.  These tools are good beginnings, but we must continue the work of listening past these channels to really hear and thus build our relationships, whether they be with our friends, our family, our co-workers, or our children.

Take some time today to really listen to the people around you.  Really being listened to and heard is a wonderful gift to give and all it takes is a little effort.

"To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation.”

Chinese Proverb

The Seven Powers for Self Control

Lesson 3:  The Power of Attention

What you focus on you get more of.

This is a hard concept to understand well.  After all, we are taught in this society, that if we focus and work hard for something, we can make it happen.  Our understanding of this is simply that if we want something we just work for it and if we work hard enough, it will happen.   The part that very few seem to understand is that it also works in reverse.  When we focus on bad stuff, we get more bad stuff.  It’s as simple as that.

Whether you think you can or can't, either way you are right.

Henry Ford

We all know people who tend to focus on the bad stuff; their glass is always half empty.  I met a woman recently who was this way.  When I remarked at how glad I was that the fog had burned off and the sun had come out, she responded that there was no way the day would be good when it had gotten off to that kind of nasty start.  When I answered her in return that it had to get better from there, her retort was that there was just no way it possibly could be.  I tried one more time, “I hope that you have only good things from here on out today.”  Her response, “Well, there’s just no way; I don’t think that will happen.”  I found myself anxiously trying to move away from her.  I was very happy, after driving in extremely dense fog for four hours, to see the sun and know that I was safe in my destination.  I’m not sure that this woman would ever feel safe.  Maybe she had some devastating news to start her day, I don’t know, but I do know just being with her made me feel bad and she didn’t want it to change.

What a miserable way to live your life!  Remember the Charlie Brown character, Pigpen?  He was always surrounded with a cloud of dirt.  So is this woman, but her ‘dirt’ is of her own making.  She is choosing to focus on the negative things in her life.  And what you focus on you get more of.  Like attracts like, so if you choose to focus all day on the fact that you woke up late so everything will be wrong today, it will.  It’s just as easy to switch your focus to include, “Well, it’s got to be better from here on out.”  It’s a fifty/fifty chance either way, but if you predetermine what will happen by your attitude, there is NO chance of a good day. 

 This is especially true when you are working with children.  I have seen time after time when a teacher or parent is focusing on what they don’t want a child to do, they get exactly that.  Why?  Because they’ve already laid the groundwork for that outcome.  There was a little boy, preschool age, several years ago who loved coming to school.  This was his first educational experience and he was excited about it.  Now, sitting still and listening were not habits he had learned, at all, yet, so his teacher, who had limited experience in a setting such as this, was not comfortable with his behaviors and how to ‘control’ him.  Her form of ‘positive discipline’ was to seat him beside her at all times.  If she moved around the room, she held his wrist and made him follow her.  At the end of the class time, she would meet the parents, sometimes waiting in the street for them, to share the issues of the day.  And there always were issues.  It got so bad, that the parent would greet the child with, “Well, what did you screw up today?”  It’s no wonder this little guy got to the point that he hated school.  He was never allowed to be successful.  They were all set for him to do wrong and he did.  Who wouldn’t under those circumstances?  What they focused on, they got more of.  

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

Napoleon Hill

No doubt this young man needed to learn how to be a good listener and how to remain focused in his new environment, but my great fear is that the pattern for his education was set in this first experience and that the rest of his educational life will be colored by the beginning.  I know that his next two years were not much better so the chances of him finding school enjoyable and being successful are probably pretty slim.  You know how teachers love to ‘share’ in the faculty lounge and the word has gotten around that this young man is a problem…therefore, he probably will be.

Why is it that we human beings seem to prefer to focus on the bad things rather than the good ones?  I believe that we have been programmed by very well-meaning people who were trying to protect themselves and us.  The idea that if you don’t set your sights too high then you won’t be hurt, seems to pervade our society, when just the opposite is just as true.  We may well face heartbreaks and failures in anything that we try to do, especially if it is new to us, and if we let those failures stop us from trying again, then we have chosen to limit our future.  It didn’t just happen to us, it happened because of us.  What do you think the chances are for this young man to believe in himself; to find any self-worth there?  While his parents love him immensely, they, as well as the educators, have told him repeatedly that he really isn’t capable of being successful.  He is destined to “screw up.”

I would hope that this young man will happen along someone in his life who will break the pattern and tell this young man just how lovable and capable he really is.  I hope that they look beyond the behaviors that, by now, I’m sure are very much habit, and see the young man who has a remarkable intelligence and sense of humor.  His creativity knows no bounds and when he is challenged, he is more than capable of following the rules and enjoying learning.  I know because I had the young man in summer camp-an educational, creative setting for the summer.  I found him to be a challenge to my teaching skills, merely to stay ahead of him.  He pushed me to my limits in keeping him challenged and occupied.   The difference was, I expected him to do well…and he did.  I greeted his parents with the good things he had done throughout the day.  Unfortunately, this experience only lasted the summer and then he went back to school where the teacher were “ready for him.”

 It’s just as easy to find good things.  Sometimes, for a young man with the history that this one has, you have to look hard at first, but there are positives and the more you focus on the positives, the more you will find.  The more success he had, the more success came.  Parents, child, and teacher focused on the good stuff, not the bad.  It was a choice we all made.  It’s a choice you can make. 



I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison

Don't Push the River



Many years ago, I purchased a small stone plaque for my husband.  He is a man who is driven, who believes his work is never good enough and that he is never good enough.  For that reason, he is always trying to do even more, even better.  It is no surprise, then, that he burns out in a very short time and then feels the need to move on to the next 'best thing.' 

This little plaque literally fell into my hands as I was shopping one day.  When I turned it to read I was so taken by the words, "Don't push the river.  It flows all by itself."  I immediately thought of my spouse and his efforts were exactly that.  He was trying to  "push the river."  What a miserable way to live as it is an impossible task.  It sat on his desk for many years.  After we divorced I had forgotten about it until recently when something, I'm not even sure what, brought it back into my memory banks.

I, too, have been guilty at times of trying to 'push the river.'  I think that most days I understand that it is pointless to attempt to do so, but there are those days when I'm tired or I'm overwhelmed that I begin to feel like I'm carrying the whole world on my shoulders.  I am thankful that when that happens now I recognize the 'symptoms' and am immediately reminded of the cure.  I don't have to carry this burden.   I don't have to push the river.  It will flow very well without any help from me. 

I recently had a conversation with a dear one regarding her comment, "Let go and let God."  My question was, "How do you know that you've done what you're supposed to do and when to 'let go?'  I never really got an answer to that question from her, but I did find an answer elsewhere.  It's ALL about letting go.  It's about listening to that voice inside of you, but more than that you have to take action on what that voice tells you.  It's not enough just to listen.  We all hear it, but we don't all do something about it. 

If we will listen to the voice (I believe that's God's channel) and then do what He has told us to do, we don't have to wonder, we don't have to worry.  It doesn't even have to make sense to us.  We just have to know and understand that it is right, in this moment, because it is.  We may not ever know the why and that's all right.  Each act that we undertake produces an effect of some kind.  It's our task in life to learn from what we've done, good and bad, but we can only do that if we have taken action.  Nothing is learned by sitting and thinking about it, wishing for a 'miracle' to happen.  Certainly, God performs miracles and sometimes He uses us to do it.  That's a miracle right there!

So this morning I urge you to catch yourself as you try to push the river.  It really will lighten your load if you'll just let it flow....all by itself.                        Blessings to you!

For additional thoughts on listening I encourage you to check out this post (http://aflourishinglife.com/2011/06/shhhhh-are-you-listening/) from a Flourishing Life.

Communication

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of words that are spoken but not so many words that are understood?  We human beings spend a lot of time using our mouths, but not so much our ears.  And yet, God gave us ONE mouth and TWO ears.  Doesn't that mean we should do twice as much listening as talking?  I must admit that I have been working on this concept for quite a while now.  Thus the reminder on my desk:  Be still and know that I am God.

Even when we think we've listened, we find out we didn't listen well.  Just ask any two people the contents of a recent conversation and you may be surprised to find that you get two very different answers.  While neither party intended to misunderstand, it happened!  As a teacher of the English language to non-English speakers, I can attest to the fact that this language we speak is extremely difficult to understand. First, words have more than one meaning, so you must listen to the context in which the word is spoken to understand it's particular meaning.  Second, the non-verbal messages given at the time the word was spoken may provide an entirely different meaning to the word than the speaker intended or was even aware he was giving. 

Even when the two (or more) people that are included in the conversation speak the same language, we find that the words that are used may have very different meanings to each of the listeners.  Based on our own life lessons, or paradigms as Stephen R. Covey calls them, we "hear" our own interpretation of the words through the events of our lives.  We must understand this dilemma as we attempt to communicate with those around us.  Many times I have had a conversation in which I was certain I was clear in what I was conveying only to learn later that, while the listener heard the words, they did not hear my message, my meaning.

Which brings me to this on-line  'thing' we all do.  Our young people (and a lot of older people) utilize this method of communication almost exclusively and have created a 'shorthand' all their own for it.  I understand their need to be different than we older folks, but I wonder just how effective this type of communication really is?  Can we really 'hear' and understand the meaning of the words when this is the primary method of communication?  I know, from personal experience, just how much MIS-communication can take place because the reader interpreted my writing into her own paradigm. 

Please don't misunderstand me...I am not saying that communicating on-line is a bad thing.  What I am saying is that ANY time we try to communicate, we must be vigilant in making certain that our true meaning has been heard.  We, as listeners, must ask questions to be clear so that our communication is effective and two-way.  This is true no matter what type of communication we use.  Far too many misunderstandings have taken place simply because we "heard" something that was never said. 

I am in the process, with a couple of friends (one friend is also a cousin), of creating a new business opportunity that will begin with a blog and, hopefully, grow from there.  We are all spread across the country as we attempt to do this so all communication is on-line at this point.  I am reminded daily of the necessity of always "seeking first to understand, then be understood" (thank you Dr. Covey!).  Maybe this is a practice we should all begin to use.  What would happen to our world if this was the mantra we all shared? 

Do you believe in miracles?