Hello beautiful Souls,
Welcome to Somatic Balance.108 , I am Caroline Hey, your mindfulness practitioner. In this Blog Post, I am giving you a short insight to the difference of HEARING vs. LISTENING.
It seem so minor. Simply the spelling, you may think. Yet it is a life-changing difference. Shifting from hearing to listening can change everything. Your work balance, your partnership, your relationship with family, kids, and friends... everything.
How?
It's about being seen and being heard, fully, and with presence.
A crucial difference when it comes to how we behave, reply or respond in the world we are living in.
As it does, everything start in your childhood. Have you been heard and seen and been listened to by your parents when you were little. As little as 6 months old, up to when you were about 4-5 years old. Those are the significant years of brain response development and behavior pattern adjustments. Our brain learns, and programs us on "How to survive".
Did your parents give you their full presence, and were listening to what you had to say, or did they just had you rambling and waffling along while they were going upon their task?
Fast forward, as an adult we behave as we been taught. If we have not been held space for, we won't hold space for others.
We are not fully present with whomever we are engaging in conversation. Therefore, everything we experience is based on perception, not on knowledge. We only hear when we choose to hear, everything else is just noise.
Communication and miscommunication.
Work, friends, family, partner, children...
How often did you find yourself frustrated in a conversation, and literally saying out loud to your opponent,
"You are not listening to what I am saying!"
Both of you get heated up, one voice talks over the other, and you are not listening, not even hearing each other anymore. Your trapped in the reply/ defense, fight - flight - freeze operation system of your primal survival brain.
The only thing you hear is white noise, and neither of you gets their point across.
We have never learn to listen.
We hear sounds, we hear noise... we can't choose to hear or not. We can't hold onto a sound for longer than it persists.
Listening is a pro-active exercise.
To listen is to hold space.
If you have been growing up in a hearing environment over a listening environment, eventually, throughout growing up, you will have lost your true voice.
You lost the true voice of your longing, your deepest inner value. You have conditioned yourself to simply reply, not to pro-actively respond... and for that matter inviting potential conflict, and room to explore new boundaries.
To reply is to defend yourself.
[An automated reaction to the noise we are exposed to. A primal brain mechanism to protect us from danger we are encountering.]
To respond is to create room for growth.
[Proactively evaluating and digesting the input exposed to, - noise, voice, volume, information, conversation - processing with the knowledge and wisdom we have gained from life thus far, and responding - or choosing not to respond.]
What is the level of urgency around this information I am exposed to? Does it need an immediate responds, or can I sit with this for a while and let it marinade?
...next Blog...
How to respond with presence and a higher chance of being listened to.