Unwrap the Gift of Mindful Communication
The holiday season is officially upon us and many of us are gearing up to mingle at holiday parties and feast with loved ones around the dinner table. These activities often encourage us to reflect and connect more deeply with gratitude, purpose, and love. And yet, for many, they may also fuel loneliness and stress. Our proposition to you is that creating the space for mindful communication can make all the difference.
The way we communicate directly impacts whether we heighten connection or disconnection. Through listening, language, tone, and presence we can make others feel safe, understood, and affirmed, or we can amplify stress, negativity, fear, and isolation.
So, before you pull up a chair to the Thanksgiving table, we thought it might be helpful to share three mindful listening practices designed to unlock connection, mutual understanding, and empathy. Notice that we call these practices because they do, in fact, take practice to become more natural and authentic. But we’re willing to bet you’ll notice a positive impact in your relationships if you give them a try.
Active Listening: The Foundational Practice
How many times have you attempted to tell a story, and someone interrupts you? The interruption may be a friend who finishes a sentence for you because they think they know what you are going to say—even though they actually don’t. The interruption may be a colleague asking a question, disrupting your train of thought, and taking the conversation in a different direction than where you had hoped to go. Or the interruption may be a family member jumping in to agree and adding on to your story when you were just about to share a different viewpoint.
When we listen, we spend much of our time functioning on autopilot. In fact, researchers Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth at Harvard Medical School have identified that all humans spend approximately 50% of their waking hours with a wandering mind, and moreover, without any awareness that our minds are even wandering.
After analyzing 250,000 points of data, they concluded that a wandering, distracted mind is also an unhappy mind—because it activates an area of the brain closely associated with our human negativity bias, emotional reactivity, and self-referential thinking. When we’re “listening” to someone else speaking, our wandering minds may start multi-tasking, whether that’s judging what’s being said, thinking about what we want to say next, or even thinking about what we have to do after the conversation is over. Each of these habits takes us out of the present moment and out of connection with the other person.
The practice of active listening invites us to anchor our attention to the present moment and expand our attentional control by listening to a person, one word and one moment at a time. When we actively listen, we do so without judgment, without interruption, without leading the speaker, and with an open, curious heart. We patiently acknowledge that we don’t know what’s coming next, because, in fact, we don’t. We pause our tendency to formulate a response because when we are focused on responding rather than understanding, we often miss a critical word, tone, or implication from the other person.
When we give someone our undivided and engaged attention, it lets them know that we care about what they say, and we are interested in their insight, feelings, and thoughts. Active listening creates spaciousness for the speaker to take the conversation wherever they want, while our attention stays focused on doing one thing only: listening to the speaker in the present moment. You’ll find it can be challenging to pause the autopilot tendency to judge, categorize, and anticipate, yet when we do, the speaker can feel your genuine interest, curiosity, and suspended judgment, which builds connection and trust.
It helps to prepare to be attentive. This may mean silencing devices, turning off any other distractions, and creating an intention to be fully present and to focus your energy on the speaker.
You also may notice that even when you’re trying your hardest to actively listen, the mind still wanders. This tells you that you’re human! All human minds are hard-wired to wander and to judge.
Active listening strengthens the muscle of attention, focus, and discernment. Notice when you default to self-criticism or judgment if your mind wanders. Instead, see if you can embrace a light-hearted playfulness with yourself, and gently bring your attention back to the speaker and to the present moment. Neuroplasticity tells us that what we practice grows stronger, and active listening is essential for creating more openness, and fostering stronger, healthier relationships.
Mindful Looping: Building on the Foundation
The second listening practice to deploy on your journey towards heightening connection is mindful looping. Mindful looping begins with active listening. After we actively listen to another, we can heighten understanding by checking in with the speaker to ensure we've heard them correctly.
Once the speaker has completely finished sharing their point or story, the listener loops back, summarizing what they heard the speaker say, with an option at the end for the speaker to accept, adapt, or deny. It might sound something like this: “What a story about you and your boss. I want to make sure I heard you correctly. You mentioned that this disagreement with your boss has now created a rift in the relationship. You’re concerned the rift may be permanent and you hope it’s not. And you’re not sure how to initiate dialogue to repair the relationship. Did I get that right?”
By summarizing the key message and creating open space for the speaker to confirm or tweak what was heard, mindful looping aligns the speaker and listener throughout the conversation. This modality of listening lets the speaker know they are being heard and affirms they are understood. Mutual understanding heightens trust and psychological safety, which are both critical to connection and healthy relationships.
Empathetic Listening: Going A Little Deeper
Often when we communicate, we use words that describe the data or the ‘back and forth’ of a situation, without expressly describing the emotions or feelings that exist underneath the back and forth. Empathetic listening is a practice that allows us to connect with the speaker at the level of feeling in addition to the words that they are saying.
Empathy is feeling as and with another being, and research shows that it fuels connection. In order to recognize the emotion that another is feeling, I need to know that feeling in myself. For a quick and playful peek at empathy, check out this animated video, narrated by Brene Brown.
Empathetic listening requires that we dial up our own self-awareness, and in turn, our awareness of others in order to recognize the feelings the speaker may be feeling as they converse with us.
Here’s an example of how empathetic listening works: “Thanks for sharing that story about you and your boss. I heard you say that this latest disagreement with your boss has created a rift in the relationship, and I heard you feel a sense of disappointment, fear, and even despair about this. I also heard you feel a fair amount of stress, uncertainty, and perhaps frustration about how to repair things. Would you say those feelings are accurate for you? I don’t want to make assumptions on your behalf.”
As humans, we are emotional creatures. Listening at the level of feeling rather than at the level of data is essential to heightening empathy, awareness, and connection with others. Feeling someone's anger or joy with them is more powerful than simply analyzing or intellectualizing their emotions, which distances us from feeling and takes us out of connection with others.
Empathetic listening requires vulnerability. It is the one method of listening that instantly builds connection. It lets people know that they are not in it alone and that there is a sense of common humanity and healing that happens when we experience empathy.
Ultimately, we are creatures who thrive through intimate and emotional connection. These three mindfulness-based listening practices can help you deepen your understanding of the people you are closest with, as well as those who are mere acquaintances. Feeling heard, understood, and supported when sharing or being vulnerable is the gift that keeps on giving.
Want to learn even more practices that heighten well-being, effectiveness, resilience, and connection? Check out our programming for individuals and organizations at Inseus. We’d love to partner with you!
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Warmly,
Ashley