Month: August 2023

Consolidating a Career:  Establishing a Career Identity

Angela Duckworth, in her book, Grit: Why passion and perseverance are the secrets to success, describes George E. Vaillant, Professor of Psychology (Harvard Medical School), as an exemplar of “grit”.  George was Director of Harvard’s Study of Adult Development for more than 30 years and persisted in data collection and interpretation over those years – mining the “gold” within the longitudinal study undertaken over 75 years.  He was particularly enamoured by the richness of such a prospective study which enabled data collection and interpretation as both the circumstances and characteristics of study participants changed over time – information being captured at different age points in their life (such as thirty, fifty, sixty and eighty).

George readily acknowledges that not only did the study participants change over time, but the interpretive framework, including his own evolving understanding, changed as well.  He was very conscious of the biological mindset of the early investigators on the research project and his own latter bias towards psychological frameworks.  His third book about the study, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study, illustrates very clearly his personal evolution as well as that of the people undertaking the study – he often acknowledges how his assumptions about an individual’s potential proved to be wrong (based on his prior erroneous reasoning).  

Consolidating a career – an evolutionary concept

George was strongly influenced by the adult development framework of Erik Erikson presented in his book, Childhood and Society.  In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Erik identified 8 stages of psychological development, including Stage 5 – Identity Versus Confusion.  George attempted to fit the data on the psychological development of his study participants to this stage as described by Erik Erikson.  However, George found that while study participants were able to establish a personal identity, they often had not developed a “career identity”.  He decided to divide Erik’s “Identity versus Confusion stage” into two separate stages – “Identity” (versus “Identity Diffusion”) and “Career Consolidation” (versus “Role Diffusion”).  Identity in George’s terms means “to separate from social, economic, and ecological dependence upon one’s parents”.  Career consolidation, on the other hand, leads to “Career Identity” (a state he contrasts with experiencing role diffusion – an inability to commit to a “work” role that provides both personal enjoyment and social contribution).

Career Identity

The outcome of George’s “Career Consolidation” stage is “Career Identity”.   He maintains that this stage of adult development involves four key tasks – commitment, compensation, contentment, and competence.  George suggests that if all four are not present, then what is often involved is a job, not a career.  The tasks of commitment and contentment reflect the perseverance and passion that I discussed as core elements of “grit”.  Compensation often reflects competence but George points out that it can be a misleading concept where women’s compensation is involved (because of a lack of equal pay) and also for househusbands who he considered to have a “consolidated career” if commitment, contentment and competence are present (despite the lack of adequate compensation).  Effectively, “compensation” is the more flexible element of his Carrer Identity stage.

George also argues that Career Identity involves a basic paradox in that commitment to a career that is sufficiently contributory beyond the self to warrant compensation, is also a “selfish” pursuit in that it requires the self-absorption necessary to develop the requisite competence. He suggests that society is tolerant of both men and women as they attempt to develop the “sense of competence” that underpins Career Identity.

Reflection

When I look at George’s concept of Career Identify, I reflect on my own work life as an academic.  I can see that my academic career spanning more than thirty years had each of the four elements present – commitment, contentment, compensation and competence (the latter reinforced by the award of Emeritus Professor on retirement).  While many elements of this career and associated identification were personally rewarding, some aspects were not.  I enjoyed teaching students, examining Masters and Doctoral Theses and the researching/learning that such a career entailed; however, I did not appreciate the politics of academia that diverted my energy and attention away from my core role(s).

As I grow in mindfulness, through reflection and other mindfulness practices, I have come to value my career and its highlights, to be grateful for the opportunities that it provided (including overseas travel) and for the mentors and supporters (including my parents) who made my progression possible.  Without their guidance and belief in my capacity, I would not have been able to achieve this aspect of the Identity Stage of adult development.

One of my mentors, Professor David Limerick, died recently after leading an exemplary life encompassing Career Consolidation, robust self-esteem, love of family, generosity towards others and an enduring love of nature and music.  I can readily feel the imprint of his life on my own mindset and personal development, my love of nature and music, and my perspective on organisation change and development. To this day, I appreciate the time and effort he took to enable us to co-author an award-winning article – Transformation Change: Towards an Action Learning Organization (1995 Award for Excellence, The Learning Organization Journal).

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Image by Alexa from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Changing How We Deal with Emotions

Hilary Jacobs Kendel, psychotherapist, author and activist, contends that we learn many things in school that we never use but do not learn about emotions that affect every aspect of our daily lives.  She strongly advocates for education about emotions though her videos, blog posts, presentations, interviews, newspaper articles and clinical practice.  Hilary is the author of  It’s Not Always About Depression:  Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions and Rediscover Your Authentic Self.

The Change Triangle®

Hilary educates people about emotions and how to change the way we deal with them through what she calls the Change Triangle®.  This is a visual representation in the form of an inverted triangle of the different types of emotions we all experience.  At the base are what Hilary calls the core emotions that are calls to action designed to help us negotiate our environment.  To the right at the top are inhibiting emotions which impede us experiencing core emotions in their true form.  These, in turn, often lead us to adopt defenses which we employ to avoid being aware of, or experiencing, our feelings.  

Hilary acknowledges that her own understanding of emotions was developed through attending a presentation by Dr. Diana Fosha, Director and Founder of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)™ which is a treatment model adopted by Hilary that was developed to help adults experiencing difficulties as a result of childhood attachment trauma and abuse.  This transformational model focuses on healing and flourishing despite the experience of emotional suffering and draws heavily on neuroscience, brain plasticity and research on mother-infant development.  Diana advocates strongly for a healing approach (transformation) instead of the traditional psychotherapy approach of a focus on pathology.  In this respect, she addresses the question What Happened to You?, not What’s Wrong With You? – a healing approach also adopted in the book by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry.  Diana wrote the Forward for Hilary’s book.

Core Emotions

Core emotions have been identified as early as Charles Darwin and their impact on the brain is now able to be identified through brain imaging.  Hilary identifies the core emotions as fear, joy, anger, excitement, sadness, sexual excitement and disgust. These emotions are beyond conscious control as they are triggered by our everyday experience and serve as a survival mechanism, activating our flight or fight response, our approach or avoidance stance.  Where real danger exists, this can be life-saving.  Fear, for example, can make us aware of a real, impending danger, e.g., a house fire.  However, through trauma and adverse childhood experiences, the core emotions can be triggered by seemingly harmless activities or events, such as conscious breathing, a smell or a sound.  The core emotions “ready our body for action” as they appear with a lot of biological energy – ready for activation. 

Inhibiting Emotions

Hilary identifies three emotions that she describes as “inhibiting emotions” – anxiety, shame and guilt.  These emotions often arise from the “shoulds” “and “should-not” messaging that we are all exposed to, especially in our childhood.  Deborah Feldman illustrates this very well in her book, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.  She talks of the shame she felt in reading books written in English rather than Yiddish (because of the constant paternal messaging) and the guilt she experienced eating cakes when she felt hungry from the very restrictive traditional diet.  Hilary explains that “shame” is designed to inhibit out impulses and ensure conformity to the norms of our reference group – e.g., family, community or religion.  She differentiates healthy shame from toxic shame – the former brings us safety through inclusion, protection and support.  The latter generates a toxic environment in that it is built on negative self-talk that reinforces negative beliefs about oneself generated by bullying (online or offline), abuse, neglect or alcoholic parents.  Hilary explains that the road to healing is employing the Change Triangle® to unearth the core emotions that lie underneath the shame.   She provides a roadmap through her blog post, 5 Ways to Work the Change Triangle as a Beginner, and offers multiple examples of this transformation process in operation within her book, It’s Not Always About Depression.

Defenses

Hilary explains that defenses are a form of emotional protection in that they are multiple ways “we all avoid painful, uncomfortable or conflicting emotions”.  She identifies the more common ways to avoid emotions in one of her blog posts, including sarcasm, superior conceit, constant apologizing, procrastination, eating disorders and addiction.  She describes some of the more surface level defenses as moving away, rolling your eyes or judging others.  Defenses can be healthy and serve our needs in particular situations such as in a professional environment.  However, unhealthy defenses prevent us from experiencing either inhibiting or core emotions and effectively lead to disconnection from our authentic self.  We hide away from the pain of our deepest feelings by finding a way to deflect them.

In a New York Times Article, It’s Not Always Depression, Sometimes its Shame, Hilary describes her AEDP therapeutic work with a client named Brain.  He had presented with what appeared to be chronic depression and had failed to respond to multiple forms of therapy and medication.  He appeared to be in a comatose state – unable to connect, express his feelings or communicate effectively.  His defenses, in the form of withdrawal enabled him to protect himself form the pain of “emotional aloneness” and toxic shame – induced by a lack of emotional bonding from his parents. His father was preoccupied with earning a living and his mother drank to excess – resulting in “emotional neglect” for Brian.

Hilary employed a range of techniques over the four years of her therapeutic intervention, including throwing cushions to Brian just to engage him in some way.  In his second year of treatment,  he learned to name his emotions, validate them and “safely connect to the emotion he felt in his body”.  On the conclusion of his therapy Brian “felt alive again”,  developed more friends, undertook meaningful work and learned to assert his needs.  In the process, he dissipated the toxic shame he had been experiencing.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness we gain increased self-awareness and are better able to identify our triggers, our habituated defenses, the inhibiting emotions and our underlying core emotions (often, there is more than one at play).  We can also learn to access our emotions through our bodily sensations – a major focus of Hilary’s approach.

In her video presentation of the Change Triangle® to a group, Hilary begins with a meditation – participants are asked to close their eyes, become grounded, get in touch with their breath, and undertake a body scan.  The first part of the scan focuses in on a place in the body where we can feel calm and warmth.  The second part of the scan involves identifying a place of tension or pain in the body.  This is followed by a process of breathing into that place and imagining that we are able to move it aside even for a little bit to locate the emotion that is under there, “pushing up for experiencing and validation”.

As Bessel van der Kolk maintains, The Body Keeps the Score.  In this book, he explains the role of the brain and body in the transformation of trauma.  As Hilary points out, through her Change Triangle®, healing and transformation ultimately lead us to our Authentic Self which enables us to achieve clarity, calm, courage, creativity, compassion and connectedness.

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Image by Ronald Plett from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Grit: Realizing our Potential

Angela Duckworth describes “grit” as the “combination of passion and perseverance”.  According to Angela, high performers are separated from under-performers (as measured against natural talent) because they not only have determination but a direction inspired by a passion.  In her book, Grit: Why passion and persistence are the secrets to success, she provides substantial research and multiple examples that underpin her perspective on “the psychology of achievement”.  She argues exhaustively that talent is not the determinant of success – despite “the global war for talent”.

Talent is misleading

There are many people in numerous areas of endeavour who have what we call “natural talent” but who fail to realise their potential.  Angela argues that we often resort to the word “talent” as a way to explain high performance or what we see as exceptional achievement beyond what is perceived as the norm.  As I read this, I remembered an incident when I played social tennis recently  – I had produced a winning running, cross-court forehand shot which elicited the unexpected comment from my tennis partner, “That’s just natural talent”.  Little did he realise that I had been playing tennis for more than 65 years and that my brothers and I used to spend hours each week doing tennis drills, including practising endless cross-court shots.

Angela suggests that high performance or achievement is often described as “magical” because it serves to protect a person’s self-esteem and offers an excuse for not competing or attempting to match the seemingly unattainable level achieved by others.  She contends that more often than not, exceptional performance or achievement is the result of grit – the combination of consistent hard work and persistence in the face of setbacks.  She maintains that labelling high performance as “natural talent” can mislead us into not making an effort.  She gives the example from her own teaching career where she was mislead into thinking that effort had to go into the seemingly talented at the expense of the “strugglers”.   This absolved her and the strugglers from making the extra effort required to bring them up to speed.

Perseverance: the hard work behind exceptional performance or achievement

Angela gives many examples of people lacking natural talent who nonetheless are exceptional performers/achievers.  For example, she writes about John Irving, author of 12 exceptional books (half of which have been turned into movies) and his struggle with dyslexia.  In his school days, John was described as “lazy and stupid”.  He overcame his disability by reading with his finger slowly which resulted in his ability to pay attention to an exceptional degree and to realise that repeating something over and over enabled him to understand that through such repletion “something that was never natural becomes almost second nature”.  John indicated that his greatest ability as a writer is ”reworking” – having the willingness and stamina to do multiple redrafts of his novels.

Angela also highlighted the “work ethic” of Will Smith who claimed that he was “not to be outworked” – he would go so far as “to die on the treadmill”.  He claimed that he lacked the smarts, talent and sexual appeal of other actors, but understood that effort, not talent, determines results.  As Angela points out, there are many people who have a precocious level of talent who under-perform because they are not prepared “to put the work in” – it all comes too easy for them so they quickly plateau.

People often drop out before they realise their potential, whether they are attempting to achieve elite performance or just using their exercise bike, running track, weights or tennis practice.  The defining personal quality for excellence is “stick-to-itness” which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the ability or capacity to see a course of action through to its completion” – which translates into “dogged perseverance”.  According to Angela’s research on excellent performance and achievement, “the highly accomplished were paragons of persistence”.   She maintains that we can overlook the persistent, consistent hard work involved because we “see the performance but not the training”.

There is a certain mundanity about the hard work involved – repetition of seemingly boring tasks done daily over an extended period.  Angela cites Dan Chambliss who studied Olympic Swimmers and wrote a report titled, The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.  Dan concludes, after three years of research, “Excellence is achieved by the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, consistently and carefully.”  The actions are done with care to ensure they are “correct” but are repeated ad nauseum to enable them to become “habituated” and combined in performance to achieve excellence.  He stated that “superb performance is really a confluence of small skills or activities”.  

Passion: the driver of perseverance

Angela describes high performers and achievers in her research as people “chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance”.  Passion drives persistence.  A singular focus maintained over time requires an underlying passion.  I used to tell my PhD students not to start a thesis unless they are passionate about the topic – without the passion they will inevitably “run out of steam”.   As Dan points out in his report, ‘a dissertation is a mundane piece of work” and the real test is whether you can complete it to the point of submission (which explains why some doctoral attrition rates [dropping out] reach 50% or higher).

Angela cites the work of Francis Galton who undertook a longitudinal study of high achievement in fields such as law, science athletics and the arts.  He concluded that exceptional zeal and “the capacity for hard work” enabled the “outliers” to “demonstrate exceptional ability”.  Angela also notes that Charles Darwin, Francis’ cousin, agreed that zeal and hard work are “the eminently important difference” in high achievement, not intellect.  Darwin claimed that he was not so remarkably clever but his “industry” (application to observation and understanding) were exceptional.  He indicated that what drove this persistence and perseverance was a “love of natural science” that has been “steady and ardent”.   As Angela points out, it’s not just a love of, or passion for, an area of endeavour but the ability “to stay in love” with it that counts in the final analysis.

Angela describes the work of George Vaillant who persisted with following the Harvard Medical School’s Study of Adult Development (which was undertaken over 75 years).  George who was the director of the study for more than 30 years published key insights from the study in three books, the latter of which was Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study.  He claimed that he was “not naturally persistent” but undertook the Harvard study on a consistent and persistent basis. He maintained that he was “totally fascinated by the Study” and stated that “there is nothing more interesting than watching people grow”.   His passion drove his perseverance.

Effort – the determinant of skill level and achievement

Angela contends that talent can determine how quickly skill is improved if you put in the effort.  However, effort builds skill and also enables us to make that skill productive.  As skill develops through hard work, we are better able and more willing to use our acquired skills.  Angela illustrates this theory of skill development and achievement through effort, with the work of Master potter Warren MacKenzie (considered an American Treasure).  Warren initially attempted with his wife Alix (Alixandra Kolesky) to try different arts such as jewellery and textile design and decided to focus on pottery.  He thought that excelling at one thing would be much more satisfying than being amateurish at many things.  So together he and his wife concentrated on ceramic work “because that was where we felt our true interest lay”. 

Warren invested effort in making about fifty pots a day and indicated that the first ten thousand pots were difficult.  Each day his skill grew and his achievement in terms of what he considered good pots grew.  Looking back on his early pots he viewed them in hindsight as not very good, lacking the richness that he was looking for.  Being a potter for most of his adult life (he died at age 94) he was able to apply his expertise and insight to teach ceramic arts at the University of Minnesota over a period of 37 years. 

Warren showed that his hard work and application – making pots every day and trying to improve his art – led to skill mastery and enabled him to apply his skill to not only excel in his chosen art form but also to become an esteemed Professor and teacher.

Reflection

Angela cites William James, American psychologist and philosopher, who maintained that people very often failed to actualize their potential – “we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources”.  The gap in actualization, according to Angela, often comes down to a lack of willingness to persevere with the hard work that is required to turn passion and interest into skill, mastery and application.  She encourages everyone to put the work in to pursue their passion – an exhortation echoed by Naomi Simpson in her book, Live What You Love: When Passion and Purpose Change Your life.

I found by applying myself to writing this blog (over 700 posts) that writing has become easier – I can more readily focus on a topic, integrate material from multiple sources (podcasts, novels, videos, articles, blogs) and create an original post.  The act of writing has become easier as I have refined my writing process through perseverance (despite many setbacks and distractions) and pursued my passion to grow mindfulness.  I continue to learn about being mindful in everyday life and have learnt to adapt my mindfulness practices to changing circumstances.  I am always on the lookout for mindfulness exemplars.

When I look back on my tennis experience over more than 60 years, I can see how Angela’s theory  of skill acquisition and application through hard work bears fruit in terms of high performance.  I have played over 1,000 sets of tennis and practised individual shots over numerous hours over my lifetime.  Even when no one else was available to play a game of tennis with me, I would take a bucket of balls to a tennis court and practise my serves and shots up and down the forehand and backhand sidelines as well as crosscourt.  Even today in my seventies, I can complete tennis shots that surprise the people I am playing with (such as a backhand half-volley drop shot or a backhand half-volley lob).  I find that mindfulness, especially Tai Chi, improves my game.

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Image by Shahid Abdullah from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Deep Listening: A Lost Managerial Art

Managers report that many things act as barriers preventing them from listening effectively in the workplace.  Distractions from external sources such as endless emails, busyness at work, noise from “open office environments” and time pressures, are high on the list as impediments.  Managers also identify what can be described as internal barriers to listening – preconceptions about an individual staff member, assumptions about what the individual wants to talk about, anxiety when the speaker is sharing difficult emotions, and absorption with their own personal issues.  Managers report, too, that they tend to try to solve problems before they really know what the employee’s problem is, interrupt people to tell their own stories and have difficulty maintaining their focus on a speaker when they are perceived to be “rambling on”.

Added to these difficulties experienced by managers is what Johann Hari describes as our “lost focus” – an ongoing decline in our ability to pay attention for any length of time because of the “fire hose” of information flooding our minds through emails, social media and news broadcasts.  In his book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, he highlights our inability to stay-on-topic, be truly present and achieve flow.  Research shows that our attention span is diminishing rapidly, making it all the more difficult for managers to engage in “deep listening”.   In a recent podcast, Gloria Monk PhD drew on this research to explain “Why our attention spans are shrinking”.

The essence of deep listening

Joan Halifax, in her book, Standing at the Edge, describes deep listening as truly listening in the present moment with openness and curiosity.  She explains that this requires us “to step out of self-absorption, self-deception, distractions” and move away “from the trance of our technological devices”.  Joan maintains that deep listening involves “really hearing” someone else by listening “with body, heart, and mind”.  In her words, it also involves being able to “listen past the filters of our personal history and our memories” – it involves self-lessness.  Too often, we have to tell our stories to legitimate ourselves in the eyes of the other person.

Larissa Behrendt, in her novel After Story, has one of her characters describe deep listening as “listening with respect” – not trying to hurry the other person to finish, paying full attention without interrupting the speaker.  She reinforces the need to be “ready to listen” – “to prepare the space and listen” so that you can take in the wisdom of the speaker and the story they have to tell.  Larissa, Distinguished Professor of Indigenous Studies and Research at UTS, maintains that deep listening has its origins in the ancient cultural ways known as Winanga-Li, where “the silences are as powerful as the words”.

Deep listening for Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as a Bridge to Mindfulness, occurs when we “not only hear music but feel it”.  This involves feeling the music “with your body and soul”.   For Richard, music can help the listener/musician overcome internal barriers to listening by “filtering out” distorting elements such as biases, prejudices, blind-spots and false assumptions.

Benefits of deep listening

There are many benefits from deep listening that accrue to the listener as well as the person being listened to.  I have summarised some of the key benefits that are identified in literature that I have been reading lately:

  • Facilitating the healing power of storytelling: deep listening enables a person to share their story of pain, suffering and trauma.  Annie Brewster details the way this can happen in her book, The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.  It is because of the healing power of storytelling that Annie has established the Health Story Collaborative.  Jana Pittman, in her biography Enough: accept yourself just the way you are, highlights the destructive impact of keeping painful things bottled up – you can lose yourself.  As someone who has experienced deep pain and suffering – through three miscarriages, a marriage breakdown, media taunting and bullying, “a cervical cancer scare”, multiple injuries destroying her Olympic Dream, battling with financial difficulties and an eating disorder – Jana can readily attest to the healing power that facing her pain and sharing her story has provided her.  She maintains that running away from pain can be a “heavy burden” because “bottling it up” is like “carrying it round like a ball and chain”.   By facing her pain, embracing it and sharing it, she has found a new release to achieve even greater goals; the alternative, avoidance strategy, “leaves you with a whole lot of defensive walls and only a short ladder”.  Larissa Behrendt, in her After Story novel, has one of her characters comment that there is “strength in saying things” because “it’s like a curtain being lifted”.
  • Achieving resonance: `Ginny Whitelaw, innovator in leadership development, contends that leadership is about achieving resonance with followers, and that it is through listening that leaders capture the energy of followers and thus focus and amplify the collective energy of a team.  She explains her underlying principles, and supporting neuroscience, in her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference.  Deep listening for Ginny involves getting on the “same wavelength”, instead of “talking past” the other person.  This means, in effect, that energy vibrations of the leader and follower become aligned and therefore amplified.  The sensitivity involved in such deep listening changes the listener and enables healing of the storyteller.
  • Developing empathy:  Joan Halifax contends that deep listening develops empathy, motivates compassionate action and obviates self-absorption.  She provides examples of deep listening in her book, Standing at the Edge, while recognising that empathy is an “Edge State” – that can lead to significant personal and social contributions, but potentially lead to “empathic distress”.  This latter downside of deep listening and the attendant empathic feelings can arise where a person is unable to separate themselves from the sufferer – they effectively “own” the other’s suffering.  In her book, Joan describes situations where she has experienced empathic distress, however momentarily, and offers ways to overcome this other-absorption, including her G.R.A.C.E. technique.

Ways to develop deep listening

There are multiple ways to develop deep listening and, like any art, “practise makes perfect”.  However, we each have our personal and historical impediments to achieving deep listening at any point in time.  Actively working to cultivate deep listening can be very beneficial for ourselves and others we interact with on a daily basis.  Several authors suggest different ways to develop deep listening (apart from consciously practising it in the present moment):

  • Sounds as an anchor in meditation: meditation often involves choosing an anchor that can enable us to re-focus once we experience distractions during meditation. While our breath is often used as an anchor, sounds can be an alternative.  Richard Wolf suggests that focusing in on the sounds of our breath along with the gap between breaths, can effectively cultivate deep listening.  We can also tune into our environment, including what he describes as the “room tone”.   Richard also encourages the development of “dual awareness” where we not only focus on the sounds of our breath but also become consciously aware of our associated bodily sensations.   
  • Music to quiet the “inner voice”: Richard maintains that playing a musical instrument or listening to music can cultivate deep listening because of the sustained concentration required.  You are effectively training yourself to tune into the music (by fully attending to the sounds) and experiencing the music emotionally and bodily. Richard argues that the concentration required quiets the self-critical inner voice and prevents contamination by our “cognitive limitations”.  He contends that music enables us to achieve an alignment of mind, body and emotion.  Richard suggests that playing an instrument for others not only develops deep listening for the musician but also provides a “stunning variety of sonic, emotional and musical elements” for a discerning audience – a catalyst for deep listening on their part.  One can readily picture a young child dancing in a totally uninhibited way to music played by a street performer who is totally absorbed in his or her art.
  • Tuning into nature: nature provides silence and unique sounds that enable us to experience our interconnectedness to everything, including people who are attempting to gain a “hearing”.  Gordon Hempton reminds us that silence in nature does not mean the absence of sounds but “an acoustic state, free of intrusions of modern, man-made noise”.  Gordon has recorded his journey as an activist for nature’s “silence” in his book, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet.  Through his work as a sound recordist and an acoustic ecologist, he has encouraged people to heighten their auditory awareness of the unique “soundtracks” that surround us in nature and to observe “the quiet between the notes” (so that we can better appreciate the value of silence and stillness).  Gordon’s crusade for silence and listening to nature is mirrored in the work of Christine Jackman, author of Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World.  In a chapter on nature, she highlights the healing power of nature and the need to tune into nature to reduce our “emotional inflammation” and regain our capacity to be quiet and listen.  Like Gordon, she contends that when we listen to nature “our listening horizon extends”.   Polar photographer, Camille Seaman, maintains that spending time in the stillness and silence of nature “dissolves the veil of separateness” and increases our understanding of, and respect for, our connectedness.
  • Adopting a “not Knowing” mindset: Joan Halifax recommends cultivating a “beginner’s mind” – the stance of “not knowing”.   She maintains that we can never really know and understand the complex mix of emotions another person is experiencing, or the precursor events at different points in their life, or the unique interplay of triggers that were the catalyst for their current psychosomatic state.  This perspective accords with the advice of Frank Ostaseski to cultivate a don’t know mind.  Robert Wilder discusses the challenges and benefits of living a “not knowing” life in his podcast, The Not-Know-It-All: The Struggle of Not Knowing.
  • Reflective practice: reflection on our communication experiences can help us to gain insight into the barriers we put in the way of deep listening.  If we are honest in our reflections, we can improve our awareness of our habituated behaviours (such as interrupting others) that act as blockages to our deep listening. I have posted a sample of questions for reflection on personal interactions in a previous post.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness by spending time observing and listening in nature, reflecting on our interactions, meditating on internal and external sounds and undertaking other mindfulness practices, we can gain awareness of our personal impediments to developing the art of deep listening.  For me, some of these impediments are a tendency to deflect the conversation when emotions become intense (on either side of the conversation), to divert the conversation to my own story or to demonstrate knowledge and experience to prop up my sense of self-worth or external credibility.

A further reflection (25 August 2023)

Reflecting on my behaviour when interrupting somenone’s conversation, I realise that sometimes I come from an “I know” position, not a “don’t know” perspective. I feel I have to explain that I have experienced (directly or indirectly) what they are talking about, read about it or heard someone else talking about it. The net effect is that I don’t reflect back the communicated emotions and divert the conversation onto my issue and away from challenging emotions. I wonder whether this habituated behaviour has resulted from my academic background (the need to be seen to know).

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Image by Monika Iris from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.