Loving Listening: Interpreting The Language Of The Heart

By Lisa J Testart and Pierre H Testart

There are plenty of books on how to save relationships, how to be better parents, or just about any “how to” situation you can think of. The self-help section of any bookstore is overflowing with innumerable volumes dedicated to helping us manage our lives better.

Listening, however, in a way that is loving and respectful, is

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saraswati Publishing
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992550042

Book preview

Introduction

Danger, danger, Will Robinson!

- Lost in Space

So I can be open to differences between you and me if I feel OK in myself? If I feel OK in myself, I can admit that there are differences and that things can be OK with you being different from me. If I am not OK with myself, then I am in some trouble!

Quote from a workshop participant

What do we need to be open to respecting other peoples' point of view?

-- We need to be in a position where we are comfortable with ourselves!

-- And how do we do that?

How do we achieve a level of freedom from stress?

How do we get a state of relaxation, alertness and comfort within ourselves, that allows us to be compassionate towards others, giving them appropriate attention, without having to have our own needs, wants, desires and agenda at the forefront?

There are plenty of books on how to save relationships, how to be better parents, or just about any how to situation you can think of. The self-help section of any bookstore is overflowing with innumerable volumes dedicated to helping us manage our lives better.

Listening, however, in a way that is loving and respectful, isn't so well documented. We can find plenty of help for the big picture relationship stuff -- the affairs, the toxic dynamics, the conflict management and so on -- but little attention is paid to the day-to-day issues, the small interactions that are like paper cuts to a relationship, whether it is intimate, familial or work-based.

Our focus with this book is small picture stuff; the small day-to-day interactions and our ability to be mindful, present, centred, and open-hearted in ways that will allow us to step into these situations when they arise with grace and compassion.

If you can do this, if the people around you can get this, if we act with respect and compassion and an open heart towards others, particularly those we are intimate with, then what flows out of that is the ability to handle the big and small things that hit us as they arise, because our heart and our head are connected.

We can then understand why we react; we can understand what is going on around us, and we have the tools and the skills to interact with each other.

A lot of listening is about being confronted with stuff that is not us.

Not our attitude, not our thinking, not our position, not our desire.

A lot of the stuff that you will read in this book involves developing an attitude of mind which allows us to be confronted by the not you without being diminished, and finding another way to admit another person's point of view into your heart and head, without necessarily accepting that that point of view should be how the world is to work from now on.

Retaining our personhood and our integrity without being diminished by somebody else and their personhood and their integrity, but acknowledging and allowing their view to be valid, is one of the major benefits, and challenges, of relationships.

That is the great difficulty in loving listening, it seems to us: being present to another person is challenging and confronting to nearly everyone.

This book explores what the conditions are within us that allow us to be a non-loving listener, and how we can change our lives in real and meaningful ways with simple, yet practical, tools and exercises.

What motivates us to try and break the cycle of stopping and listening? How do we feel about it when it happens to us?

With the frustration born of our own experiences of people not listening to us, we can take that on board; we can use that as a powerful tool to change our own ideas about what is going on with this stuff, because when it happens to us, we definitely don't like it!

We don't like not being heard.

We don't like being relegated in importance behind whoever the anonymous texter is on the phone that our conversation partner is fiddling with.

We don't like losing the telephone face-off with call waiting.

We don't like any of that kind of crap! We certainly don't like having to ask the person we love again and again to revisit an issue we thought we had resolved in the past.

We don't like being unheard in that way, and it may be enough for us to develop a justified resentment against someone over a period of time.

So, then, what if you do that to somebody else, how is it for them? Is it not as enormous as your stuff?

One of the wellsprings of behaviour change is the willingness to transform our behaviour.

Another is recognising the nature of the problem we all face, and hopefully see what we can, and want to change in our listening. Perhaps then we can bring ourselves to listen openly and fully to others.

So, what is it that we need to do to listen in a loving way?

As you read on, you will discover that listening is something we all actually want and need in our lives; we all deep down crave being heard.

We crave being held in the accommodating attentiveness of another person; a person who shows that deep respect and compassion of Loving Listening by being present to us wholly, not just in part, and allows us to express every part of ourselves -- the rest, as well as the best.

There are activities and practical examples of listening techniques to practice throughout the book.

There is space for you to write notes, observations and document your reactions to what you are reading and experiencing.

We want this to be an interactive book that you pick up again and again, diving into the sections that matter most to you at the most appropriate moment.

This book has been written for you, the reader.

It is comprehensive, accessible and relatable, with down to earth, common sense discussions about the real world we live in today; a world of distractions and barriers to effective listening that are bombarding us from all directions.

As we do, we hope you find it useful in your day-to-day life.

Lisa and Pierre Testart

❀

Lisa

Loving Listening came at a critical time in our relationship; when we needed it the most. No one is perfect, and our ability to listen is only as good as what we know how to do, and the way in which we were conditioned as we grew up.

Over many months I had to find a new way of being; find a new path through what it meant to be in a relationship and it wasn't easy.

Our relationship had hit a critical point and needed a lot of work if it was to survive. We started out in bliss, and ended up on a precipice we did not know how to back away from without crashing and burning, and ultimately destroying what we thought we had.

A great deal of hard work ensued, and it was not an easy task. It was the most difficult, emotionally laborious and painful endeavour I have ever undertaken.

My life, our life, was tossed up in the air as if we had been picked up by a tornado and left sprawling in the emotional morass of our deepest and darkest places.

Listening to my heart, my gut, my intuition, enabled me to find my voice and listen to my own truth, which in turn helped me work on our relationship and myself.

We talk about the relationship triangle in our workshops: there is you, then there's me, and then there's the relationship - ignore each part at your peril.

For me, the pathway to being a loving listener began through intense pain, personal reflection, and the capacity to look beyond the usual blaming and tuning out that we use as our weapons of choice within damaged relationships, although that is not all there was to it.

I found great strength in shared experiences, validation from key people in my life and understanding that this was an important message from everyone I talked to.

Loving Listening is not new; it's just not something we generally do.

We don't have the art of listening taught to us as children, and, on average, it is estimated that there could be as many as 1 in 6 children or more, who come from abusive or dysfunctional families (Olsen).

That's potentially millions (billions!) of people who grow up with skewed or underdeveloped emotional intelligence (the empathic, understanding and feeling part of us), who don't know what it means to be in a loving, nurturing relationship and who may never get the right role modelling of how to be in a relationship.

In other words, as I like to express it, our relationship radar could easily be broken.

We don't know how to recognise the red flags that tell the average person that this is not right or appropriate behaviour from a loved one.

We don't know how to express ourselves, and we trust others too much because we have a deep need to be accepted and loved because of self-esteem, behavioural or other issues, rooted in our dysfunctional family of origin.

That's sad, yet it's a fact.

Your partner also has a significant chance of coming from a home like this, and for their radar to be broken, as well.

Does that scare you?

It scares me that if we don't become the Loving Listeners we can be, then we could perpetuate an intergenerational style of communication that leads to conflict, aggression, abuse, and dysfunction -- all without realising it.

Coming from just this very same environment, I know what it’s like to have to find this emotional intelligence of Loving Listening.

It took me 48 years to finally be able to find my voice and be heard, and to hear those around me.

Being a Loving Listener is not about power, control or manipulation. It's about a way of life that has intent, meaning and purpose.

Loving Listening is a way of life, and if you open your heart, become present and live life with grateful intent, then you too will find the world of Loving Listening opening up to you, bringing with it the joy of a communication style you could never have imagined before.

Loving Listening, and the steps we teach (what we mean is guide, coach, impart, admonish, advise, and explore with you in an experiential way), have helped relationships heal, grow and mature.

Nothing changes if nothing changes, and if your relationship could do with some help, what have you got to lose?

❀

Pierre

Why do we need yet another book about listening?

Well, we live in a world of planned obsolescence, where things aren't made to last. And we see that that is true of relationships, as well, with on average 50% of marriages ending in separation and divorce each year in Australia.

Most countries have laws relating to the formal ending of that most fundamental family relationship, marriage.

In Australia, we call it divorce.

Even in countries with a