listenings

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LISTENINGS

Speaking

LISTENINGS

Speaking

Listenings

Who do you think has the most power in a conversation?

The speaker? Or the listener?

What if you are you are living in a false assumption about this?

You can learn to distinguish many different kinds of listening.

Kinds Of Listening

A forgotten transformational skill...

Listening: a forgotten skill

Isn't strange that we have to talk about listening?

You have two ears that can hear sound, what else do you need to know about listening? It is obviously a skill that naturally comes for any human being. Even deaf people have the possibility of listening.

Most people do not ever reflect on their capacity or incapacity to listen, to truly listen.

Do you feel heard? Do you sense that you are listened to? Probably not...

You have probably developed a survival strategy that protects you from the pain of not having been listened to for a long time. A wall of pretend of clever one-liners, empty smiles and hollow comments... Whether others listen to them or not, it does not matter because it is just pretend. It is not really you talking. If they don't really listening, you will survive...

Listening is maybe not such an insignificant-naturally-given skill as it seems...

Isn't stranger that you never had a class in listening?

Probably not... listening is not high on the skill list needed to become a teacher. You would think as a person in charge of shaping the next generation of human beings, listening would actually be high up there for determining whether a teacher can carry that privilege task.

Why not? Why didn't have class about listening? Why this might be the first time you consider that there is different kinds of listening with each their own skill-set and consequences?

Because listening is a transformational skill.

In modern culture, you are taught to speak.

Speak loud and first and you will be heard. If you don't speak up for yourself, who will?

You are taught that you need to fight to be heard. How long before your Being gives up the fight to be heard by a crowd of non-listener? Not very long. You bury your authentic speaker for lack of listening, until you cannot hear its voice anymore.

By forgetting the skill of listening, we have silenced ourselves to meaningless chatter.

You are taught by example, that the one who can speak (or scream) the loudest is the one who is right. Have you ever been in a meeting that uses this thoughtware? Or in a relationship?

In modern culture, listening has become a weak skill.

What if listening was as powerful, if not more, than speaking?

Survival Listening

Listening, authentic listening is not about being a slave of other people's beliefs or rules "Listen to your mother!"

Children do what their parents do, not what their parents say. When a parent says: "Listen to your mother", it is not difficult to guess that the child is not listening to his mother because his father is not listening to her either, and she is not listening to him. Why should the child listen when nobody else is listening to each other in the house?

Or "I am your boss so you should listen carefully."

If you are force to learn to listen under threat, you will listen for what you need to survive.

What do I need to listen to so that I can survive?

You have learn to survival listening, listening for survival purposes. You have learn to listen to the slight change of tone in your dad's (or mom's) voice before they explode for you to get out of the way. You have learn to listen to the teachers hidden implication for when or what the next test will be about. You have learn to listen for what behaviors or words triggers your mom happy so you could please her easily. You have learn to listen to the slightest threat so you would look for what you had done wrong and have an already-made reason when the questionning started. Maybe you learn to listen to the alcoholism in your father or the depression in your mother.

When you were 18 years old, you were ready to shift out of survival listening into listening for Life. Your listening is probably still survival based.

Listening: a transformational skill

Listening for Life is a transformational skill.If you learn to listen, you can bring a person to a complete shift without you uttering one word. You can change the direction and purpose of a whole gameworld. If you learn to listen, you have the power to provide a space for things that have never been thought of, spoken of, imagined to come into awareness.

When you think about this, who has the power in a conversation: the listener or the speaker? What can the speaker speak of if the listener is limited suvival based listening? The speaker is therefore limited to survival speaking. What you have is a survival communication.

It is a lot harder for an authentic speaking to be heard from a survival based listening than it is to offer a authentic listening to a survival based speaker for the speaker to change 'channel'.

Do you truly listen to your peers and your loved ones? Probably not... Because why?

Because listening is a transformational experience.

When you truly listen, the result of true listening is that you - as the listener - get transformed as much as the speaker changes. The speaker is heard when you have transformed into the person who could hear something that you could not hear before.

Listening is a two ways transformational road.

Learning true listening might not be as easy as it seems. You have many blocks, fears, conclusions, opinions, thoughtware and prejudices to change and transformation. One of your Box's reaction might be: "Why would I transform so that they can be heard?"

Good question.

Thoughtmap of 6 Kinds of Listening

In Possibility Management, we distinguish 6 Kinds of Listening (the 5 Kinds of Listening Thoughtmap dates before the discovery of the 6th kind of listening):

Normal Neurotic Listening
Adult Listening
Possibility Listening
Discovery Listening
Universe Listening (Listening to the Field)
Transformational Listening

Map of Listenings, Possibility Management

Normal Neurotic Listening

let your Gremlin listen for itself while pretending to listen to someone else

Listening The Serves Your Gremlin

Normal neurotic listening is by far the most common kind of listening that you encounter and produce during your usual day. It is named “neurotic” because it is behavior that is self-referenced, self-serving and does not often accomplish what it promises, namely listening.

Look at people in a cafés, restaurants, in meetings or walking down the streets, you can see that both their lips are moving at the same time. If everybody is speaking at the same time, who is listening?

You can see people on the phone 'listening' while buying their groceries or lunch, while checking out the latest sales or flipping through a magazine. If their attention is their lunch, how much attention can they give their speaker?

You can see people wearing headphones on while talking to someone. You can see people's eyes riveted on their phone while seemingly having a conversation with the other human being sitting next to them.

Do you know who else is doing that? (You.)

Actually your Gremlin. Normal neurotic listening is listening for your Gremlin, that part of you that is dedicated to serve your hidden purpose. Your Gremlin listens for your survival purposes of separating, taking revenge, competing, hating, being superior or inferior, ignoring, withholding, being right, not knowing, etc...

When the speaker says something important to you, and you use normal neurotic listening, you might interpret what they said as a personal attack. You could feel either challenged or stimulated, and before the speaker even finishes you start formulating in our mind what you
are going to say to them. You allow no time for what they said to land in your heart. Your mind keeps running, and words burst out of your mouth, like horses out of a starting gate.

Or when the speaker communicates with anger or sadness or fear, you take it as your problem
and try to avoid it or try to solve it.

If the things the speaker wants to share with you are things you do not want to hear about, you cleverly ask diagonal questions, change the subject, make a joke, or look at your watch and whip
up some excuse for leaving.

In Normal Neurotic Listening, your interest in the other's world, in the other's concerns or love declaration (if you consider that when someone is talking to you it means that they love you) comes after your Gremlin's need for food.

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By forgetting the skill of listening, we have silenced ourselves to meaningless chatter.

~ Anne-Chloé Destremau

Adult/Active Listening

Listening That Serves Both Of Us

Adult Listening is what is also referred sometimes to as Deep Listening or Active Listening (word coined by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson in 1957).

Adult Listening is a revolution in comparison with Normal Neurotic Listening. Adult Listening follows the Thoughtmap of Communication with the intention to complete
communications and navigate toward extraordinary human love. Adult listening is rare and
extraordinary; it leads to extraordinary human relationship.

In Adult Listening, the speaker feels heard, seen and understood by the listener, and the Listener to hears, sees and undersstand the speaker. Adult Listening serves both Adults in the communication.

For Adult Listening, the Listener takes an open body position, legs and arms uncrossed, showing a willingness to be affected by the speaker. The Adult Listener often nods to impress on the speaker that they understand and are being with them. The Adult Listener repeats back what the speaker says without twisting the meaning or spinning the message. The Adult Listener asks questions to make sure they understand the speaker's communication. The attention of the Adult Listener is on the speaker.

The Adult Listener does not share their opinions, or their beliefs about the speaker's theme of conversation. The Adult Listener does not interrupt to tell their own stories. The Adult Listener does not agree or disagree with the speaker.

This might seem quite simply and easy to apply. If it is so, why don't more make use of a tool that is in service of both participants in a conversation?

Many schools, projects, teams, work place, NGOs, etc... would benefit greatly from having the distinction of Adult Listening and applying it in their daily life.

It maybe your job to bring the skill of Adult Listening into the gameworlds that need it.

Possibility Listening

Listening That Serves The Speaker And The Bright Principle Of Possibility

Adult Listening is already a powerful tool for extraordinary human communication and connection. However, Adult Listening has its own limitation.

In Adult listening, you repeat back what you have heard people say and you also ask question to make sure that you understand what they are communicating with you.

When you are repeating back or asking questions you are not listening anymore, you are speaking. Asking questions is one of the most powerful ways to direct a conversation in the direction that you want it to go, not the speaker. Trying to understand limits the speaking of the speaker to your own understanding.

Because of these limitations, another kind of Listening was needed as a service: Possibility Listening.

Possibility Listening is the service to become a blank work bench for the speaker to work with. You might have notice that talking to yourself is very different than talking to someone else, even if that person does not say a word. It is because the listener has a consciousness into which your speaking can land and be heard, be completed.

As a Possibility Listener, start by making sure that you have your center, grounding cord and bubble. Then, again with your clicker, declare yourself as a vacuum listening space. A vacuum listening space is a space empty of any of your Box's opinions, conclusions, expectations, assumptions, prejudices, jugdments, needs for understanding, belief systems, rules of appropriateness, etc... You are still there, listening attentively, but there is nothing in the way of your listening, not even your understanding. This means you do not nod, or say "Yes". Both of these automatisms are form of condition to manipulate the other people to keep doing what they are already doing. It is recommended that you something say something neutral like [Youtube r57BP--isxk
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