Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week’s blog said that you honor your relationships when you listen with your heart. Here are some articles on listening and how a heart-felt approach improves the quality of your listening.
Listening – With Your Heart As Well As Your Ears “How often have you heard these statements? “You’re not listening to me!”… “Why don’t you let me finish what I’m saying?”… “If you only let me, I’ll tell you!”… “I may as well be talking to a brick wall!” … “You just don’t understand!” … “But that’s not what I said!” If you hear any of these comments coming from your partner, children, friends, or co-workers, perhaps it’s true that “you’re not listening” – really listening to the people who are important in your life. Listening is the art of connecting with another person so you fully understand what they are saying and feeling. It is a vital and necessary skill needed in creating and maintaining a marriage, in parenting children effectively, and in working together and making effective decisions on the job.”
Listen With Your Heart, Not Your Ears “if we aim to become better listeners, we must think about principles of the heart. People can sense how we feel about what they are saying. Do we respect what they are talking about? Do we care about them? They can tell a lot by the way we communicate, by the way we are looking at them, and our body language. While we can control what we say, and maybe to a small extent our body language, we cannot control what our heart is feeling. And those subtle sentiments seep through and are detected by others.”
How to Listen Without Getting Defensive “Understanding your partner requires the capacity to listen. Really listen. Couples are advised to hear each other’s complaints without feeling attacked, and as great as this sounds, it’s often unrealistic. When something you said (or didn’t say) hurts your partner’s feelings, there’s a strong impulse to interrupt with, “That wasn’t my intention. You’re misunderstanding me,” even before your partner is done talking. Unfortunately, when the listener reacts to what the speaker is saying before the speaker gets the chance to fully explain themselves, both partners are left feeling misunderstood.”
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