Happiness Health and Beauty Secrets

Presence is extremely difficult. Ironically you are exhibiting the proof of what I am saying right now, because in your head, you’re arguing with me. See if you can read the rest of this without being in your head either agreeing, or disagreeing Can you just for a moment suspend all of your thoughts and judgments, and just listen to, or read these words?

What I am proposing here is actually disagreeing with some of the most famous psychologists of all times. In fact, if you look it up, Carl Rogers coined the term “active listening” Ironically if you are listening with your own thoughts of whether you agree or disagree, you are not listening with true presence. I dont know how to say it any better than I said in a previous post. Listen like you are sitting in the first row of a new Broadway Show and you have no idea what is coming next. So you are just hanging on the edge of your seat listening not analyzing.

In fact I so disagree with Carl Rogers that I would propose that if you repeat back to someone what they just said they might think you are making fun of them. Try that out with your wife and let me know how it works out. So she says “honey it really upsets me when you let the trash pile up and dont take it out” so you say “so what I hear you saying is that you would like me to take the trash out” Dude you might as well just get your pillow and blanket because you are probably sleeping on the couch tonight.

A: you are practically making fun of her. B: any idiot knows there was more to come but you INTERRUPTED her. How crazy is that? So active listening is parroting, and interrupting at the very least. But the biggest sin of all is that she was only getting warmed up. If you shut up and let her or him speak for as long as they wished you could have uncovered stuff you never heard before. Because you were too busy “active” listening to hear anything.

I promise you if you can keep your mouth shut long enough you will hear new things from every single person in your life. It will truly be magical. You will reach depths of connections deeper than you ever had even with those that you have deep connections with your whole life.

Why do you think people spend hundreds of dollars an hour to go to a shrink? Its literally the only time in their whole life that someone listened to them for an hour. Thats when magic happens. And those of you who have gone to a shrink know that every great insight came from you. The shrink actually said nothing.

Your active mind is busy making connections and wanting to agree, disagree, help, advise, react, respond. It just means you are alive and you have a lot of memories and feelings that are being fired off when another person is speaking. Its truly a monumental task to quiet your mind. Why do you think its so difficult to meditate. Furthermore think of this. When you are meditating you are in a quiet place with no distractions. Even then you cant quiet your mind. Think how much more difficult it is to quiet your mind when someone else is speaking. And you have a relationship with that person. So of course you want to help them, guide them. Its really difficult. And I truly doubt you have ever done it.

But if you can, you will have given someone the greatest gift in the world your “presence” Please do it even if its only once for 5 minutes. I bet its even harder to do with your children. you love them so much you want to guide them help them. It makes it almost impossible to quiet your brain and your mouth. But just do it. You will thank me more for this than any thing else I have proposed.