I used to think that I was a really good listener. But upon further reflection, I think I was confusing being a good speaker and being able to have a conversation with someone, with being a good listener. I can talk, I have that part down. I come from a family of talkers and story tellers. Not professional story tellers, but if you ask any member of my mom's side of the family a question, don't expect a one sentence answer. We can turn a trip to the mailbox into a story! But while I used to think being a good speaker and being a good listener go hand in hand, I think at least in my case, I was wrong.
I shared in my first blog that I am enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It is a one year program that trains you to be a health coach. It takes a holistic approach to health and teaches you that being healthy is about more than just nutrition. One of the key components of the program is the idea that being healthy includes having healthy relationships, engaging in regular physical activity, having a fulfilling career and a healthy spiritual practice. I think this is what connected me so quickly to the program. As a health educator, I was trained in the whole health wheel that looks at your physical, nutritional, spiritual, emotional, mental, and financial health. So I have always agreed with this philosophy that a healthy person is more than someone who eats the right foods. But the other components of the program, learning about a variety of nutrition theories, coaching techniques, business and marketing techniques, time management tools and organizational skills, are also important topics and techniques to being a good health coach. As I said, I am excited about every facet of this program. It speaks to me on so many levels that I feel that regardless of what the final outcome is after this year is over, whether I get my CEUs for CHES certification and become healthier, or if in addition to that, I create a business, I will have benefited from this program. See my first blog for more on what all of that means!
So, why do I suddenly think that I am not a good listener? And what does this have to do with IIN? As I said, I used to think that I was a good listener, or at least I did until listening to one of the lessons in my Integrative Nutrition Program. Linda Eve Diamond has a book on the 10 Rules of Listening. She did a presentation on how listening skills can make you a better health coach. What I have come to learn is that while health coaches provide some guidance, a lot of the time is spent listening to your client and asking the open-ended questions that allow the client to come up with a lot of the answers all on their own. Her first rule, Stop talking!, she states, "you can't multi-task speaking and listening. If you're talking, you're not listening. This rule also applies to the talking inside your head. If you're thinking intently about what you want to say, you're not listening to what's being said." When I heard that, it hit me like cold water to the face. I am a culprit of the talking inside my head. Of how I can relate this story to something that happened to me. In my defense, I will say that it is done as a way to relate to the other person, to let them know that they are not alone in what they are going through and that I understand. But what I have come to realize is there is a way to let the person know that I can relate to them or am sympathetic to their problem without completely turning the conversation into something about myself.
So, to be a good listener, we need to talk less. Sounds pretty simple, right? Try it. The next time you have a conversation with someone, or someone comes to you with a problem, fully listen to them. Put down the smart phone, turn off the TV, fully listen to them. Check yourself when you start putting thoughts together in your head on how you are going to relate this story back to an experience you had, just listen. When you ask questions, make sure they are questions about finding clarity in what the person is telling you. You may find that it's harder than you think, at least it is for me. I didn't realize that I am not always a good listener. I have become so used to multi-tasking that I think I can do it all, and then find myself realizing that I only heard part of what someone said to me.
Another area that I need to work on is being a good listener is when meeting someone for the first time. I always say, I am so terrible about remembering names. I am now wondering if this is another poor listening skill. So I am going to actively pay attention when I am being introduced to people from now on, make a point to repeat their name after it is said to me, and see if I still struggle to remember names. Then I can determine if it was just another case of poor listening skills or if I need to take some ginkgo biloba!
The fact is, there are many organizations and business out there with their online advice about active listening, that it proves to me two things. First, I am not alone. Secondly, we really need to spend more time listening and less time talking!
This is actually one part of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, seek first to understand, then to be understood. Imagine if we spent more time seeking to understand before seeking to be understood. Imagine seeing this on any of the cable news programs! Can you just imagine a cable news show where the host invited someone to their show and then actually took the time to understand the differing point of view instead of cutting them off all the time? I think it says something about the society that we have come to live in. We see it in our news, on reality TV shows, on all forms of social media, everyone is just trying so hard to be heard that everyone screams over everyone else and we just get louder and louder and louder, with less understanding, less compassion, less listening.
So I'm trying. This is my own personal Hayward Adventure to become a better listener. I will try to follow Linda Diamond's 10 Steps. And I will try to seek first to understand and then to be understood. It will make me a very good health coach, but more importantly, it will make me a better mother, wife, sister, daughter, and friend.
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