Coaching with Gretchen

Movement, Mindfulness & Self-Care Coaching with Gretchen Schock

live intentionally

How to Practice Intentional Listening

Coaching, Habit Change, Mindfulness, Wellness, Yoga

A common theme I talk about in my yoga classes is using the time you are spending on your yoga mat to take an inventory of your body.

To intentionally listen to what the body is telling you in each pose. Rather than focusing on the loud, constantly judging voice in your head evaluating whether you are doing this pose “right,” instead listening to the deeper story that the body is trying to tell you.

Is there a tightness there in my hip? Or does the shoulder actually feel good when I do that movement even though I’ve never moved it like that before? Take in the data without an emotional attachment to it. Without an opinion or judgment, use the time on your yoga mat as a way to take in the information.

When we begin to train ourselves to listen to the body, we can hear the cues before the injury happens, and we can hear things in the body before it becomes a full-blown issue. When the sore wrist is just a sore wrist and before it becomes wearing a brace and having carpel tunnel. Or that slight pull in the shoulder every time you over-extend the arms, listening to that feeling before it becomes a full rotator cuff situation. Of course, injuries happen sporadically. But often, the body is telling us something subtly first, and we have chosen to ignore it.

Once we become masters of intentionally listening to the body, we can take that knowledge off the mat and use it to intentionally listen to our spouse, co-workers, and friends.

A very simple example that I have witnessed with several of my coaching couples is asking someone in your family to take out the trash. The response is often a, “I’ll get to it…I’ll get to it in a minute”. And then what happens next is that the person forgets. They aren’t being malicious. They genuinely have forgotten because they were preoccupied when asked and something in their lives has a higher priority. So then, what happens? I think you know the answer. The original asker has to ask again. Guess what? The response is the same, “I’ll get to it”…

By the third time that the original asker has to ask, the simple task of taking out the trash has turned into a fight. Voices have escalated to yelling in the middle of the kitchen, and suddenly it turns into all the other times that you didn’t support her, didn’t follow through, and didn’t answer an important question.

It has suddenly become this mountain of a problem. And maybe it’s here when you think to yourself, “If I just took out the trash the first time I was asked, I could have avoided that huge blow-up!”

And you are partially correct. The feelings the person is experiencing are real. I’m not saying that the issues that are brought up in the moment of the fight aren’t going to be addressed later because it’s clear that those topics and feelings need to be talked through. But it isn’t ideal to yell or getting to the point of escalated emotions fueled by the trash not being taken out. This conversation should happen over dinner or as you lay in bed. Ideally, in a tone of voice that is in neutral volume rather than that higher pitch of frustration or that deeper growl of resentment.

Listening to those small cues that the people we love express to us, when they tell us what is important to them, we must listen and not assume. For example, when they ask us to take out the trash, we need to both understand their desire and together come to a compromise on the timeline of when it will happen. The important part is that they know we will do it. We may not stop what we are doing right at that moment, but within the next few hours, we will take it out without being asked again. Something so simple, having a conversation about trash and tuning into those subtle cues of frustration from our spouse is the way that we can support and love the other person, showing that we value them.

Again, we can begin the journey of intentional listening by learning to listen to the body. When we become experts on our bodies, we can take that how-to knowledge off our mats and apply it to our lives.

Learning to listen in a world where there is a lot of noise takes time, so be gentle with yourself. The loud voices of the people on Tic-Tok or Instagram create clutter in our heads. It’s time to tune them out, put down the phone and have deeper conversations of connection with the people we love. It’s essential for our relationships to listen to the subtitles of the people we care about, those in our inner circle, and commit to being more mindful in our relationships.

A Great Way To Be Present When You Gather With Friends

Mindfulness

The very first step is to take the time for self-reflection.

Self-reflection is hard, but it’s an essential step in learning to live intentionally with your values and ideals guiding your life. Too often, we see the flaws in others before we realize that we too are doing exactly what we are complaining about in another person. Or we spend so much time helping others solve their problems that we never take the time to reflect on our own needs or how to change our behaviors.

Here is an easy and simple way to begin to notice your own behavior around the intention to be more present when surrounded by friends and family. We’ve all been in the situation where we are having dinner with friends or hanging out with a small group of people, and the conversation is going great. People are engaged and laughing. Then, someone mentions something that no one in the group can remember the answer to. Whether it’s Ross’s monkey’s name on the show Friends, the year or the song Beyonce sang at the Super Bowl, or the actor’s name in a movie you just saw. And then the major shift in the gathering happens- someone pulls out their phone to google the answer.

Take this moment to notice your own behaviors. For example, do you feel the desire to reach for your phone? Or have you caught yourself in mid-swipe before noticing what you are doing? This all too common scenario is remarkable to take a moment of self-reflection. And it happens by pausing. Taking a beat and sitting in what I refer to as the seat of observation. You can notice your urges and desires in that moment of a pause, by not immediately moving into action.

Here is how it’s played out for me one too many times. The answer is googled, often by a person who has their phone on their body, and then there is a quest for others to pull out their phones, “did I show you the pictures of our vacation/a room that they painted in their house/the new puppy?”

Or another classic one is showing someone a funny meme you saw, a video clip that has gone viral, or a snippet of a comedian that you recently watched. At that moment, I’m scrolling on my phone to find whatever video I saw that I thought was worth sharing and who honestly knows how much time has passed but what was once a lively discussion has shifted. I’ll look up, and everyone who was once talking and having a great time we are all on our phones. Because this scenario has happened more times than I would like, I’ve made a rule that no phones are allowed at the table, which means no googling the answers. We have to deal with the frustration of not knowing or continue figuring it out as a group.

In the moment of self-reflection, you can change your behaviors and choose differently. So take the pause, the moment before moving into action, and notice for yourself how you’d like to change your behaviors so that you are living more intentionally. And maybe create your own phone usage rules around your gatherings. It has made for a more interesting conversations in our house.