Certainty is a bugger.
I mentioned last week about how false certainty about (bad) future timelines only leads (me) to anxiety and freezing, and that remembering I don’t *actually* know what’s going to happen gives me room to breathe.
As a coach, I’m a bloody brilliant listener. I hear patterns, levels, emotions, hesitations, possibilities, the lot. I have literally nothing else going on in my mind but you.
Outside of a coaching session, I’ve been watching what happens when I’m listening to people and, well, it’s often not pretty.
And I think the source of why I might not be truly listening is certainty.
Arrogant certainty.
Certainty that I know the outcome of a conversation.
Yes, I might learn some information, but my attitudes won’t change, my outlook won’t change, my sense of self won’t change.
I just know it.
I think, if I’m wildly honest, that might be rooted in a kind of unconscious disrespect of who I’m talking to, and a sleepy-numb approach to what I think might happen in my day.
A disrespect that nothing you’re going to say is going to really affect me.
And sleepy-numb as in, forgetting the utter freaking miracle of you and me being conscious humans on this tiny blue rock in space. The utter unlikelihood of it all. The fragility of it. The wild complexity of every moment.
And there I sit, basically waiting for my day to unfold exactly how I expect it to.
And for us to have a conversation and have it end and then us both to continue about our totally predictable days.
This? Is no way to live.
The Theory U folks talk about levels of listening.
- Listening which is basically waiting.
- Listening for debate.
- Listening for emotion and connection.
- Listening which allows for transformation.
I’m not saying I’m always Waiting Listening, but I’m rarely Transformation Listening.
I had a badge a while back that said, Today Everything Changes.
I found it a pretty inspiring reminder, for a bit.
But how do I continue to remember?
Do I need to prep for conversations with this in mind?
Do I need to open more to the people in front of me?
Do I need to shift my attitude to humans?
This is (yet) another example of needing reminders of how we stay conscious when the mind is so prone to distraction and overwhelm.
How?
How do we drop into our bodies, into a felt-sense of the world, using that deeper vision that sees beyond immediate appearances?
We don't need to go looking for the utter profound magic of each moment.
But how do we stay open to it?
Don't let people be the only one in meetings
There was a time I was in a meeting. Everyone else seemed to know what was happening, and I was asking for clarification and it was obvious I was breaking deep taboos.
I literally started doubting my sense of what was being asked of us, as everyone else seemed to not think it was bad (or at least seemed to understand!)
I came out of the meeting really shaken, tears in the stairwell and everything.
It wasn't until a few days later that a colleague forwarded on a news article that said the thing I thought was happening was indeed happening, not just with us but across the sector.
Although it was a terrible phenomenon to read about, I felt the relief in my body to know that I wasn't being stupid or obtuse or naive.
I remember in some facilitation writing I read a while back, one of their major practices was noticing when someone was on their own in expressing a view.
If this happened, as a facilitator they would ask, does anyone else see this this way?
And if no one did, they would find something in their own experience that overlapped in some way with the lone person's.
Their perspective was that having someone isolated was a deep rupture for a group and one of the things that would stop healthy interactions happening.
(I think there's some nuance here about if someone is expressing harmful views, but, maybemaybe even then it's useful to keep someone in a conversation rather than shunning them. MUCH nuance there, but, you know, dynamic tensions
Just because you're on your own, doesn't mean you're wrong.
And sometimes sharing what's happening for you can be enough for someone to get the strength to carry on.