The Possibility You Create

When it is like this, you create for yourself the possibility of being a source of clearing for kindness, gentleness, harmony, and compassion. You become present through the power of listening.

The automatic way we listen is usually reactive. The little voice inside you reacts to what we think or hear. The first step then to manage your listening is to catch yourself listening in a reactive manner. Awareness is the key to managing your listening. Developing distinctions for reactive listening allows you to do this. You usually listen through a variety of reactive filters. Have you ever said, “I already know this,” in your mind at one point in a conversation? This is an example of a reactive filter. This is a filter because when you react in this way, the only things that get through to you are information, which you already know. In other words, your listening is only focused on the information that validates your thinking.

You filter out the new information (i.e., the stuff you don’t know). When the conversation is completed, you end up leaving it knowing you were “right.” As a result, you remain stuck in the past. There is no transformation. There is no change. You miss out on the information you did not know; information that could have brought about new possibilities for growth and development. There are a lot of other reactive listening filters like these: