Listening For Intimacy

Several years ago a woman called me to get some help on her marriage. After a couple of sessions her husband agreed to come for couples coaching. On the calls it seemed like neither partner practiced listening to the other one effectively. Because of this, neither one felt understood, so conflict seemed to be the way they showed each other that their needs were going unmet. I asked them questions, such as: “Do you know what makes him feel disrespected? Did you ever ask her what she most wants or needs from you? Do you know why it’s important for her to talk about her work?” These questions allowed the couple to access their own inner wisdom, and they realized how much better they could listen to and understand one another. Over a period of several weeks they began to hear and feel one another again, and this simple shift was enough to save their marriage.

Deep listening is an amazing gift to give, and it carries with it a powerful benefit—heartfelt connection. The root of communication means to commune, to be at one with another. One of the most satisfying things about being in a conscious relationship is that we can both speak and feel understood.

In conversation, do you perceive another’s pain, desires, needs, and values? Do you regularly hold a space for others to express their thoughts and emotions or help them discover their truth and inner guidance? If you do, you are likely supporting them toward a greater sense of meaning, love, and healing. People who feel listened to are more willing to be vulnerable, which invites deeper levels of honesty, sharing, and intimacy.

How would you rate the mastery of your listening ability on a scale from one to ten? Have you recently brought tears of love to another just because you made them feel understood? If not, let’s look at a few aspects that can support your listening skills and quality of relationships.

Listen with Presence
To be an outstanding listener, we must give the other person our full attention and interest as if nothing else but him or her matters at that moment. If you would rather be somewhere else or with someone else, the other person will energetically feel it at some level and in that degree disconnect from you. Distracted listening fosters frustration, disrespect, and confusion. Your loving consideration can make that person feel significant, help him to get clear, allow him to connect to his emotions, and discover what he truly believes, values, desires, and fears. Such awareness can allow him to make more workable choices.
Do others feel your love when you are listening? If not, try listening with every cell in your body and not just with your ears. Don’t just hear the words but feel them with your heart or better yet with your entire body as if it was a sponge soaking up the expressions of another.

Listen for Essence
Although it’s extremely important to accurately hear the content of what someone says to us, it is often significantly more important to receive the essence of what’s being said. Essence includes, but is not limited to, the silence between the words; tone of voice, inflection, and genuineness; repeated or emphasized ideas; emotions; why something is being said; and what’s being left out. Essence is around, underneath, and inside the energy of the words.

When your heart is open, you’ll perceive what is being expressed at the heart of another’s words. Seek to understand the feelings, beliefs, needs, fears, pain, and yearnings of the ones you care about. When you perceive that someone is trying to communicate more than he is saying, if appropriate, be willing to ask questions that help to clarify your knowingness. “What I sense you are getting at is …” or “What else do you feel about that?” Then allow the other person the space to discover and reveal deeper levels of his heart and mind. How many times in relationship have you argued with someone about one thing, and when you stopped and truly listened, you realized that it wasn’t even the real issue? Instead of making assumptions as if you already know what the other person is thinking and what their motives and needs are, simply ask.

It will also help you to be aware of the context surrounding another’s words. His context includes the location and conditions from where he is speaking (airport, bedroom, car, with company, etc.) as well as what has gone on or is going on in his life (he started a new relationship, is moving or switching jobs, or has an ill mother). Context and emotion greatly impact what’s actually being shared and why. If you get people’s context and motivation, they’ll feel moved by the way you pay attention.

Ask Powerful Questions
Here are some questions to ask in order to more fully understand the heart of your child, partner, friend, relative, or coworker:

1. What is most important to him right now?
2. What does she yearn for or dream about?
3. What inspires or energizes him, and what takes his energy away?
4. What is her greatest fear, pain, or wound?
5. Why is he experiencing the emotions he is?
6. What allows her to feel safe, and what causes her to close down?
7. What is his pattern when he is scared, tired, or overwhelmed?
8. What restores her, makes her feel easier, or brings her peace?
9. What is his communication style (i.e., visual, auditory, and/or kinesthetic)?
10. What makes her feel most loved (words of appreciation, gifts, quality time given to them, touch, understanding)?

Finally, have fun listening! The quality of your energy is the most important thing you give in communication. You can read about other aspects of listening in my new book: Being Love: 26 Keys to Experiencing Unconditional Love, available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

5 Ways to Find More Certainty

Things are changing faster than anytime in history, and the world seems filled with uncertainty. Perhaps you've recently had moments of unease, anxiety, or tension. There are five ways to feel more in control of your life and destiny.

1) Stack past references: you've had times where you've mastered something difficult, took a courageous step and gained confidence, or gotten a victory over a fear. Emotionally connect with those positive times and stack them together to empower your level of certainty that you can face whatever is in front of you now.
2) Get information: uncertainty is largely based on the unknown, and by getting more information you reduce or eliminate the unknowns. There are millions of ways to find out more, including asking others.
3) Model success: many of the most successful people modeled resourceful patterns of other successful people. You can save yourself a lifetime of trial and error just by doing this.
4) See/feel/pre-live it: Visualize it, feel how you would be as if the positive event or way of being has already happened for you. The discipline is to live in this great feeling space until the fruition comes. The point is that you're always living in some space, so which one will give you the best results?
5) Take direct action: First you must move your thought in a new way, then move your body by doing what is directly required to be/do/have what's in your heart. This is one of the best ways to eliminate fear, gain a powerful sense of identity, and discover what's possible.

Life is short, play with all you have and enjoy the ride!

Questions to Change Your Life

In response to several requests from clients and friends, here are daily questions you can ask yourself or better yet briefly journal about to bring more meaning, progress, and fulfillment to your life:

1. What do I intend for today?
2. What guidance am I grateful for today?
3. How have I contributed and connected today?
4. What experience or achievement today has blessed others or me?
5. What have I learned today?
6. What worked today? What didn’t and what could I do better next time?
7. What did I enjoy most today?
8. Powerful Question: ask something that you want the answer to, something that makes you feel better just by asking it. E.g.: “What is the best way to resolve the way I’m feeling about my boss?”
Remember, what gets measured and recorded gets attention and progress. May these questions be supportive to you and those you love! Feel free to email the positive results you feel.

5 Tips to Keeping Your New Year’s Resolution

Clarify a Compelling Vision:
• What do you most want to experience or achieve? This is your target and clarity will help you focus, whether your resolution has to do with your physical body, relationships & family, career, finances, emotions, or spiritual pathway.
• Get specific & emotionally connect with your desired result. Bring it into the present by visualizing & feeling it as if it has already happened.
• Who would you be and how would you relate to others when you’ve achieved what you’re going for? Start being this.
• When is your celebration date, and how will you reward yourself?

Feel your Purpose:
• This is your fuel, and what will allow you to overcome obstacles & distractions, keep going and feel passion while making progress. Most people quit because they don’t have powerful enough reasons? When reasons are greater than obstacles, you’ll get it done no matter what.
• Why do you really want this goal?
• What would it do for you and others?
• Is there a higher purpose for it? Walt Disney wanted to build a place for his girls to enjoy.
• What would make it a must for you or make you unstoppable?

Write a Winnable Action Plan:
• What steps could you take to hit your target or create experience that’s in your heart?
• What ideas, resources, people and environment are available to support your progress?
• Who could you model that’s already done it?
• What’s helped you succeed in the past, and how could you employ those patterns again?
• What’s the biggest thing standing in your way and what could you do differently this time?

Take Consistent Action:
• After writing your plan immediately, do something towards achieving it to build momentum.
• Taking action in the direction of your dreams expands your capacities, improves your confidence & certainty, opens doors, and makes it easier to take action again.
• Schedule your resolution time and it will more likely happen. This is what will replace your wishbone with some backbone.
• Understand your priorities: 20% of your efforts tend to give you 80% of your results. Do 20%’ers first and watch how fulfilled you become.

Measure your Results & Celebrate:
• What gets measured gets attention; what gets attention gets results. The more often something gets measured the better the results tend to be. The feedback you’re getting will allow you to adjust either of both of two things: your perceptions or strategy.
• Accountability works: with a Coach, spreadsheet, or reliable friend. The real question is: what could you put in place that will support you taking action consistently?
• Celebrate your progress! Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the ride, and reward yourself for your efforts. By doing so, you’ll have a positive association for them.

© 2010 by LifeCoachMark.com & Mark J. Petroff, LLC

Goals & Results

Most people who set goals do not achieve the results they had intended. There are many elements in setting goals, but here are a few reminders to get you back on track:
1. First, get clear about where you are to know where you would rather be. Clarity is power, and it’s also about honesty! Then write your goal down. Using your physiology will help make it more real to you.
2. Be specific about your goal. If you want a new car, pick out the year, make, model, and features. You could even test drive the car so you’re sure about your vision.
3. Emotionally connect with and list the reasons why you want this goal, and what it would cost you not to have it. This is your purpose, your fuel, for this goal, and without a purpose you will likely lose energy when you face obstacles and distractions.
4. Design an action plan. You can always adjust this with the feedback you’ll receive along the way, so start with what you know about whom and what can support your goal.
5. Measure your progress. If you want to exercise four times a week, mark on your calendar which days you actually did exercise. What gets measured gets better results, and the more often you measure, the more often you’ll get better results (all other things being equal). If you want to fire up your progress, find an accountability partner: someone who believes in you and your dreams, and won’t sell your short regarding your commitments to yourself. Examples of a partner could be a friend, family member, coach, or mentor.
6. Make sure your goal is attainable and realistic, so you actually believe it will happen. If you want to be a concert pianist in 30 days, but have never struck an ivory key, your mind will flag your fantasy and set you up for a failure.
7. Put a time stamp on it, and call it your celebration date. Picking a date (or even time on that date) will kick butt over phrases like “someday” or “soon”. If you know your target, you can chunk it down into bit size steps to get there.
8. Review your goals regularly, such as daily or weekly. When you do, get in the space where you feel like you would feel if the goal was already achieved. How would you feel, who would you have become, who else could you benefit, and what else would be possible for you? The feeling presence practice is powerful, and actually aligns you with possibilities, resources, ideas, and people that can help you get there.
9. Keep stretching yourself and celebrate your victories. Meaning in life comes from growing and giving!
I’m here to serve you, and wish you much success and fulfillment!
Coach Mark

Compassion and Acceptance

Perhaps all of us have had family members or others in our life that have said or done things to us which frankly seem unforgivable! Can you remember a circumstance where you spoke hurtful or hateful words, and later recognized that you did not really mean them? The context of your life affected the content of what you said. You were tired, afraid, angry, stressed, or feeling hurt. In that moment you just had to defend yourself, get some space, work through anxiety, or vent some frustration. If someone had understood how you were feeling emotionally, mentally, and/or physically at the time, they could have more easily forgiven you, right? Likewise, if we understood more about the one who offended us, we could more easily forgive them. Picture that person before you right now, and ask them to tell you what the context of their life was like at the time. Listen. What you hear may radically heal you.

When we go to the theater and watch a feature length period piece we may make some judgments about it. The leading actor did a decent job, but the cinematography was lousy, and the movie was a let down. We believe our perceptions are well informed and accurate. We’re always right about how things look to us, aren’t we? We think our truth is The Truth, and that is where the problem lies. If we watched only two minutes of the film instead of the whole feature, we would obviously be less informed. In judging others, we often base our perceptions and reactions on a very short piece of their ‘life movie’—the limited and interpreted part that affected us! So, our judgments may not be as wise as we believe they are. We don’t know every thought and fear they’ve entertained, every decision they made, and how much they were influenced by various people and environments. There is so much we really don’t know about the movie of another’s life. Perhaps that is why the great beings taught that true judgment belongs only to God.

We can come to the place of understanding that, based on the person’s spiritual level of consciousness at the time, how they were feeling, the programming of their DNA and culture, the many choices they had made before that point in time, and what they believed to be true about themselves and the world, it is likely they could not have done it any other way than the way they did, at that moment in time. It is possible that if we had lived their life for them, we may have done it just as they did!

Gautama Buddha taught that the only sin is ignorance. Most people are simply unaware of just how unloving they have been. Understanding this gives us perspective. It is easier to find forgiveness when we connect with what Jesus spoke: “…forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34—LAM). For someone, this may be translated, “The man has no clue.” For someone else, “I see she did not have the awareness and capacity to do it another way.” As we awaken, we perceive a fuller impact of our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Only with heightened awareness can we make higher choices.

If we not only watched an entire movie, but learned about the making of the film, the screenwriter’s background and intent, and the history of the era in which the movie takes place, our perceptions would shift and our understanding of context would expand. We would naturally have more insight and compassion. The same principle applies to understanding another person! Being compassionate with others is the key to opening the door of our heart to forgive.

When we closely examine some of our own repeated poor choices, mistakes, and verbal offenses, we can be just as gentle with ourselves. We did the best we could, until we progressively learned to do it better. Awareness and compassion lead us to acceptance of what was, and what is, without resentment. It is like our heart says, “Of course it happened that way, now I understand.” With this higher wisdom we no longer have to fight the past. We can be at ease with it. Coming to this realization may not be easy; it may be challenging and require much of us in the way of radical humility. It just happens to be easier than continuing to live with the heavy weights of hurt, anger, and resistance—which keep us stuck and deplete our life energy.

Stay open for Divine grace to soften your heart and heal your emotions. A burden can be removed from the other person and you. Forgiveness always has multiple blessings.

New Year’s Resolution

Clarify a Compelling Vision:• What do you most want to experience or achieve? This is your target and clarity will help you focus, whether your resolution has to do with your physical body, relationships & family, career, finances, emotions, or spiritual pathway.
• Get specific & emotionally connect with your desired result. Bring it into the present by visualizing & feeling it as if it has already happened.
• Who would you be and how would you relate to others when you’ve achieved what you’re going for? Start being this.
• When is your celebration date, and how will you reward yourself?

Feel your Purpose:
• This is your fuel, and what will allow you to overcome obstacles & distractions, keep going and feel passion while making progress. Most people quit because they don’t have powerful enough reasons? When reasons are greater than obstacles, you’ll get it done no matter what.
• Why do you really want this goal?
• What would it do for you and others?
• Is there a higher purpose for it? Walt Disney wanted to build a place for his girls to enjoy, and now he's touched hundreds of millions of people with his vision.
• What would make it a must for you or make you unstoppable?

Write a Winnable Action Plan:
• What steps could you take to hit your target or create experience that’s in your heart?
• What ideas, resources, people and environment are available to support your progress?
• Who could you model that’s already done it?
• What’s helped you succeed in the past, and how could you employ those patterns again?
• What’s the biggest thing standing in your way and what could you do differently this time?

Take Consistent Action:
• After writing your plan immediately, do something towards achieving it to build momentum. There is no substitute for action.
• Taking action in the direction of your dreams expands your capacities, improves your confidence & certainty, opens doors, and makes it easier to take action again.
• Schedule your resolution time and it will more likely happen. This is what will replace your wishbone with backbone.
• Understand your priorities: 20% of your efforts tend to give you 80% of your results. Do your 20%’ers first and watch how fulfilled you become.

Measure your Results & Celebrate:
• What gets measured gets attention; what gets attention gets results. The more often something gets measured the better the results tend to be. The feedback you’re getting will allow you to adjust either of both of two things: your perceptions or strategy.
• Accountability works: with a Coach, spreadsheet, or reliable friend. The real question is: What could you put in place that will support you taking action consistently?
• Celebrate your progress! Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the ride, and reward yourself for your efforts. By doing so, you’ll have a positive association for them.

© 2010 by LifeCoachMark.com & Mark J. Petroff, LLC