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Try this deep listening exercise for deeper connection and better conversations
Are you listening?
Using just five minutes of your day for a spell of deep listening has wide reaching effects on your relationships with work, home and nature. Intentionally tuning in to our surroundings primes us to throw 100% of our attention into our conversations, and sharpens our connection with the surrounding world.
Stepped out below is a blueprint for bringing deep listening into your day-to-day, taken from Bobette's wonderful Do: Listen.
Give it a go to for the benefits to your mental and physical health, before a meeting or presentation for greater awareness and presence, or simply for the joy of it.
Six simple steps
You can stack this exercise onto something you’re already doing (like picking up your kids, driving to work or sitting in your office chair) but ideally you want to make it your time. Where do you feel safe? Happy? A park bench? An armchair? A cafe?
Turn off the TV, close your laptop, put your phone on silent. Put as much friction between yourself and your devices as possible.
Look around and listen. Find, and focus on, something you find beautiful. Mindfully isolate the different sounds. What do you notice? Which are you drawn to?
Don’t let the first two minutes or so dishearten you. Your ‘monkey brain,’ (as Bobette calls it) will try its best to throw you off course with worries and ‘white noise.’
Inhale for seven beats, then exhale for eleven. Repeat this for a minute or so to tune-in with your breath. If you get distracted, choose a positive word to guide you back to the rhythm of your breathing.
Tune in to the sounds of the world around you. You could focus in on one specific sound, or you could take more of a ‘big picture,’ approach, and experience them all at once.
Use it or lose it
Like strengthening a muscle, deep-listening gets easier the more you do it. Distractions will fade, worries will wane, and the ‘monkey brain,’ won’t be so noisy anymore. And when we slowly switch our focus from the inner to the outer world, we better equip ourselves to listen, wholeheartedly, to what people (and the world) are saying.
Keen for more?
Add more friction between yourself and your distractions with this handy resource.
For more Bobette, take a look at her 10 Key Principles of Storytelling.
Come along to our Lessons from Nature, Applied to Life workshop for more insights from the outside world.
Try our 10-15 minute Are You Listening? eCourse for even more listening tools and techniques.