Tag: first

Understanding without filters

Posted on by philipdodson

We all have a deep need to be seen and understood. Yet we spend so little time understanding others.

We are wrapped up in our needs and we have this expectation that others are seeing us as important. We expect others to understand us, but we are not prepared to understand them.

Equally, we do not communicate with others, we isolate ourselves, close ourselves off and then still expect others to understand us.

It is always better to start from a position of no expectation of others, it stops us from becoming disappointed and releases them from the burden of our expectations.

We have to be first to understand others and that requires us to listen. Listening is a challenge for us all as we are not taught how to listen properly. True listening is being silent, listening to the other person from our hearts and listening to them how we would want others to listen to us…fully and completely without judgement, evaluation or interruption. Listening isn’t about a pause for us to think about what to say next, it isn’t about evaluating what the other person is saying, it isn’t about us or how it might affect us.

People want to be heard and seen not told and fixed. They do not want to hear about our story or for their story to be judged or corrected. Their truth is theirs, and their story is theirs. We are not the arbiter of that, or the person to correct what we have judged to be wrong about it. Our role is to listen to them empathetically and from a place of love, allowing them to be seen and know that they have been understood.

It is one soul seeing the soul of another and connecting with them as one without the filters of our minds.

How do I speak to someone who I find it difficult to speak with?

Posted on by philipdodson

We often say ‘I am not sure how to handle this situation, I don’t know how to say “x” to her’. ‘I am worried about how she might take it’.

We are uncertain how to speak to someone, how to say the thing we have to say. We have formed an opinion of that person that he/she will react a certain way and, of course, when we believe that, then that is what it becomes…difficult.

This comes from the mind and its fear of how the person might react to what we say to them. It comes from the judgements we have made about that person and then our behaviours towards them reflect that, and naturally, we manifest the very thing that we feared.

We want to handle a challenge and we deep down want to speak our truth and be understood by this person, yet the mind sabotages that because of the psychological fear of their possible reaction and then we end up diluting what we wanted to say to avoid confrontation or we do not say it at all and continue to suffer from not speaking up or perhaps make a confrontational situation out of what we wanted to say and make it worse.

The thing is before speaking to anyone we have to do a simple thing. Imagine the person who is easiest to talk to and is unconditional in their love for us and we love them too unconditionally. Imagine it’s our best friend, daughter, partner or someone who we trust and value completely, a person we feel completely at ease with. How would we speak to them? We would speak to them from our heart, we would come from a place of love and we would not fear their reaction so we would be at peace. We would speak without agenda, judgement and fear, so they would receive it as we intend, from our heart.

The other thing is we need to be first, always be first, so we need to start by seeking to understand the other person first, we have to listen empathetically and hear them. We have to hear them without making any evaluation and then when we have truly understood them, we can speak our truth with love from our heart and without any attachment to an agenda of our minds.

We should treat everyone with love, empathy, trust and understanding. We need to make the other person feel that they are seen and we need to be the first to do, not waiting for others to be first. It has to be unconditional if we want to change our world. Everything reflects us.

The whole world is a reflection of us, we create our reality completely. If we want to be able to say something to another, we have to come from a place of love without judgement of them and their likely reaction.

If we start by being the first to listen and understand them, if we allow them to be seen, then when we speak our truth from our heart, they will more likely be able to understand us and allow us to be seen. Of course, their reaction is none of our business, however, it is the prejudging of others that creates what we believe them to be. In order to see people as they really are, we have to be the first to stop evaluating others.

Treat everyone the same, love them and trust them…be first.